Late night with UVA, tonight’s game at Cal tips at 11 p.m.

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia is a 4.5-point underdog in the very late-night tipoff at California tonight (11 p.m. start Eastern time, ESPN2). The Cavaliers are the first ACC team to make the challenging West Coast swing (they play at Stanford on Saturday, 4 p.m.) since the conference expansion.

The Golden Bears (7-7, 0-3) have lost six of their last seven games, but likely favored because of the absurd starting time for a visiting East Coast opponent. While UVA’s coaching staff has planned appropriately for the time difference, the Cavaliers’ collective body clocks may have a difficult time adjusting to finishing a game at approximately 1 a.m. Eastern time.

Ron Sanchez said he and his staff have studied and researched the best methods on how to prepare their team for the trip.

“You know, how much energy that we spend, how do we adjust our clocks?,” Sanchez said. “When do we start practice? What time are we going to go to bed? What time are we going to get them up? So, there’s been a lot of meetings and a lot of time invested into trying to make sure that we can perform at the best level that we can.”

Sanchez said he’s not only concerned with this week’s schedule, but noted it impacted last week and will impact next week when the team returns from essentially a week on the road, in terms of adjusting body clocks from the time difference. UVA won’t miss any classes, so the coach is hoping that his young team, relatively new due to the transfers and freshmen, will benefit from the bonding experience.

The Cavaliers won’t return from the West Coast until late night, Jan. 11, which is a Saturday, then will spend Sunday recuperating from the travel. UVA will host SMU the following Wednesday (Jan. 15), then travel to Louisville the following Saturday.

“I think you get time to bond, time to spend more time to get to know each other,” Sanchez said. “We do have a lot of new players and we are kind of in a unique situation, so for us to just have time to dialogue, watch more film, not have to travel, kind of get guys back into the arena, but we’re all together in one space, is definitely beneficial.”

Virginia is 8-6, 1-2 in the ACC, and is 1-4 away from home, 0-2 in true road games.

Cal primarily plays a four-guard lineup, featuring Andrej Stojakovic, a player Virginia attempted to recruit a few years ago. Stojakovic is a 6-foot-7 sophomore, primarily a swingman role, and averages 20 points per game.

UVA is coming off a 20-point home loss to Louisville last Saturday, when the Cavaliers were outscored 38-23 in the second half.