No defense, no fire in the belly leads to UVA loss

By Jerry Ratcliffe

When Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry watched the video of Virginia’s recent down-to-the-wire loss to SMU, he saw a “dogfight,” and was prepared for that kind of game on Saturday at sold-out John Paul Jones Arena.

It never materialized.

Shrewsberry’s Fighting Irish, which have struggled mightily this season and particularly on the road, jumped all over what seemed like a disinterested bunch of Cavaliers right out of the gate, 14-3, and never relented as Notre Dame staked claim to its first ever win in Charlottesville, 74-59. The Irish had lost 24 of their last 26 ACC road games, including four in a row this year, before meeting the passive Wahoos.

While the win slightly elevated the Golden Domers to 9-10, 3-5 in the ACC, the loss sank Virginia to 16th in the league standings at 9-11, 2-7. Only the top 15 teams in the conference will participate in this year’s ACC Tournament (for a complete nuts-and-bolts description of the game, see the related game story, along with a full box score, team notebook, player notebook and a Jon Golden photo gallery).

Saturday’s game was the kind Virginia needed in order to enhance its position in the league, particularly with a road trip coming up at ACC-winless Miami, but instead of embracing the opportunity, the Cavaliers were dispassionate for most of the evening.

“I’m extremely disappointed in the way that the team came out, and that’s on me as their head coach,” said Ron Sanchez, who fell on the sword like most coaches would. “I did not get them rallied up and ready to compete with their hair on fire like we needed today, so I’ve got to do a much better job with that.”

Maybe so, but Sanchez doesn’t play defense and Virginia leader Isaac McKneely said that as a captain, he deserved more blame than his coach.

After all, the Cavaliers were coming off a home win against Boston College, and had a sellout crowd on hand for a clearly winnable and important game. Why no fire? No life?

“I don’t have an explanation,” said McKneely, who scored all 14 of his points in the first half, when UVA trailed, 39-27. “Coach Sanchez is always going to take the blame. That’s what good coaches do. But I’m going to take a lot of responsibility for that. As a leader on this team, I’ve got to make sure that we’re up and ready for each game. We can’t be satisfied with one win against BC. We just didn’t bring it.”

Notre Dame brought it … lots of it, in the form of point guard Markus Burton, a baller who led all scorers with 21, plus six players with at least one 3-pointer, as the Irish shot 52 percent from the arc and 48 percent overall against a team that looked like had “Pack Line” defense amnesia.

It was the seventh time Virginia has allowed 70 or more points in a game this year, and surprise, the Cavaliers are 0-7 in those contests. If that had happened during the Tony Bennett era, they would have had to wrap him up in a straightjacket.

Shorthanded offensively with point guard Andrew Rohde banged up and battling injury after missing a couple days of practice, backup guard Ishan Sharma ill and not dressed for the game, Virginia couldn’t afford its defense being out of whack, but it was.

McKneely said that other than the lack of energy, there’s a lack of communication on the defense, and that offensive rebounding remains to be an obstacle holding the team back.

Plus, when Sharma is out, Rohde is off, opponents can gang up defensively against McKneely to thwart his 3-point shooting, which Notre Dame did with its halftime adjustments (McKneely was 4 of 6 the first half, 0 for 4 in the second).

“Communication on switches, we’re having trouble with that,” McKneely said. “There’s a lot of areas we need to get better at.”

Then came the inevitable question of how weird it feels to be out on the floor and watching Virginia’s defense melt into a puddle of goo, something the 14,000-plus fans at JPJ never thought they would witness.

“Virginia’s built its program off of defense ever since Coach Bennett was here,” McKneely said. “We’ve got to get it figured out. We scored enough points to win the game … we’ve just got to get stuff figured out defensively.”

In the former “Pack Line” days, yeah, 59 would have been enough, but not now, not when Virginia doesn’t have the former ingredients of an in-your-grill point guard or a lockdown defender to shutdown the opponents’ hottest shooter, nor a physical rim protector.

Without those ingredients, 59 ain’t going to be enough most nights, even in an ACC that’s as down as most observers can ever remember.