Sanchez had three points of emphasis after Bahamas trip

By Jerry Ratcliffe

After back-to-back thumpings in the Bahamas, Ron Sanchez had a significant checklist of things to correct once his Virginia basketball team returned to friendlier shores.

His Cavaliers were overwhelmed by the physicalness and athleticism of nationally ranked Tennessee and St. John’s, giving the new UVA coach plenty of topics to grab his players’ attention back home. While Isaac McKneely confessed the past few days haven’t been easy, the team has benefitted from the added focus.

That focus was on display Monday night when Virginia got by a pesky Manhattan team, 74-65.

“You get beat by 20-plus, two times in a row, it’s hard to come back the very next day after a long road trip from the Bahamas and get back to practice … that’s probably the last place you want to be,” McKneely said after leading the way past Manhattan with a game-high 18 points. “But I think we all had good attitudes about it. We knew we had a lot to work on.”

Sanchez said some of the things he wanted the Cavaliers to work on were mental, some physical.

“We wanted to do a much better job of rebounding, taking care of the basketball and our transition defense,” the coach said about his three points of emphasis upon getting back in the gym.

• Rebounding — Check. While Manhattan won the battle of the boards, Virginia trimmed the deficit to just 31-28.
• Lower turnovers — Check. Only 8 turnovers on Monday night, including only 3 combined by guards Andrew Rohde (1 in 36 minutes) and Dai Dai Ames (2 in 31 minutes).
• Transition defense — Check. Manhattan only scored 5 points on the break after UVA turnovers, a significant improvement against the more athletic opponents in the Bahamas.

“Those are probably our three most direct areas of focus,” Sanchez said. “The last two days, you don’t have a lot of time. When you’re traveling like that, you’re exhausted. You still want fresh bodies out there so you can’t overdo it. I think we did a decent job. Not to our liking yet, but definitely took a step forward.”

Virginia’s gameplan was to exploit its size advantage over Manhattan and to work the offense more through touches in the paint. The Cavaliers worked that well, outsourcing the Jaspers 42-22 in the paint (for a complete nuts-and-bolts description of the game, see accompanying game story, box score and notebook here).

What must be remembered here is that this is a relatively young basketball team with one senior (non-starter Taine Murray) and three juniors (McKneely, Rohde and Elijah Saunders). Six months ago, many on this roster were from all corners of the nation.

Sanchez reminded us that it takes time to build chemistry and to learn a new system from a new coach. Tuesday was only Virginia’s sixth game of this young season.

“We’re not the most experienced, agewise, and as far as having a large number of games together, so we are learning each other,” Sanchez said.

Manhattan coach John Gallagher said he gets it, in terms of what Virginia is going through.

“They’re like a lot of teams in America, they’re figuring themselves out,” Gallagher said. “They’re talented, they’re good and they’re deep. You can’t look at where you are in November. You’ve got to look at where you can be in March. Look at UConn today.”

Gallagher was referring to two-time, defending national champion Connecticut, which lost for the second time in two days during tournament play in Hawaii.

“Obviously, Virginia has pieces and we saw that tonight,” Gallagher said. “They made a lot of big shots, but we were right there.

“Ron knows what he’s doing and he’s a really good coach. Offense, defense, it takes time to get continuity, and that’s what I see. I see Virginia as a team that just keeps getting better, and I saw it tonight.”

The Cavaliers shot the ball well and nearly had six players score in double figures.

McKneely said part of that scoring inside was by design. The offense had become stagnant in the Bahamas appearance and Sanchez believed part of the reason was because there weren’t enough touches in the paint, so that was a big part of Tuesday night’s gameplan.

Players described that the practices, since coming home to Charlottesville, have been intense, but necessary.

The next step comes Friday in a rare afternoon game at JPJ against Holy Cross.