Sanchez pushed all the right buttons against Wolfpack

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Give Ron Sanchez credit for his dedication to the task at hand, a rather huge New Year’s Eve battle with visiting NC State on Tuesday afternoon.

Sanchez’s Virginia team hadn’t played in nearly 10 days, a harder-than-it-should-have-been win over American, a few days after an impressive loss against No. 21 Memphis on Dec. 18. The span between those games and the Wolfpack would be important in his team’s growth.

The interim coach may or may not have been feeling pressure after a 7-5 start with an extremely young team. Sanchez saw some steps forward against Memphis after three lopsided losses to ranked opponents Tennessee, St. John’s and Florida.

It was an opportunity to focus on what his team does well and prepare for State, a team that stole an ACC Championship game appearance from the Cavaliers in overtime last March. Sanchez figured Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts would use his athletic squad to press a slower UVA team, especially after Keatts saw how successful Penny Hardaway’s Memphis team used it to pull out a win.

Virginia was prepared for the pressure, getting the ball to the middle of the floor, not getting trapped on the sidelines and after trailing by 10 at the break, by as many as 14 early in the second half, turning the ball over only one time the final 20 minutes. That was huge.

The Wolfpack, which had struggled against its quality opponents just as UVA had, was performing better offensively than it was accustomed to in the first half at John Paul Jones Arena, a place that has been brutal to State over the years (Virginia owns an 11-2 record vs the ‘Pack at JPJ). Keatts’ team, which averages only five 3-point makes per game, already had six in the first half (6 for 11) and made 62 percent of its field-goal attempts (13 for 21).

Sanchez made a couple of subtle defensive adjustments at the half, decided to put the ball in junior guard Andrew Rohde’s hands and sit Dai Dai Ames, plus made it a point of emphasis to continue to attack the paint and get the ball into the hands of Elijah Saunders as much as possible.

Saunders, who has been playing well, was obliging by posting a career-high 22 points, taking advantage of a size mismatch with State big man Ben Middlebrooks — the ACC’s leading shot blocker — sidelined after throwing up throughout the night and morning.

The Wolfpack didn’t really have a good answer for Saunders in the paint, where he made 6 of 7 shots and drew fouls, making 7 of 8 free throws.

With Saunders cutting up State like boarding house pie on the inside, it took some heat off deadeye Isaac McKneely, the most accurate 3-point shooter in Virginia history, on the outside. McKneely made 3 of his 4 daggers in the second half and wasn’t alone, as the Cavaliers made 7 of 13 shots from Bonusphere over that span.

UVA stormed back after the 14-point deficit by outsourcing the Wolfies 17-2 over a 5 ½-minute stretch to knot it at 46-all with 13 minutes to play (see related story for the nuts and bolts of the game, player and team notebooks and box score). The Cavaliers went on to build a 10-point lead of their own with four minutes remaining and before State made them sweat it out to the end.

It would have been understandable, if not tempting for Sanchez to hear the whispers from the outside voices. What if Virginia lost this home game to State? What would that mean? Especially with Louisville coming to town this weekend, followed by the talked-about West Coast trip to Cal and Stanford coming up in the near future.

But Sanchez doesn’t think like that and couldn’t hide his smile when a reporter opened the door about the challenge coming up.

“You guys have too much time on your hands,” Sanchez said, shooting down that State-Louisville could be viewed as a make-or-break week.

“We don’t use those words,” the interim said. “There is no make or break. Every game is important. Doesn’t matter who the opponent is. The only thing that we can control is our preparation and our focus. If we start looking at what’s coming ahead, you’re gonna lose your way.

“Today was about NC State. It wasn’t about anybody else. We didn’t talk about what’s gonna happen three months from now. That would be foolish. We’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. This is ‘let’s get NC State.’”

Kudos to the coach for staying that focused and obviously keeping his young players focused as well.

Beating the Wolfpack and evening the ACC record at 1-1 — remember that loss at SMU a few weeks back? — was a big deal. While Sanchez’ tunnel vision is to be admired, there’s no denying a loss to State would have been hard to swallow and would have sent message-board trolls into overdrive.

“It’s a great feeling,” said Rohde, who was credited with a great performance (11 points, 7 assists, 1 turnover, 36 minutes). “Coach talked to us about a new season, now conference play, so we kind of just attacked it with a different mindset.”

While Rhode played almost the entire game, Ames was mysteriously a non-factor, getting 8 minutes of court time — all in the first half. Ames was not injured.

Rohde and his teammates gave Sanchez an ovation when he entered the victorious locker room after the game, his very first ACC win under his belt.

“Nice kids, awesome, all of them,” said a grateful Sanchez. “I told them [that win] is not mine, that’s ours … it’s really yours because I didn’t make a basket today.”

Sanchez did much more. He worked them hard against NC State’s expected pressure in practice, had them ready, made them believe, even when things looked rather grim when they were down 14. If you ask me, that’s worth a game ball.