‘They’re playing like UVA now,’ says Tech’s Young of Wahoos

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia’s basketball journey rolled through Blacksburg on Saturday, breaking its four-year win drought at Cassell Coliseum and avenging a previous setback at home to its age-old arch rival.

Host Virginia Tech had no answer for UVA sniper Isaac McKneely (22 points), while Cavalier big man Anthony Robinson enjoyed the best outing of his young career (career-highs 15 points, 7 rebounds) as Virginia claimed its third straight win and its fifth win over the last seven games (for a complete, nuts-and-bolts game description, box score, team and player notebooks and schedule, see our game story here).

Staving off a desperate Hokies comeback attempt late in the game, Virginia held on for a 73-70 win and improved to 13-12 on the season, 6-8 in the ACC. The Cavaliers are in a three-way tie for ninth place in the conference with FSU, Pitt and Virginia Tech, a half-game back of eighth-place Georgia Tech.

When it was all over in Blacksburg, Tech coach Mike Young perhaps paid UVA coach Ron Sanchez during the postgame press conference.

“They’re playing like UVA right now,” Young said, noting the Cavaliers’ progress. “They’re playing with physicality. Their screens are violent, their cuts are hard and sharp, and they’re doing a really good job. I think that’s a testament to Ron and his staff and the work that they’ve put into this team.”

A longtime protégé of Tony Bennett, the man who rebuilt UVA basketball, Sanchez must have been thrilled with that assessment.

The Cavaliers’ interim coach gave his insider’s view of what it has required for his young team (only one senior) to get to this point, when it could have thrown in the towel weeks ago when it was ranked near the bottom of the ACC and projected to finish 16th in the league.

“Guys have to get used to each other over time,” Sanchez pointed out. “Time is the key. If you don’t have any shared experiences, then what do you tap into? This group was thrown together. We’ve got so many guys that didn’t play together last season.”

Fans and observers were excited after reviewing the backgrounds of the incoming players, but few considered how long it might take for all these new players to gel. Sanchez noted that as much as he wanted, he couldn’t speed up that process.

“You cannot speed up Mother Nature. Some things require time and experience,” he said. “The one thing about this group is that going through adversity and hard time presses you. It presses you forward in order for you to become who you’re supposed to become.

“You have to go through difficulties in order for you to arrive. We are thankful for evey loss that we took, every heartbreak, every long trip, because those experiences have to be had so that then you can persevere forward. The turnovers, the losses, the mistakes that cost you games, all of it is all part of the journey and you can’t have one without the other.”

Sounds like a page ripped from the Tony Bennett handbook on how to develop a basketball team.

There were a few predictable keys to this game as we learned from the previous meeting 16 days ago, a one-point Hokies win at JPJ.

One was that Virginia didn’t have a natural matchup for Tech forward Tobi Lawal, who scored 17 points in the win at Charlottesville. Lawal got off to a sensational start again on Saturday, scoring 19 of his game-high 23 points in the first half. In fact, 19 of the Hokies’ 33 points at the break.

Give UVA’s coaching staff credit for shutting Lawal down in the second half, when he scored only 4 points.

“We did make some adjustments,” Sanchez said. “I’m not going to tell you what they were, but he was the focus. We knew we had to do something different with him, just to make it a little harder for him and to communicate better to make sure that the right people were guarding him.”

Sanchez wouldn’t divulge any trade secrets, but Young didn’t hesitate in describing UVA’s second-half strategy to shut down Tech’s scoring machine.

“They started switching the top ball screen, which they’ve never, ever done [in previous seasons],” Young said.

Actually Virginia did it very late in the second half against the Hokies in the near comeback a couple weeks ago, then also against Pitt and Georgia Tech since then, but most of the second half Saturday.

Young wanted to run Lawal up the floor to exploit a mismatch, but Virginia adjusted, putting a post player (Robinson) on the Hokie scorer.

Still, Tech fought to the bitter end, but again, had no answer for McKneely, who scored 16 points the second half, 13 over the last 11½ minutes, and sank three triples in the final nine minutes.

“I don’t have a great matchup,” Young said “Need a bit more size and a bit more length on Isaac. Ben (Hammond) and Brandon (Rechsteiner) worked their tails off. I couldn’t ask another thing of those two and how they pursued him, how they guarded him. That’s a hard matchup. [McKneely] didn’t have many catch and rip it. He was flying off that stuff (screens) and we were right in his footsteps and he got it turned around and made a couple of really tough ones.”

McKneely is 6-foot-4, while Rechsteiner is 6-1, Hammond 5-11.

Robinson was a bit of an X-factor. In the previous meeting, he played only 15 minutes, scored 6 points and had 4 rebounds, but has steadily improved and gives Virginia a much-needed physical presence in the paint on both ends of the floor.

At times Saturday, he was almost dominant inside.

Robinson’s confidence seems to grow from game to game, and he no longer plays like a redshirt freshman. With point guard Andrew Rohde advancing his game, Robinson big in the middle, McKneely bombing away confidently from outside and other players filling nicely into their roles, yes, Young was right.

Virginia is now playing like Virginia, finally. Better late than never.