Wahoos open ACC Tourney play, looking back at turnaround

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Back in mid-January, Virginia was languishing in its own basketball hell.

The Cavaliers had dropped five straight games — two to Louisville, one to SMU and one each to Cal and Stanford on a West Coast swing — the program’s longest losing streak since Tony Bennett’s first year (2009-10). At that point, UVA stood at 8-10 overall and a paltry 1-6 in conference play.

There was chatter that the Wahoos, led by interim coach Ron Sanchez, would be fortunate to even make the ACC Tournament.

Sanchez and his team could have easily folded, come apart at the seams and called it a season. Give him and his coaching staff credit for not waving a flag of surrender.

Virginia won 7 of its last 13 games to capture the No. 9 seed and a first-round bye, which leads to today’s high noon showdown with Georgia Tech in the second round of the ACC Tournament (ESPN). The Yellow Jackets are a team that the Cavaliers have dominated, with UVA winning 20 out of the last 22 games against Tech, including the last 13 straight.

Yet, Damon Stoudamire’s 8th-seeded Jackets are a 1.0 to 1.5-point favorite.

Perhaps that’s because Tech has won five of its last seven games to close the regular season (seven of its last 10), while Virginia closed by losing four of its last six.

Sanchez delved into what it took to right the Good Ship Wahoo earlier this week before the team headed to Charlotte for Wednesday’s game. Sanchez said it required both a tactical component and a psychological component to pull his team out of a terrible rut.

“Part of it was a lot of conversations, really coaching the group, but also coaching the guys individually and film sessions,” the coach revealed. “This is where you can be really effective. Identifying these are the things that are not working individually, and then trying to put all those things together.”

Complicating that juncture of the season was the almost week-long trip to California to play the ACC’s West Coast members, including the Cal game, which didn’t begin until 11 p.m. Eastern time.

Sanchez relied on the program’s pillars and the team playing unselfishly, along with a secret ingredient: Fun.

“I wanted them to go back to their middle school days where they were just playing for fun,” Sanchez said. “We needed time and consistency to do that, and I think that we finally arrived in that space and then the guys just kind of ran away with it from there.”

The tactical side of things was a different approach. Sanchez had loosened the reins a bit on the offense, and he and the staff had to figure out how to make sure that Isaac McKneely scored the ball, and how to get the ball in the best place for Dai Dai Ames to be most effective. What could Andrew Rohde do to help the team, and how would redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson’s physicality fit?

All those factors came to fruition, with McKneely leading the team in scoring (14 ppg) and leading the ACC in 3-point accuracy (41 percent), while Ames came on strong and averaged 14.8 points per game over the last 10 contests.

A fiery Rohde put up dazzling numbers from the assist-to-turnover standpoint, becoming sthe ACC’s most improved player from last season to this one, and Robinson gradually gave UVA the most physical presence it desperately needed down the home stretch.

Virginia returns to the tournament in Charlotte for the first time since 2019, when it lost to FSU in the tournament semifinals before going on its miraculous NCAA run of six straight wins and the program’s only national championship. This time, though, UVA doesn’t boast a great resume. This is the Cavaliers’ lowest seed since 2010, and should they beat Georgia Tech for the 21st time in 23 meetings, No. 1 Duke lurks for the winner in Thursday’s quarterfinals.

Virginia has advanced to the semifinals of the ACC Tournament in 8 of the last 10 years, but doing so this year would demand an inspired upset over the Blue Devils.

Georgia Tech has not scored more than 66 points against Virginia in the last 21 meetings of the series, and has failed to reach 60 in 14 of those.

Come noon, there won’t be any surprises by UVA, Sanchez hinted.

“For sure, you’re going to try to repeat the things that you did well and try to remedy the things that you did poorly,” Sanchez said in reference to the two teams’ only meeting this year, a 75-61 UVA victory. “[Georgia Tech] is going to try to stop us from doing things that we did well. At this point of the year, there aren’t many surprises. We are who we are. You’ve just got to be the best version of yourself and just bring a reckless abandon.”

Virginia fans are wondering exactly which Cavaliers team will show up Wednesday — the good one or the bad one — something that even Sanchez likely can’t predict.