Season Opener Ends Happily for Sanchez and Co.

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Six years to the day from his first game as a Division I head basketball coach, Ron Sanchez hit another milestone. In his debut as the University of Virginia’s interim head coach, Sanchez walked off a winner.

Little came easily for the Cavaliers on Wednesday night at John Paul Jones Arena. With 1:15 to play, they led by only five points. But UVA held Campbell scoreless in the final minute to secure a 65-56 victory in front of an announced crowd of 13,414.

Sophomore center Blake Buchanan made sure to congratulate Sanchez afterward.

“I’m super happy for him,” Buchanan told reporters later. “He’s doing a great job and I’m loving him as the head coach right now, so we’ve just got to keep it rolling.”

Sanchez, who had two stints as Virginia’s associate head coach, was promoted last month after the unexpected retirement of his mentor and close friend, Tony Bennett. In 15 years under Bennett, the Wahoos posted a 364-136 record and advanced to the NCAA tournament 10 times. They were crowned NCAA champions in 2019.

After the game Wednesday, the “first thing I thought about was, I only need 363 more to catch up to Tony,” Sanchez said with a smile during his press conference.

This was the first meeting between UVA and Campbell, which competes in the Coastal Athletic Association. When the game was scheduled, Camels coach Kevin McGeehan said, he expected to see Bennett on the Cavaliers’ bench. But to McGeehan, not much has changed at JPJ.

“At the end of the day, this brand is bigger than anything,” he said. “They have a culture here, a significant culture of basketball: winning, toughness and defense. And that’s present even with a different guy in the main seat. And I have a ton of respect for both Tony and Ron.”

Virginia went ahead to stay on a 3-pointer by freshman swingman Ishan Sharma with 8:05 left in the first half. The Hoos led by nine at the half, but Campbell (1-1) stayed connecting with timely 3-point shooting. None of the Camels finished with more than nine points, but eight of them made at least one trey.

“This is a really good basketball team,” Sanchez said of the Camels. “Kevin does a really good job of coaching them. You prepare for a team that cuts backdoor and runs the Princeton offense and goes face to face and get to the elbows, it takes a little more discipline.”

And that’s why, Sanchez said, he decided to start an experienced lineup Wednesday night. Of the Cavaliers’ scholarship players, only swingman Taine Murray is in his final year of eligibility, and the roster includes six newcomers, including freshmen Jacob Cofie and Sharma.

For the opening tip, Sanchez sent out Buchanan, junior guards Andrew Rohde and Isaac McKneely, sophomore forward TJ Power and junior forward Elijah Saunders. Rohde, who began his college career at St. Thomas, is in his second year at UVA. Power and Saunders are transfers from Duke and San Diego State, respectively.

Another transfer, sophomore Dai Dai Ames (Kansas State), was an option to start at point guard, but the Cavaliers’ coaching staff decided after practice Tuesday to go with the 6-foot-6 Rohde.

“There’s been a battle at that position in the summer, in the fall,” Sanchez said, “and we just decided to go with a little more experience. We’re not an experienced team to begin with. We don’t have a lot of returners, and this moment can be big for some of the young guys. And we decided to go with guys that have a deeper understanding of our defensive system.”

Their trademark Pack Line defense broke down at times, but the Hoos forced two shot-clock violations in the second half, drawing applause from the crowd each time. At the other end, Virginia shot 57.1 percent from the floor, and four players scored in double figures: Cofie (16 points), McKneely (11), Saunders (11) and Buchanan (10).

“We shared the ball well,” Sanchez said. “When we ran our stuff, we ran it well. Obviously, we had some possessions where we didn’t have great rhythm, and that’s just more of them growing and learning and starting to understand when somebody’s denying or pushing you the other way how to continue the offense.

“But overall, honestly, we took care of the basketball. We did a decent job there. We did a decent job on the glass. I think we should have grabbed a few more offensive rebounds, something we’ll address.”

In its preseason scrimmages against VCU and Georgetown, Virginia totaled more than 40 attempts from 3-point range. The Cavaliers shot only 13 treys against Campbell.

“I think that we decided to play more of an interior game today,” Sanchez said. “You saw we ran some post-ups and some high-lows and we wanted to get in front of the rim. It felt like that was part of our advantage today.”

McKneely, the Cavaliers’ top returning scorer, attempted only three 3-pointers against a defense that emphasized limiting his touches, but the 6-foot-5 Sharma and the 6-foot-10 Cofie each made two treys.

“Overall, honestly, I’m pleased with the shooting percentages,” Sanchez said. “We took 13, and we made six. I’ll take that all day.”

He’ll also happily take more performances like the one Cofie had in his UVA debut. In 28-plus minutes off the bench, Cofie made 7 of 8 shots, grabbed six rebounds and added an assist, a blocked shot and a steal that he turned into a breakaway dunk.

“He had a great game,” said Buchanan, who like Cofie is from the Pacific Northwest. “I’m super, super happy for him. I’m pretty hard on him in practice, and I get on him, and I try to do my best that I can to kind of mentor him a little bit.”

Cofie, who’s from Seattle, played well in UVA’s scrimmages, “so going into this game, I was excited and confident,” he said, “and I feel like Ron Sanchez does a good job installing confidence in me to be ready to play out there.”

Cofie had a couple of defensive lapses, Sanchez said, but “I’m hoping that this is just the beginning for him and he can springboard into better performances than this one. I think he’s definitely capable of doing it.”

The 6-foot-11 Buchanan, who’s from C’ouer d’Alene, Idaho, started six games for the Cavaliers last season but wasn’t consistently productive. He struggled from the line Wednesday, missing 5 of 9 free throws, but led with Virginia in rebounds (seven) and blocks (three). Buchanan’s five assists were a career high, and two of them came on passes from the high post to Cofie on the block.

“I just feel a lot more natural this year,” Buchanan said. “I’m not reactive. I know where to be. I know what to expect. I’ve already done a year of college basketball, so the game’s a lot slower this year than it was last year. I definitely am stronger from last year, so I’m more physical and I can do a little bit more stuff with that.”

The ball often went through Buchanan on the perimeter when Virginia was on offense, and “I think that’s what we want him to do,” Sanchez said. “I think there’s more in him. I’m not sure that he’s comfortable yet doing the things that we want him to do. But we’re gonna continue to throw the ball to him. Hopefully he can make some decent decisions so we can get better finishing. He’s gotta shoot better from the free-throw line. I think he could have had a much better stat line if he’d just made a few more free throws …  But I think he did a really good job of staying poised down the stretch and helped us organize the offense at times as well.”

On defense, “Blake anchors us,” Sanchez said. “He’s the one interior player that we have that has experience. And had a couple of crucial blocks down the stretch, and a couple of ball-screen defensive slides that prevented the ball from turning the corner.”

Rohde, who shot only 29.3 percent from the floor in 2023-24, missed his only two field-goal attempts Wednesday night and had four turnovers. But he recorded five assists and earned praise from the Hoos’ new leader.

“Rohde’s responsibility is to be an extension, almost like a bridge between the other four guys on the floor and myself,” Sanchez said. “He has to settle us down. He can’t speed us up. He has to get [McKneely] shots. He has to make sure that Elijah gets shots. He has to make sure that TJ gets shots. His responsibility is to make sure that the guys that are supposed to shoot get those shots, and I think that he’s really growing into that role. I think he’s doing a really good job of it.

“But also defensively, I think he’s improved the most. I think that his ability to guard the ball has gotten a lot better. He has a great voice, he communicates well.

And I know that people only look at the stat line. A lot of other factors that go into guys impacting a game, and I think he did a really good job with that.”

Buchanan said Rohde is “a great passer. He sees the floor well. He’s very good at getting us to our spots … I think he did a good job just keeping us organized the whole game and just doing what a point guard should do.”

Sanchez led the program at Charlotte for five seasons before rejoining Bennett’s staff UVA in June 2023. His first game with the 49ers ended in defeat, but the Cavaliers made sure he had more to celebrate Wednesday night.

“We want to win every game, and we want to start off right,” Buchanan said. “It’s going to be a journey for sure with this team and we’re excited for it. There’s a lot that’s happened recently, and we’re just going to keep facing adversity, keep going against it and kind of proving people wrong.”

UP NEXT: At 7 p.m. Monday, Virginia hosts Coppin State (0-2). The game will air on ACC Network Extra. After that, the Cavaliers won’t play at home again until Nov. 26, when Manhattan visits JPJ.

Coppin State, which opened with a loss at Wake Forest, fell Wednesday at High Point. The Eagles host Rider on Saturday before busing from Baltimore to Charlottesville.

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