Saunders Finding His Comfort Zone at UVA

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In his two seasons at San Diego State, Elijah Saunders attempted only 31 free throws, and he rarely went to the line in pressure situations.

Saunders, a 6-foot-8 junior, has a larger role at Virginia. Twelve games into his first season as a Cavalier, he’s shot 34 free throws (and made 28 of them).

“It’s a luxury when one of your power forwards is the guy that you can get the ball to at the end of the game and have him try to seal the game for you,” UVA interim head coach Ron Sanchez said.

That’s what Saunders did Sunday afternoon in Virginia’s 63-58 win over American at John Paul Jones Arena. In the Wahoos’ final non-conference game, they saw the Eagles rally four times to take second-half leads. Each time the Hoos regained the lead—their largest deficit was five (47-42)—but they were up only three when Saunders went to the line with 24.7 seconds left.

To that point, Virginia had made only 2 of 6 free throws, but Saunders calmly sank both ends of his one-and-one. Eight seconds later, after a missed 3-point attempt by American, Saunders went back to the line for another one-and-one, and this time he split the pair.

With 10.3 seconds left, the Eagles hit their 11^th trey to make it 59-56, and they fouled Saunders in the backcourt a moment later. Had he missed the front end of this one-and-one, American would have had a chance to tie with another 3-pointer, but he made both shots, allowing the Cavaliers to exhale at the end of a game that featured 13 lead changes.

“I haven’t really been in that situation yet in college,” Saunders said of taking late-game free throws, “but in high school, I used to be in that situation a lot, so I kind of [focus on] just having a level head going to the line.”

Saunders led all scorers with a career-high 21 points and also pulled down a game-high eight rebounds. He was 7 for 9 from the floor and 7 for 8 from the line. For the season, he’s averaging 11.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game. He missed his only 3-point attempt Sunday, but he’s shooting 38.7 percent from long range this season.

“Elijah has shown the ability to kind of be a three-level scorer,” Sanchez said. “Today you saw him play in front of the rim, hit a pull-up. We’ve seen him shoot the 3-ball. He also can make free throws … I think he did a fantastic job down the stretch. So for him it’s just continuing to develop that confidence and to want to play that role, and for us as a staff it’s continuing to make sure that we put him in spots to be successful.”

Saunders, who’s from Phoenix, has scored at least 15 points in four of Virginia’s past five games. He said he’s “getting more comfortable with our offense, kind of knowing where my points are going to come from and knowing when to be a screener and when to try to be more aggressive, so I’ll just say I’m feeling more comfortable.”

The 240-pound Saunders impressed American head coach Duane Simpkins, a former Maryland standout.

“He’s strong,” Simpkins said of No. 2.

The Cavaliers led 32-28 at the break Sunday, but little came easily for them in the second half. American guard Colin Smalls finished 4 for 13 from the floor, but his makes included three consecutive 3-pointers, the last of which put the Eagles up 39-37 with 15:50 to play. Virginia fought back and regained the lead at 42-41, but American responded with back-to-back treys to go up 47-42.

The Hoos answered with a run of their own and took a 49-47 lead when 6-foot-10 freshman Jacob Cofie hit 6-foot-5 senior Taine Murray for a backdoor layup with 5:50 to play. Once again, though, the Eagles rallied.

With 3:20 to play, the Hoos trailed 51-49, and the home fans at JPJ feared the worst. But the Cavaliers steadied themselves. Junior guard Andrew Rohde’s jumper made it 51-51, and Saunders scored inside off a pass from Cofie to put UVA up 53-51. After an American miss, Cofie’s fourth and final assist set up a Murray 3-pointer from the left corner, and suddenly Virginia led 56-51.

“I think that at the three-minute mark, we could have just packed it in,” Sanchez said, “and they decided to stick together and battle and came out with the win.”

In his second straight start, Cofie totaled six points, seven rebounds, four assists and two steals. Murray, the team’s only senior, had matched his career high by scoring 14 points against No. 21 Memphis on Wednesday night. He came off the bench to score 13 points against American (6-6), giving him back-to-back games in double figures for the first time as a Cavalier.

“Just super proud of the guys, the way we came together,” Murray said, “and, obviously, Elijah hit some pretty big free throws just to finish that out.”

McKneely, who leads UVA in scoring (12.1 ppg), was 3 for 8 from beyond the arc Sunday and finished with 11 points. As has been the case all season, the 6-foot-4 junior had a defender with him everywhere he went on the court.

“When you are the leading scorer on a team, obviously you get the best defender on the opposing team,” Sanchez said. “And when you’re as good of a 3-point shooter as Isaac is, teams have decided to make him beat them a different way. Our challenge to Isaac is to be the guy that can put the ball on the floor and get to the free-throw line and do things that are a little different that he hasn’t maybe done in the past, but still want him to hunt his 3-point shots.

“I think that Jacob did a fantastic job today of screening after a post feed and got [McKneely] a wide-open 3. So it’s not only Isaac, but it’s the team. We have to understand who Isaac is, and then we have to work together to make sure that we get him room-and-rhythm shots whenever possible.”

Virginia improved to 6-1 all-time against American. Fewer than 120 miles separate the two schools, but this was their first meeting in men’s basketball since Dec. 28, 2006, when the Cavaliers, in their first season at JPJ, routed the Eagles 91-70.

American hit several late-clock 3-pointers Sunday but shot only 38 percent from the floor overall, and Sanchez generally was pleased with his team’s defense.

For the Cavaliers, he said, the question is, “Are we contesting every shot? And I think today we contested a decent amount. We gave up a couple, we had a couple of miscommunications, and that’s just more youth and inexperience than anything else. We’re throwing Jacob and [fellow freshman Ishan Sharma] at times out there to do a job against a pretty experienced team, and the ball is moving, and they have to be in two places at once. They’ll just get better and better as we go, but we do have to continue to have tremendous effort. If we’re not gonna play like our hair’s on fire defensively, it’s just not going to work. We can’t coach effort. We can only coach execution as we go.”

NEW YEAR’S EVE MATINEE: The Hoos (7-5, 0-1) don’t play again until Dec. 31, when they face ACC rival NC State at John Paul Jones Arena. The noon game will air on ESPN2.

In its ACC opener, Virginia lost 63-51 to SMU in Dallas on Dec. 7.

The Wolfpack, 1-0 in ACC play, improved to 8-4 overall with an 89-63 win over Rider on Sunday in Raleigh, N.C.

NC State is coming off a season in which it advanced to the Final Four for the first time since 1983. The Pack’s postseason run included a comeback win over UVA in the ACC semifinals at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.

A short holiday break is next for the Hoos. When the players return to Grounds after Christmas, Sanchez said, “we’ll have a little mini-camp. We’ll try to clean up some things that we learned from non-conference and really hone in and narrow things down, tighten some bolts, and make sure that we’re as sharp as we can be, knowing that some of our young guys just need a little more time.”

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