Hoos Head Into New Year on Happy Note

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Applause greeted Ron Sanchez when he entered the jubilant home locker room at John Paul Jones Arena on Tuesday afternoon. A few minutes earlier, UVA had defeated NC State 70-67, giving Sanchez his first ACC win as the program’s interim head coach, and his team wanted to acknowledge that milestone. Sanchez deflected the praise.

“I told them that’s not mine, that’s ours,” he said later, “and it’s really yours, because I didn’t make a basket today.”

In front of a festive New Year’s Eve crowd at JPJ, the Cavaliers trailed by 10 at the break and by 14 less than two minutes into the second half. The next 13-plus minutes, however, belonged to Virginia. Led by junior forward Elijah Saunders and junior guards Andrew Rohde and Isaac McKneely, the Wahoos rallied to take a 12-point lead with 5:02 remaining.

“Overall, I think we just buckled down defensively,” Sanchez said.

Second-chance opportunities allowed the Wolfpack (8-5, 1-1) to battle back and make it one-possession game with a minute to play, but the Hoos (8-5, 1-1) made enough plays in the final 20 seconds to prevail.

With 15.5 seconds left, Saunders hit both ends of a one-and-one to push Virginia’s lead to 70-65. After NC State scored inside at the other end, Saunders was fouled with 4.9 seconds remaining. He missed the front end of this one-and-one, but Wolfpack guard Michael O’Connell’s heave from the backcourt didn’t come close to dropping, and the Cavaliers celebrated a much-needed win.

“It’s a great feeling,” Rohde said. “You want to go and win every game you can, but especially after that [holiday] break, [Sanchez] kind of talked to us how it’s a new season now, conference play. So we kind of just attacked it with a different mindset, and it was good to just go out and get the first win.”

Sanchez, who was promoted in October when Tony Bennett unexpectedly retired as Virginia’s head coach, said he told his players “in the locker room, ‘This is a 12-round match.’ We kind of wobbled out at the end, but we went 12 rounds.”

NC State, which came in shooting only 32 percent from 3-point range, hit 6 of 11 shots from beyond the arc in the first half. In the final 20 minutes, though, the Pack was 2 for 12 from long range.

As the Cavaliers’ defense improved, so did their shooting. They were 7 for 13 from 3-point range in the second half. McKneely made a game-high four treys, and Rohde and freshman Ishan Sharma had two apiece for the Cavaliers.

The Wolfpack’s starting center, 6-foot-10, 240-pound Ben Middlebrooks, missed the game with an illness, and that helped the 6-foot-8 Saunders dominate inside. A transfer from San Diego State who’s in his first year at UVA, Saunders sank 7 of 9 shots from the floor and made 7 of 8 free throws. He finished with a career-high 22 points.

Saunders has scored at least 15 points in five of Virginia’s past six games. Against NC State, he said, “I just felt like a lot of times I had a mismatch on me. Even their starting 4-man was kind of more of a 3.”

Asked about Middlebrooks’ absence, Wolfpack head coach Kevin Keatts said, “I thought we did enough in the first half where it didn’t show up, but in the second half, as the game went along, you could tell we needed his body.”

Even without Middlebrooks, State outrebounded Virginia 34-22 and totaled 18 second-chance points.

“We’re going to look at our rebounding situation and try to get better there,” Sanchez said, “but we’re going to celebrate this. We’re going to celebrate what we did well. The team is coming along.”

Turnovers have been a recurring problem for the Cavaliers this season, but not Tuesday. NC State’s full-court pressure rarely rattled the Hoos. Of their seven turnovers, only one came in the second half.

The key, Rohde said, was “just staying calm and trying to get the ball to the middle. A lot of times we try to bring up the sideline and they’ll come and trap it or whatever. But I think just staying poised, trying to get it to the middle and keep playing off two feet to limit those turnovers.”

Sanchez said: “We always talk about eliminating losing, and when you take care of the ball, that’s one step. We could have done a better job on the glass, especially down the stretch there, but I think that was the difference.”

The Cavaliers’ only senior, 6-foot-5 Taine Murray, continued to shine off the bench. He finished with a career-best five assists and also had four points and three rebounds.

“I think Taine was terrific today,” Sanchez said. “He took care of the basketball, made some timely plays, had five assists, and he’s earned that trust by doing his job.”

McKneely finished with 14 points, three assists and three rebounds, and Rohde contributed 11 points and a season-high seven assists. He had only one turnover.

“I thought Rohde was terrific today at the point guard spot,” Sanchez said. “Not only did he shoot the ball well and score, but he assisted well. He got guys shots. When he plays like that, we’re a different team.”

The 6-foot-5 Sharma and 6-foot-10 Jacob Cofie (six points, game-high three blocked shots) are the Cavaliers’ freshmen. Cofie made his third straight start Tuesday, and Sharma played 14-plus minutes off the bench.

Sharma’s second 3-pointer put the Cavaliers ahead to stay, at 54-51, with 10:19 to play. That started an 8-0 run capped by McKneely’s fourth trey. After State answered with a basket inside to make it 59-53, Saunders took a pass from McKneely and buried a 3-pointer from the right corner. Rohde followed a minute later with his second trey, and then sophomore center Blake Buchanan scored inside to make it 67-55 with 5:02 to play.

“The goal is to get multiple guys to play well at the same time, the same night, on both ends of the floor,” Sanchez said.

His team achieved that goal Tuesday. “Honestly, our focus is really simple,” Sanchez said. “Let’s do the hard things well. We’ll celebrate the things that we do well, and the things that we need to improve on, we’ll just put our hard hat on and go work on that. I’m not good at kind of trying to trick guys into having energy. It’s just false. You either have it or you don’t. I think this is a group that can bring energy. I think today we pushed the right buttons, we had the right lineups, we put the right guys on the floor.”

Both teams have undergone significant turnover since last season, when the Wolfpack took two of three from the Cavaliers. Their final 2023-24 clash came in the ACC semifinals in Washington, D.C., where McConnell banked in a long 3-pointer as time expired in the second half to force overtime. State went on to win 73-65, continuing an improbable postseason run that culminated in a Final Four appearance for Keatts’ team.

“I think that game will be in the back of my head for a long time,” Rohde said. “[State is] a really good team, really well-coached, so every time we play them it’s a battle, and we came out on top in this one.”

UP NEXT: A five-game homestand that began Dec. 12 for the Cavaliers ends Saturday. At 4 p.m., UVA takes on Louisville at JPJ. The game will air on ACC Network.

Louisville (8-5, 1-1) plays North Carolina (8-5, 1-0) in Chapel Hill on New Year’s Day.

The Hoos have won nine straight over the Cardinals and lead the series 24-5. In the teams’ most recent meeting, UVA scored the game’s first 11 points en route to a 69-52 victory Jan. 27 at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville.

UVA goes on the road next week for games at Cal and Stanford, two of the ACC’s three new members.

“This is a long journey,” Sanchez said, “and we’re just taking steps and [will] see where it takes us.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.