Cavaliers Coming Up Short on Boards

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The University of Virginia men’s basketball team leaves Sunday for an extended stay on the West Coast. The Cavaliers played one of the ACC’s three new members, SMU, in Dallas last month, and they’ll face the other two this week in California.

First up for UVA (8-6 overall, 1-2 ACC) is a late-night date with Cal (7-7, 0-3) in Berkeley on Wednesday. The Wahoos close their road trip next Saturday against Stanford (9-5, 1-2) in Palo Alto.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for us to come together as a group and bond a little bit out there and hopefully come back home with two wins,” junior guard Isaac McKneely said.

For that to happen, the Hoos must shore up deficiencies in several areas, most notably their performance on the backboards. In its three ACC games, UVA has been outrebounded 112-72. Especially costly has been Virginia’s inability to keep opponents from coming up with offensive rebounds.

Against NC State on New Year’s Eve, UVA won despite giving up 13 offensive rebounds and 18 second-chance points. But in losses to SMU and Louisville, the Cavaliers were unable to overcome their opponents’ dominance on the boards.

SMU outrebounded Virginia 36-25 and rallied to win 63-51 in its ACC debut on Dec. 7. Louisville finished with 42 boards, to only 25 for the Hoos, in its 70-50 win Saturday at John Paul Jones Arena, where the crowd included the two greatest rebounders in UVA history: Ralph Sampson and Travis Watson.

Three Cardinals—6-foot-11 James Scott (nine), 6-foot-6 Terrence Edwards Jr. (nine) and 6-foot-5 Aboubacar Traore (eight)—combined to pull down more boards than all the Cavaliers. Louisville had 14 offensive rebounds.

For Virginia, 6-foot-5 senior Taine Murray, primarily a perimeter player, grabbed a team-high five rebounds Saturday. The Hoos’ frontcourt starters—6-foot-8 junior Elijah Saunders and 6-foot-10 freshman Jacob Cofie—had four rebounds between them, and the team’s reserve centers, 6-foot-11 sophomore Blake Buchanan and 6-foot-10 redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson, combined for three boards.

Size, experience and athleticism all factor into rebounding, but “there is a level of tenacity that you have to have in order to want to be a rebounder,” said interim head coach Ron Sanchez, who added that he believes Virginia “should be a much better rebounding team than we are right now.”

The Hoos work on rebounding “every day in practice, we’re definitely capable of it, but a lot of it’s just effort,” the 6-foot-4 McKneely said. “Boxing out and getting rebounds is not a talent thing, it’s just effort, who wants it more. [The Cardinals] wanted it more than us tonight, so credit to them for that, but we’ve got to fix that for the rest of the season going forward.”

For the season, Cofie is the Hoos’ top rebounder (5.6 per game), followed by Saunders (4.9) and Buchanan (4.6). Buchanan, who started Virginia’s first 10 games, leads the team with 28 offensive rebounds.

As the Cavaliers head into their second extended road trip of the season, their objectives are clear, Sanchez said. “We just have to continue to work on eliminating the things that are hurting us right now, particularly defensive rebounding. We gotta shoot the ball better, we have to continue to be aggressive, and we just have to play together.”

Against the Cards, “I think today we fractured a little bit,” Sanchez said. “We became a little more individual. Our strength is our unity and we have to continue to do that. But then from an effort standpoint, we have to make sure that we match the intensity of the opponent.”

Virginia, which had won nine straight over Louisville, shot 37 percent from the floor overall and 19.2 percent from 3-point range. McKneely (3 for 7) and junior guard Andrew Rohde (2 for 5) were the only Cavaliers to score from beyond the arc. Their teammates were a combined 0 for 14 from long range.

UVA led only once Saturday, after Cofie’s three-point play made it 7-6 with 15:56 to play in the first half.  Still, it was a two-point game early in the second half, and the Cardinals’ lead was only seven with 7:00 remaining. From there, though, it was all Louisville.

Senior guard Reyne Smith’s fifth 3-pointer made it 55-45 with 6:52 left, and the Hoos never recovered.

“Pat does a great job with his group,” Sanchez said. “It’s a very experienced, older group that he has. They’ve got a lot of basketball experience under their belt, and they came into the environment and they owned it. They competed hard. They got what they wanted. They got shots for the right guys. They screened well. They fought. They didn’t let us get paint touches like we wanted.”

Smith is one of four players who followed Kelsey from the College of Charleston to Louisville after the 2023-24 season. Smith came in having accounted for nearly 30 percent of his team’s 3-point attempts, but the Hoos lost him several times, and the 6-foot-2 left-hander made them pay for those lapses.

“The scouting report on him was that he was gonna get screens and we had to stay attached to him,” Sanchez said. “Why there was so much room or so much separation, I don’t know exactly why, but we should have been really close on him when he made the catch.”

Smith hit 5 of his 10 attempts from long range. For the game, the Cards shot 43.9 percent from the floor, and when they missed, they often tracked down the rebound.

“We were getting stops,” McKneely said, “but then they were getting second and third opportunities, and they just wore us down in that area.”

Sanchez likes to use a boxing analogy with his players, stressing the need to compete for “all 12 rounds” in games.

“You can’t do eight, 10, or you’re gonna get knocked out,” McKneely said, “and we got knocked out tonight, so we gotta find a way to play a full 40 [minutes]. I gotta be a better leader to my teammates, especially when the other team is going on a run and we get down a lot, I gotta be a better leader and keep the group together. But we just gotta find a way to play a full 40. Because when have played a full 40, we’ve won those games. So we gotta find a way to do that every game.”

Rohde said: “We can’t let our foot off the gas, and we’ve got to try and gain momentum in whatever way we can.”

Three players scored in double figures for Virginia: Rohde (16), McKneely (13) and Saunders (12). Rohde spent his freshman season at St. Thomas in Minnesota, and the 16 points are his high as a Cavalier. Primarily playing point guard Saturday, he also contributed four rebounds, four assists and a game-high three steals, with only one turnover.

“I give Andrew a lot of credit,” Sanchez said. “What I appreciate about his game is that Andrew is not afraid of the moment. He goes after it. He’s not afraid to fail. If he makes a great play, he’ll make it. If he makes a bad play, he’ll bounce back and he moves forward … He’s not intimidated by the opponent or the moment or the stage. He’s a hard-playing guy who’s really smart.”

As a sophomore, the 6-foot-6 Rohde shot 29.3 percent from the floor and averaged only 4.3 points per game. He’s raised his shooting percentage to 47.8 and his scoring average to 9.1 ppg.

“He’s just matured a lot in the second year in the system,” McKneely said. “He’s a really good defender. He’s gotten a lot better at taking care of the ball, making great passes, and he’s scored a lot this year, too. So he’s kind of doing a lot of everything for us this year. He’s a great point guard, and I’ve loved playing with him so far and can’t wait to continue the year with him.”

COAST TO COAST: Virginia’s game at Cal will start at 11 o’clock Eastern on Wednesday night and air on ESPNU.

The Hoos lead their series with the Golden Bears 2-0. In December 2015, UVA edged Cal, whose players included Jaylen Brown, 63-61 in overtime at JPJ. A year later, Virginia defeated Cal 56-52 in Berkeley.

UVA’s game at Stanford will start at 4 p.m. Eastern. The Cavaliers are 1-7 all-time against the Cardinal. These programs haven’t met since Nov. 18, 2010, when Stanford won 81-60 in Palo Alto.

Stanford lost at Pitt and Cal at Clemson on Saturday.

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