Cavaliers Fall to Cardinal, 88-65

PALO ALTO, Calif. — For the UVA men’s basketball team, the second game on its West Coast trip went no better than the first.

Virginia, which lost to Cal in Berkeley on Wednesday night, played at Stanford on Saturday afternoon. The Cardinal led for the final 30:04 and pulled away for an 88-65 victory at Maples Pavilion.

The 88 points are the most the Cavaliers (8-8 overall, 1-4 ACC) have allowed this season. They arrived in Palo Alto giving up an average of 62.4 points per game.

Led by Maxime Raynaud, a 7-foot-1, 245-pound senior, Stanford (11-5, 3-2) scored 40 points in the paint Saturday. Raynaud, who leads the ACC in scoring and rebounding, posted game highs in each category, totaling 24 points and 10 boards. He also had three assists.

“He was a handful,” interim head coach Ron Sanchez told Jimmy Miller of the Virginia Sports Radio Network in a postgame interview. “He kind of handled our post trap. Our post trap was kind of soft in there at times, and we let him get the ball out too easy.”

Six players scored at least eight points each for Stanford, which shot 50.8 percent from the floor. The Cardinal was 21 for 37 from inside the arc.

“Our vision [on defense] hurt us today,” Sanchez said. “They moved the ball well, and then we had a few too many miscommunications on the defensive side of the ball.”

Junior guard Isaac McKneely, who was held to a season-low three points in the loss to Cal, scored 22 points to lead UVA. He was 7 for 14 overall and 5 for 11 from long range.

“I think Isaac was fantastic today,” Sanchez said. “I hope he can stay there and continue to play that way.”

The Hoos need McKneely to hunt shots, and he was aggressive from the start Saturday. The 14 field-goal attempts matched his season high.

“Coming off the Cal game, I didn’t play well, didn’t shoot the ball well, so this one is definitely a confidence-builder for me,” McKneely told Miller. “But hopefully we can get in the win column next game. That’s the main goal.”

Stanford joined the ACC last summer, and this was the first men’s basketball game between these school since Nov. 18, 2010.

UVA hit five of its first six shots from 3-point range and led 19-16 with 12:00 left in the first half Saturday. The Cardinal answered with four straight points, but freshman Jacob Cofie scored on a drive to put Virginia up 21-23.

That was the Hoos’ last lead, but the game was close for a while after that. With 4:00 left in the first half, Virginia trailed by only one. Stanford, however, hit back-to-back treys to go up 35-28 and went into the break leading 40-30.

The Cardinal scored the first five points of the second half. With 7:50 to play, Stanford led by 17, but Virginia behind McKneely and Cofie, whose free throw made it 73-63 with 5:04 remaining.

After falling behind by 17, the Cavaliers wanted to cut their deficit to 10, Sanchez said. Once they accomplished that, “then we said, ‘OK, now let’s try to get it to five,’ ” Sanchez said. “We just wanted to get a score and a stop.”

Instead, the Hoos gave up 11 unanswered points, seven of them by Raynaud. Virginia’s only points in the final five minutes came on a McKneely jumper that made it 84-65 with 1:51 to play.

Stanford turned the ball over only six times. Virginia had 12 turnovers, and the Cardinal turned those errors into 22 points.

The 6-foot-10 Cofie, one of the Cavaliers’ two freshmen, made his sixth straight start and totaled 11 points and five rebounds. His classmate, Ishan Sharma, a 6-foot-5 guard, started for the first time Saturday. He finished with six points, three rebounds and three assists in a season-high 32 minutes.

“He was an awesome offensive spark [early in the game],” Sanchez said of Sharma. “He hit a couple of 3s. He was intelligent. He knew what we were trying to do offensively. Defensively, I think he had a really good start for us. I kind of like him in that role, and I’m hoping that he can continue to grow.”

Andrew Rohde, Virginia’s starting point guard, was battling flu-like symptoms and played only five minutes in the second half. Even so, he finished with a team-high five assists.

UP NEXT
Back in Charlottesville, Virginia will host SMU (12-4, 3-2) on Wednesday night at John Paul Jones Arena. The 9 o’clock game will air on ACC Network.

This will be the Cavaliers’ second meeting with the Mustangs in five weeks. UVA opened ACC play Dec. 7 with a 63-51 loss at SMU.

SMU routed Georgia Tech 93-71 in Dallas on Saturday.