Hoos Have Enough to Finish the Job

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

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Eight was enough for the University of Virginia men’s basketball team Wednesday night.

With starters Andrew Rohde and Elijah Saunders sidelined with lower-leg injuries, UVA had had only eight scholarship players available against ACC rival Miami. Each of them played at least 11 minutes as the Cavaliers (10-11, 3-7) won a road game for the first time this season.

“The message was simple: It was next man up,” interim head coach Ron Sanchez said after Virginia’s 82-71 victory at the Watsco Center.

Against Miami (4-17, 0-10), the ACC’s last-place team, those men included senior swingman Taine Murray and sophomore center Blake Buchanan.

In his fourth start of the season and first since Jan. 8, Murray posted career highs in points (20) and assists (seven).

“We try to invest a lot of time into guys that don’t get an opportunity to play a big role,” Sanchez said. “In practice, we coach them like they’re starters for this precise reason, so that when your number is called, you don’t have to get ready, you are ready. And Taine actually showed that today.”

Buchanan, who celebrated his 21^st birthday Wednesday, finished with 16 points—two shy of his career high—and pulled down a game-high nine rebounds. He was 6 for 8 from the floor and 4 for 6 from the line on a night when was battling illness.

“In warm-ups, I just got super nauseous,” Buchanan said. “I thought I was gonna throw up the whole first half. I started the second half, and then towards the end it kind of just went away.”

Sanchez saluted Buchanan for battling through his discomfort “and laying it on the line. I know we want to win every game, but I’m just proud of the fact that our guys continue to fight.”

For the 6-foot-11 Buchanan, the start was his first since Dec. 12. He went into the game knowing he had “to be a little bit more locked in from the jump,” Buchanan said. “[Sanchez] told us there’s more opportunities when one person goes down and people gotta step up. We talked about that a lot. Taine did a great job today, and Isaac did what Isaac does.”

Junior guard Isaac McKneely, who leads the Wahoos in scoring, torched the Hurricanes for a season-high 26 points. He hit six 3-pointers, the second of which put Virginia ahead to stay with 11:24 left in the first half. That was part of a 14-0 run that included three McKneely treys.

It’s unclear how long the 6-foot-8 Saunders (11.8 ppg), who was injured in practice Tuesday, and the 6-foot-6 Rohde (8.7 ppg) will be sidelined. They’re Virginia’s second- and third-leading scorers, respectively, and with them out “I just knew I needed to hunt shots more,” McKneely said.

He scored 13 points in the first 20 minutes to help the Hoos take a 40-29 lead into intermission. Miami heated up early in the second half, however, and cut Virginia’s advantage to 47-44 with 13:28 left. The Cavaliers pushed their lead back to seven, only to see the Canes rally again.

With eight minutes to play, Miami trailed by only four, and McKneely was still scoreless in the second half. When No. 11 finally re-asserted himself, though, he changed the game.

With a dazzling display of marksmanship, McKneely scored 13 points in the final 7:47. Nine of those points came on treys, each one assisted by Murray. McKneely’s final 3-pointer came with 2:12 remaining and made it 74-64.

Sanchez said McKneely is “learning how to be the guy. Mac’s never had to be the guy [at UVA]. That’s something that he’s definitely learning. I think he’s doing a really good job of coming along. The games that he hasn’t scored well, it’s not because he didn’t get shots. When you do score 14 points in the first half, teams come out at halftime and they’re like, ‘You’re not going to do that to us.’ He’s finding a way to find his groove.”

Sanchez singled out post players Buchanan, Cofie and Anthony Robinson for their screens, which helped free McKneely on the perimeter, and Murray, Dai Dai Ames and Ishan Sharma for their passes.

“We’ve been working really hard on our offense the past week or so,” McKneely said. “Coach Sanchez has made it a focal point for our guys, the bigs, to screen, especially for guys like me when I’m hitting shots. Ant, Blake, Jacob, all those guys did a great job screening for me tonight, and Dai Dai and Taine did a great job setting me up and hitting me in the pocket.”

Sanchez said: “It’s not just about [McKneely] making shots. It’s about the whole unit kind of working together to find opportunities for iMac.”

The Canes cut their deficit to four points three times in the final nine minutes: at 57-53, 59-55 and 64-60. The first time the Hoos responded with two free throws by Cofie, a 6-foot-10 freshman. The next two times they answered with McKneely 3-pointers.

Led by 6-foot-7 senior Matthew Cleveland, Miami kept coming. As a freshman, Cleveland had hit a desperation 3-pointer to lift Florida State to a comeback win at John Paul Jones Arena, and he hurt the Hoos again Wednesday, scoring a game-high 27 points.

“He has a very, very complete game,” Sanchez said. “If you put a bigger guy on him, he faces him and beats him off the dribble. If you put a smaller guy on him, he’ll back him down and score with his back to the basket.”

With 49.3 seconds left, it was a five-point game, but the Hoos went 6 for 6 from the line in the final 37 seconds to make a miserable season worse for the Canes. Like UVA, Miami has an interim head coach. Bill Courtney, a former Virginia assistant, was promoted late last month after Jim Larrañaga unexpectedly stepped down as head coach. Larrañaga also is a former Virginia assistant.

Sanchez’s job title changed in October, when Tony Bennett retired on the eve of what would have been his 16^th season as Virginia’s head coach.

Asked about the state of two programs that have ranked among the ACC’s best, Sanchez said he and Courtney “are going to do the best that we can with the hand that we’ve been dealt to honor our students, to honor our universities, to make sure that we work hard for our athletic directors and our presidents and for our fan base.

“We can’t control the emotional state of our players losing their head coaches, that’s real, but I can guarantee you that Bill and his staff are working their tail off, just like our staff is working their tails off every single day.”

The victory was the Cavaliers’ eighth in their past nine games with the Hurricanes, and it came in a less-than-hostile atmosphere. On the road, UVA players are accustomed to hearing boos when they take their court for their final warm-ups, but there weren’t enough Miami fans in the 8,000-seat arena to make much noise as tip-off approached.

“It was super weird running out and not hearing anything,” Buchanan said. “Like my high school had more fans than what they had tonight.”

Virginia’s cheering section included Happy Perry. She’s the mother of D’Sean Perry, one of three Cavaliers football players slain after returning to Grounds from a class field trip in November 2022. Happy Perry attended the game with the parents of UVA kicker Will Bettridge, who was one of D’Sean Perry’s closest friends. Both graduated from Gulliver Prep in Miami.

Sanchez met Happy Perry on Wednesday morning, and she told him she was coming to the game that night. He saw her out of the corner of his eye after the final horn sounded and sought her out.

“I didn’t want to leave without giving her a hug,” Sanchez said.

Murray is the only senior among Virginia’s scholarship players, and the joy he felt at the Watsco Center contrasted with the despair he’d experienced Jan. 15 at JPJ. With the Cavaliers leading SMU by a single point with 7.4 seconds left, Murray missed two foul shots. The Mustangs then hit a last-second 3-pointer to win 54-52.

“I was disappointed that I missed both those free throws,” Murray said Wednesday night. “I have to be better for the guys. I took it pretty hard, but I think I just tried to bounce back and put it behind me and learn from the situation I was in.”

Sanchez said: “He just missed the free throws. That’s not who he is. We’ve met and we’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about a lot of guys that have missed a lot of free throws in their careers during that moment, and that if the opportunity presented itself, he’s going to be the guy again.”

Murray’s previous career high in points was 14. He surpassed that with a 3-pointer at the 16:44 mark of the second half Wednesday night.

“It was awesome to just be able to get a win,” Murray said. “I was super proud of everyone. Everyone played their role.”

COMMONWEALTH CLASH: The first of UVA’s two regular-season meetings with Virginia Tech (9-12, 4-6) comes Saturday at John Paul Jones Arena. The 4 p.m. game will air on ACC Network.

The rematch is Feb. 15 at Cassell Coliseum in Blacksburg.

UVA is 98-60 all-time against Tech in a series that started in 1915. The Hoos have won five straight over the Hokies at JPJ.

Tech defeated Florida State 77-66 in Tallahassee on Wednesday night.

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