Hoos Settling In On West Coast

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

Born and raised in Phoenix, Elijah Saunders spent two years at San Diego State after graduating from high school, and he hasn’t seen much snow in his 21 years. Had he stayed in Charlottesville this week, Saunders would have had ample opportunity to toss a snowball or two, but the University of Virginia men’s basketball team left town Sunday afternoon to avoid the winter storm that was bearing down on Central Virginia.

On the Cavaliers’ trip to California, however, their plane stopped to refuel in Oklahoma City, where Saunders was treated to a rare sight. “It was crazy,” he said. “I’ve never seen snow like that.”

The team arrived in the Bay Area on Sunday night and settled in for a weeklong stay. The Wahoos (8-6 overall, 1-2 ACC) will play two games before heading home: the first against Cal (7-7, 0-3) in Berkeley on Wednesday (11 p.m. Eastern) and the second against Stanford (9-5, 1-2) in Palo Alto on Saturday (4 p.m. Eastern). Stanford’s roster includes former UVA lacrosse star Cole Kastner.

Cal and Stanford, which hosts Virginia Tech on Wednesday night, are two of the ACC’s three new members, along with SMU. The Hoos opened conference play last month with a 63-51 loss to the Mustangs in Dallas.

Saunders is familiar with both of the ACC’s West Coast schools. As a sophomore last season, the 6-foot-8 forward helped San Diego State defeat both Cal and Stanford, which were then longtime members of the Pac-12.

Those games were played in Southern California. In 2022-23, San Diego State knocked off Stanford in Palo Alto. Saunders didn’t play in that game, but he remembers the atmosphere at the Cardinal’s 7,200-seat Maples Pavilion, where the official attendance was 3,945.

“It was not too packed,” Saunders said by phone Monday night. “I felt like San Diego State had a lot of fans there.”

In this era of player movement, rosters often change dramatically from one season to the next, but Saunders matched up in 2023-24 against several of the players he’ll face this week, including former UVA recruiting target Andrej Stojakovic, a 6-foot-7 guard whose father was an NBA standout.

Stojakovic played for Stanford last season, however. He’s now a Golden Bear who’s the ACC’s second-leading scorer (19.9 ppg). But Stanford still has several formidable weapons, including the ACC’s top scorer, 7-foot-1 Maxime Raynaud (20.9 ppg).

The Cavaliers will try to frustrate Stojakovic and Raynaud, interim head coach Ron Sanchez said, “but it’s a team thing. It’s not an individual thing. It’s not a one-on-one thing. We as a group have to help each other and be connected.”

The Hoos lead their series with the Golden Bears, 2-0. In December 2015, UVA edged Cal 63-61 in overtime at John Paul Jones Arena. A year later, Virginia defeated Cal 56-52 at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley.

UVA is 1-7 all-time against Stanford. They haven’t met since Nov. 18, 2010, when the Cardinal won 81-60 in Palo Alto.

For the Cavaliers, this is their second extended road trip of the season. In early December, they flew to Gainesville, Fla., where they lost to the then-undefeated Florida Gators, and then to Dallas, where SMU rallied for a victory in its first-ever ACC game.

This trip, though, is more complicated, with the three-hour time difference between Virginia and California.

Starting last summer, Sanchez said Monday on the ACC coaches’ media availability, the UVA staff “spent a lot of time trying to figure out not only this week, but what we did in the weeks leading up to this. How much energy do we spend? How do we adjust our [body] clocks? When do we start practice? At what time are we going to go to bed? At what time are we going to get them up? So there’s been a lot of meetings and a lot of time invested into trying to make sure that we can perform at the best level that we can.”

Once the Hoos return to Charlottesville, they’ll start preparing for their Jan. 15 game against SMU at JPJ.

Virginia’s strength and conditioning coach, Mike Curtis, previously held that position with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, and his “input on this trip was fantastic,” Sanchez said.

Adjusting to the time difference, Saunders said, usually takes him about 48 hours. Waking up in Berkeley on Monday “was kind of rough,” he said, “but I think going forward, by Wednesday and of course on Saturday, we’ll be adjusted.”

UVA is coming off a 70-50 loss to Louisville at JPJ. The Cardinals outrebounded the Cavaliers 42-25, continuing a troubling trend for Sanchez’s team. In its three ACC games, Virginia has been outrebounded 112-72.

Improving on the boards, especially after opponents’ missed shots, is a priority for the Cavaliers.

“Absolutely,” Sanchez said. “If our team isn’t doing something well, then that’s on me to make sure that I find a way to make sure that they improve it. Rebounding is something that we work on literally every single day, just like we work on our transition defense every single day, and we work on the things that we consider eliminating losing: ball-handling sureness, passing … And what we’ve got to do is identify different tactics, maybe for individual guys, and how do we help them get better. So it is something that we’re studying, that we’re addressing, and that we’re rehearsing and practicing. I think your teams will do what you teach and you emphasize, and maybe certain individuals need to use a little different technique, and so we are trying to find a way to make each individual improve his defensive rebounding.”

Saunders, who weighs 240 pounds, had only one rebound against Louisville, and it came off a UVA miss. For the season, he’s second on the team in rebounds (4.9 per game), behind 6-foot-10 Jacob Cofie (5.6).

“For myself, I’ve never really been the best defensive rebounder, even when I was at San Diego State,” Saunders said. “I’m probably better offensively than defensively, but it’s a matter of just going back to the fundamentals and rather than trying to fight with your man, actually going and tracking the ball.”

The Cavaliers’ other frontcourt players are underclassmen. Cofie is a freshman, Blake Buchanan and TJ Power are sophomores, and Anthony Robinson is a redshirt freshman, and their collective inexperience has shown at times.

“Other than myself, I think we’ve got a pretty young frontcourt,” Saunders said. “In high school it’s not like you’re competing with the same amount of physicality on the floor, so I think the more we get in ACC play and the more some of these other guys accumulate minutes, they’ll be way better [on the boards].”

Saunders, whose parents and other family members will be at the games this week, is the Cavaliers’ second-leading scorer (12.1 ppg). He’s scored in double figures in six of their past seven games.

“He’s a big kid, he’s strong, and he’s got really good touch around the basket,” Sanchez said. “He can go perimeter to post. The one thing that I’m trying to encourage him to do more is to seek more fouls. I think that Elijah can get to the free-throw line more, and if he does, I think you could even see his numbers go up higher.”

Saunders’ roommate in California is Cofie, who’s from Seattle, and they’re enjoying life back on the West Coast.

“Even waking up this morning and seeing fog in the morning, that’s how San Diego was,” Saunders said. “I forget how much I miss living here, with the weather.”

Temperatures reached the mid 60s in the Bay Area on Tuesday, and “it’s just fun to be able to go outside and relax,” Saunders said.

Back on Grounds, the spring semester doesn’t start until Monday, so UVA’s players aren’t missing any classes this week. They see this trip as an opportunity to grow closer as a team.

“I was thinking that today in practice,” Saunders said. “We’re going to be around each other so much, and I feel like that’s what we need right now, just to be around each other, make good memories and have fun with each other, because we do have a very new team and we have young guys on our team. If we just get to know each other better, that’ll be beneficial.”

On the road, Sanchez said, a team gets “time to bond. You get to spend more time together, get to know each other. We do have a lot of new players and we are kind of in a unique situation. So for us to just have time to dialogue, watch more film, not have to travel, kind of get guys back into the arena where we’re all together in one space is definitely beneficial.”

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