JPJ Finale Leaves Hoos in High Spirits

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — They had multiple opportunities to fold against Florida State at John Paul Jones Arena. Each time, though, the Virginia Cavaliers persevered, much as they had in January after a heartbreaking home loss to SMU that followed a disastrous California trip.

They saw their resilience rewarded again late Wednesday night. When the final horn sounded, the Cavaliers celebrated a 60-57 victory over an opponent that has had more success than most visiting teams at JPJ over the years.

In the last seven minutes, UVA (15-15 overall, 8-11 ACC) rallied three times to regain the lead. The Wahoos finally went ahead to stay on an Andrew Rohde 3-pointer from the right corner that barely beat the shot clock.

“In games like this you need a guy to make a play,” said Ron Sanchez, Virginia’s interim coach.

Rohde’s fourth trey of the game made it 58-55 with 59 seconds remaining. After the Seminoles (16-14, 7-12) scored to make it a one-point game, Virginia guard Dai Dai Ames hit both ends of a one-and-one with 6.1 seconds to play to close out the scoring.

The victory was the sixth in 10 games for UVA, which heads into its regular-season finale tied for ninth in the ACC standings with Virginia Tech (13-17, 8-11). The Cavaliers are assured a spot in the 15-team conference tournament, which starts next week in Charlotte, N.C., and they can clinch a first-round bye with a win at Syracuse (12-18, 6-13) on Saturday night.

“It’s a group that’s had a lot of grit this season and has shown it,” Sanchez said of his team.

After losing at home to Notre Dame on Jan. 25, the Hoos were 2-7 in the ACC. At that point, they were in danger of being one of the three teams that would fail to qualify for the conference tournament, whose format changed after Stanford, Cal and SMU joined the league. Since then, however, Virginia has won at Miami, at Pittsburgh, at Virginia Tech and at Wake Forest, with home wins over Georgia Tech and FSU mixed in.

Critics pounced when the team was struggling, but Rohde, a junior guard, said the Cavaliers tried “not to bother ourselves with the outside noise … So we’re just going to keep that level of competitiveness and joy and just keep trying to play the game the right way and try to get as many more wins as we can.”

Against the Seminoles, UVA received important contributions from each of its starters late in the game: Ames, Rohde, Blake Buchanan, Isaac McKneely and Elijah Saunders. Those five accounted for all of Virginia’s points Wednesday night.

“They didn’t fracture down the stretch. They could have,” Sanchez said. “This is what growth looks like, if you really want to know. This is what trust looks like. This is what learning from your previous experiences looks like. So I’m proud of the guys for battling through. It wasn’t pretty, but [FSU has] always been a hard team to play against.”

Ames, a sophomore guard, finished with a team-high 18 points and was 3 for 4 from long range. Rohde scored 17 points, his high in his two seasons at Virginia, and also recorded four rebounds, three assists and two steals.

Buchanan, a 6-foot-11 sophomore, totaled eight rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots. His final assist came on the Rohde trey that put the Hoos ahead for good. McKneely (3 for 11) had an off night, missing eight straight shots during one stretch, but he banked in a shot with his left hand to tie the game at 55-55 with 2:07 left.

Saunders, a 6-foot-8 junior, took a blow to the chin with 12:10 left, opening a wound that bloodied his No. 2 jersey and forced him to leave the game. When he re-entered with 9:10 remaining, Saunders had seven stitches in his chin and was wearing jersey No. 55.

He shrugged off any discomfort and made two critical shots. Saunders’ second trey, off a pass from Ames, put Virginia ahead 50-49 with 6:39 remaining. Even bigger was his final basket, a transition 3-pointer that made it 53-53 with 2:55 left.

“Man, if I shoot it like that, I might stick with 55,” said Saunders, who finished with 12 points and five rebounds.

The game marked Leonard Hamilton’s final game at JPJ as the Seminoles’ head coach. Hamilton, who’s retiring after this season, has enjoyed several dramatic wins over UVA during his tenure, and he was gracious in defeat as midnight approached Wednesday.

“Down the stretch there, I thought we could have done a much better job of getting a higher percentage of shots than what we did,” Hamilton said. “But I thought Virginia earned the victory by just maintaining their poise. They stuck with their game plan, they moved the ball, created for each other, and hit the shots that they had to hit down the stretch.”

He smiled. “That’s what they always do, though, here in UVA country.”

Sanchez was promoted from associate head coach when his mentor, Tony Bennett, retired in October on the eve of the season. Bennett, who watched the game from a JPJ suite Wednesday night, stopped by the arena earlier in the day to see Hamilton.

“We kind of chuckled about the battles that we’ve had over the years,” Hamilton said. “It’s been a clean, wholesome rivalry that we’ve enjoyed, because we know that Virginia represents all that is right about college basketball and college sports together. I’m sad to lose the game, but they did the things they had to do down the stretch to win the game.”

Ames, a transfer from Kansas State, scored in double figures for the ninth consecutive game and had no turnovers Wednesday night.

“He’s shown he’s really growing right in front of our eyes,” Sanchez said. “He made really good decisions, good plays, made plays for himself, plays for others. Against a team like this, you needed Dai Dai to do what he did today.”

With four 3-pointers, Rohde matched his career high. Asked about his game-winner, he said, “I kind of just tried to put as much arc on it as I could, and it went in.”

His teammates’ response to his shot—and that of the crowd—was “amazing,” Rohde said. “I love playing with these guys. They’re like my brothers, and they have as much support for me as I have for them, so it’s great.”

The Cavaliers’ roster includes two seniors—Taine Murray and Bryce Walker—and that made the victory especially gratifying, Rohde said. Murray is in his fourth year in the program, and “for us to be able to go out and do that for him and end his JPJ career on a [win] is great,” Rohde said. “It’s a blessing.”

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