The Virginia Cavaliers men’s basketball team suffered a deflating 70-50 loss to the Louisville Cardinals on Saturday. The ’Hoos were unable to build on their momentum from an encouraging win on New Year’s Eve over NC State, and they now sit at 8-6 overall (1-2 in ACC play).
Andrew Rohde led the Cavaliers in scoring with a season-high 16 points (6-of-12 FG) and Isaac McKneely hit three triples and added 13 points of his own.
Following a tough home loss, here are five takeaways from the game and things to consider going forward.
Virginia completely lacks resistance down low
The 2024-25 Virginia basketball team isn’t all that small, but it sure can feel like it when they play stronger, more athletic power conference opponents. The ’Hoos lack muscle. It showed against Louisville.
Throughout the first half, Louisville’s wings and bigs attacked one-on-one matchups, using their size and athleticism to ward off weaker defenders and create enough separation for easy layups. Louisville finished with 36 points in the paint to Virginia’s 18. That was the difference in the game.
While UVA’s roster can’t magically gain fifteen pounds and a few inches, they can position themselves better defensively to limit easy drives to the basket. The on-ball defender has to cut off the ball-handlers driving lane, because if Andrew Rohde or Isaac McKneely, for example, are even a half-step behind, they don’t have the athleticism to cover that ground and make a stop.
Additionally, the bigs — primarily Cofie, Saunders, and Buchanan — need to rotate quicker and provide help-side defense at the rim. The bigs were constantly a step too slow against Louisville’s explosive guards. At times, they were nowhere to be seen around the rim, leading to at least 10 or 15 points on wide open layups that a fifth-grade team could make.
I could rant about the defensive rebounding, but Zach Carey wrote about that in detail last week. Interior defense goes hand-in-hand with defensive rebounding, an issue that’s plagued the Cavaliers all season. Louisville grabbed 14 offensive boards, the third time in the last four games that Virginia has allowed double-digit offensive rebounds. Virginia is too soft and too weak down low (I encourage Sanchez to play Jack Salt tape on loop so the UVA bigs can see what it looks like to fight like your life depends on it in the paint).
Virginia’s bench was nonexistent
The Cavaliers didn’t score a single bench point until 10:37 left in the second half. That’s nearly three-quarters of the game without a bucket from the bench. Sharma’s bucket was the lone bench score all game.
Blake Buchanan hasn’t noticeably improved since his promising freshman season, playing his way out of a starting role to less than 15 minutes of playing time per game. T.J. Power doesn’t have confidence right now and it’s really affecting his outside shooting. Meanwhile, Dai Dai Ames is a completely different player than he was in November. (Is the ankle sprain still bothering him?)
Coach Ron Sanchez has run a pretty deep rotation so far this season, testing out a variety of lineups and often giving meaningful minutes to as many as nine or ten players. That might need to change as we head into the thick of ACC play.
McKneely, Saunders, Cofie, Rohde, and recently Taine Murray appear to be mainstays. But outside of those five, Sanchez could go a number of different directions with playing time. Ames and Buchanan have shown enough spark in the past to warrant minutes, but both players are struggling to find an identity on this team.
Buchanan has the makings of a two-way center, yet he can’t stay out of his own way on defense and his touch is just off inside the paint. Redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson has shown some promise, but it’s unlikely that he’ll cut into the minutes of the more veteran players in front of him.
Sanchez has to find a consistent rotation fast if the ’Hoos are going to play more consistent.
Andrew Rohde might be the third-most important Cavalier right now (as strange as that sounds)
No Virginia player has been more contentious than Andrew Rohde over the past two seasons. He played his way out of a starting role last season, and it seemed like he might be a seldom-used bench piece heading into this season until point guard Jalen Warley announced he was transferring. UVA was left with a gaping hole at point guard … enter Rohde.
Dai Dai Ames seemed like the clear answer at point guard early in the season, but the 6-foot-1 sophomore hasn’t looked the same since the beginning of December. He’s had problems dealing with pressure, making good decisions with the ball, and initiating offense (as has Rohde). While Rohde has had plenty of bone-headed turnovers this season, he’s playing with a level of assertiveness on offense and defense that the ’Hoos desperately need.
He finished with 13 points, four boards, three assists, and three steals. Last game, he had 11 points and a Virginia career-high seven assists. It isn’t always pretty, but Rohde’s playing much more aggressively and using his size to make difficult shots around the rim. He’s also become UVA’s second-most reliable three-point shooter, improving to 46.9% from distance on the season with a pair of threes against Louisville.
If this version of Rohde shows up more than the nervous, passive, brick-laying Rohde, then Sanchez has at least one guard who can initiate offense.
The ’Hoos three-point shooting plummeted down to earth
One of the few bright spots for Virginia’s offense this season has been their three-point shooting. Entering today’s game, they were shooting 38.5% from three (23rd in the nation). But the UVA shooters regressed to the mean on Saturday.
The Cavaliers shot an abysmal 5-of-26 from downtown. Besides McKneely (3-for-7) and Rohde (2-for-5), Virginia was 0-of-14 from beyond the arc. They were due for an off-night from three, but it’s hard to overcome that poor of a performance.
While they missed a handful of open looks, a big reason for their struggles was a lack of open-shot generation around the perimeter. Louisville’s guards pressured on and off the ball beyond the three-point line, and Virginia’s guards couldn’t create separation.
Virginia ran their inside triangle offense a lot in the first half (after it was really successful against NC State), but they weren’t able to find many openings for quality three-point looks. It didn’t really matter what offense they ran, because Louisville’s perimeter defenders were glued to their guys all game.
This Virginia team has a lot of capable three-point shooters, more than any Virginia team since 2020-21. They need to create more open looks for shooters against these longer, athletic defensive teams. And the shots have to start falling for guys like T.J. Power and Ishan Sharma, who were recruited to Charlottesville to hit threes.
Virginia is a bottom-half team in the ACC right now
Virginia was selected to finish fifth in the ACC before the season, but that was before the monumental news broke regarding Tony Bennett’s retirement. Louisville was picked ninth, but many analysts and fans had higher expectations for their revamped roster loaded with experienced transfers under new head coach Pat Kelsey.
Heading into Saturday’s matchup, Louisville was sixth in the ACC standings and seventh in the ACC in KenPom rating (measuring offensive and defensive efficiency). Virginia’s loss revealed the talent and experience discrepancy between themselves and an upper-tier ACC team.
Louisville is around the same level as SMU, and in both matchups, the ’Hoos looked outclassed physically. In a year without a clear top-tier in the ACC (outside of Duke…ugh), Virginia doesn’t seem to belong in that second grouping of teams ranked 2-8-ish.
Instead, they’re probably somewhere from 9-14th in the conference, and they’ll need to find a way to beat some of those top teams if they want to squeak into the NCAA Tournament.
