Virginia faced its first two significant tests of the post-Tony Bennett era and failed both of those tests miserably, getting blown off the floor by Tennessee and St. John’s on consecutive nights in The Bahamas by a combined 47 points. Do these losses mean that the sky is falling in Charlottesville? Or is there hope for a young team with a new interim head coach to pull it all together for ACC play?
Let’s break it all down with ten things we learned about the Cavaliers from their two losses in the Bahamas.
Let’s start with the unfortunate big picture observation. Virginia looked about as outmatched as one could fathom a team being in games between two major conference opponents. It’s possible that the Cavaliers could improve enough to compete with teams of this caliber by the end of the year, but Thursday and Friday in The Bahamas showed that the Hoos have a lot of ground to make up. Everything seemed to come fairly easily offensively for Tennessee (in the second half) and St. John’s (for the entire game), while the Cavaliers struggled mightily to generate open shots and even their makes were difficult. Past UVA teams could depend on stout defense to keep themselves in games while the offense played catch up, but that might not be the case for this team. Virginia will need to improve significantly on both ends of the floor in order to contend in the top third of the ACC.
Even Tony Bennett’s best teams that had elite point guards and a surplus of trusty ball handlers had their moments of vulnerability against the full court press. All throughout Bennett’s 15 years at UVA, opponents used the press to speed up the Cavaliers and, in some unfortunately unforgettable moments (2016 Syracuse, 2023 Furman, etc.), force critical turnovers that altered the outcomes of big games. Ron Sanchez does not have the benefit of a Reece Beekman or Ty Jerome or London Perrantes to guide the ball up the floor. Dai Dai Ames has promise and Andrew Rohde has shown flashes of improvement, but Jalen Warley’s entrance into the transfer portal has left this team alarmingly thin at the point guard spot and dangerously vulnerable to the full court press. Tennessee and St. John’s exposed that weakness and UVA’s future opponents will undoubtedly take note.
UVA is once again operating at the bottom of college basketball in terms of tempo – 363rd out of 364 teams in Division I men’s basketball. It seems Ron Sanchez will not be abandoning Bennett’s “Embrace the Pace” style anytime soon. If that’s going to be the case, then the Cavaliers absolutely cannot afford to turn the ball over with the frequency they did in The Bahamas. Against Tennessee, Virginia turned the ball over 18 times and the Volunteers scored a whopping 30 points off of those takeaways. UVA turned it over 16 times against St. John’s and the Johnnies scored 18 points off of those takeaways. 34 turnovers and 48 points off of turnovers in two nights. It’s not a fluke either, as the Cavaliers are averaging 13.8 turnovers per game this season as compared to just 9.2 turnovers for their opponents. Virginia’s slow pace of play and poor ball security is a self-destructive combination.
Last season, Virginia suffered ten losses by double digits and lost six games by at least 20 points. That included a horrendous 34-point loss at Virginia Tech and a 25-point defeat to Colorado State in the NCAA Tournament play-in game. While no one was expecting Ron Sanchez to completely solve the sluggish offenses that characterized Bennett’s final few years at UVA, it’s concerning to see the Cavaliers returning to the same old scoring droughts that doomed them to those blowout losses last season. Virginia had multiple lengthy scoring droughts against Tennessee and went nearly eight minutes without scoring in the first half against St. John’s, turning a 19-16 game into a 35-16 blowout before halftime. UVA’s offense is still going stale with no timely answers.
Virginia’s offense wasn’t exactly humming in the first three games of the season, but the hot shooting the Cavaliers exhibited against Villanova, headlined by Isaac McKneely’s perfect 6/6 night from beyond the arc, gave hope for the Hoos moving forward. Those hopes were crushed immediately in The Bahamas, as McKneely was held to just six shot attempts (1/3 from three-point range) and four points against Tennessee before rebounding with a moderate 3/9, 10-point showing against St. John’s. It was far too easy for these teams to effectively neutralize Virginia’s top scorer. McKneely must be more aggressive and the Cavaliers must find better ways to scheme open shots for the sharpshooter even when opposing defenses are keyed in on him.
This is a tangent point to our comments on Isaac McKneely, but this team is severely lacking in individual playmaking. Reece Beekman was the lone player who could create his own shot on last year’s team and Dai Dai Ames might be the only one who might be able to do so reliably this season, and he’s still very much a work in progress. While Tennessee and St. John’s frequently won individual matchups and generated open shots for teammates (which is also an indictment on UVA’s individual perimeter defense), the Cavaliers could not beat their own defenders nor were they effective in using screens to break down the defense. Ames had a couple of nice drives, but Virginia is going to need a lot more of that. Andrew Rohde is not likely to develop that trait anytime soon. Maybe Christian Bliss will provide that boost when he becomes healthy enough to make his collegiate debut, but that’s probably asking too much of the redshirt freshman.
Speaking of Andrew Rohde… he isn’t the answer for Virginia from a playmaking standpoint, but his shooting in the last few games has been extremely encouraging. Rohde knocked down a pair of threes in each of UVA’s two games in The Bahamas and is 7/12 from beyond the arc in his last three games, all of which have come against major conference competition. If there’s any hope for this UVA offense, Rohde developing into a consistent three-point shooter is certainly part of it.
We won’t sugarcoat it. Whether you’re considering his stats on paper or the on-court eye test, TJ Power has looked nothing like a former five-star recruit. After playing sparingly at Duke last season, many (including myself) came to the conclusion that Power was simply the odd man out on a roster overloaded with talent. But through his first five games in a Virginia uniform, Power is shooting worse than he did in his limited opportunities at Duke and has yet to impact the game significantly on either end of the floor. In The Bahamas, Power scored three total points and shot a combined 1/9 from the floor. If Jacob Cofie continues to impress, Power could end up losing his starting spot.
With that said, it’s not time to give up on TJ Power yet. In just five games, Power has already played more than half the total amount of minutes he played in his entire freshman season at Duke, which I point out to say that he is basically still a rookie and could still develop into an impactful player. Power needs to start to find his three-point stroke, though.
Anyone who stayed up to watch the doubleheader of Baylor-St. John’s and Virginia-Tennessee on Thursday night noticed that the two games were nearly a different sport given the drastic differences in pace of play. While the Volunteers showed they were comfortable meeting that up-and-down style on the following night, the Cavaliers could not keep up in the track meet with St. John’s in the second game, allowing 11 fastbreak points and scoring zero for themselves. Against St. John’s and Tennessee, Virginia was clearly at a hefty disadvantage in terms of athleticism but also size and strength in the front court. UVA was outrebounded by 17 boards in the two games and gave up a bunch of offensive rebounds and second-chance points. More concerningly, the Cavalier guards could not keep up with their counterparts. While Virginia has some soul-searching to do from a scheme standpoint, I’m not sure much can be done to remedy these disadvantages in athleticism and physicality.
I am not ruling out the possibility that the Cavaliers could respond to these two humbling losses, get their act together, and go on a run in the ACC. We saw that plenty of times in the last decade under Tony Bennett. But it might be more likely that this is the start of a trying season for the UVA basketball program. Virginia is only a little over a month removed from the retirement of its Hall of Fame head coach, who even said that he was excited about the two-year potential of the roster he built before he retired, rather than expressing optimism about what this team could accomplish this season. There’s still hope for the Hoos, but this could be a long season and one that ends in a national coaching search.
Virginia Basketball Falls to St. John’s 80-55 | Key Takeaways
The Plus/Minus: Virginia Gets Skunked by Tennessee in The Bahamas
Virginia Basketball Falls to Tennessee 64-42 | Key Takeaways
