UVa. hoops off to unimpressive start
Virginia fans hopeful that the 2006-2007 Cavs will return the UVa. basketball program to the promised land of college hoops would be wise to lower their expectations - for the time being, anyway.
To say that the Wahoos struggled in their 78-63 victory in an exhibition over Division III Augusta State Saturday night would be understating things by quite a bit.
The Cavs committed 24 turnovers - six in their first seven possessions - and showed obvious difficulty punching the ball inside against their overmatched (Augusta State was an unremarkable 15-13 in D3 in 2005-2006) opponents.
"Twenty-four turnovers are too many," coach Dave Leitao said after the game. "When you try to pick up the pace, you're going to turn it over. Some of those were turnovers of aggression, but the rest of them were turnovers of non-aggression. I'm much more concerned about that."
Another concern is the availability of players. Among those expected to contribute this season who did not suit up Saturday night were freshmen guards Solomon Tat and Will Harris - meaning the heralded backcourt of Sean Singletary (27 minutes) and J.R. Reynolds (31 minutes) had to do more work than Leitao would have liked to see in an exhibition.
"It's difficult to continue to evaluate our team because we're banged up, and the guys that we're playing aren't fully there," Leitao said. "They need to rest, and unfortunately we can't rest them right now. We need to move forward. If you look at the other teams in the league, none of them will have as challenging a start as we will next Sunday. That gives us a pretty good dilemma in trying to prepare in the next week."
Next Sunday refers to Arizona - who will help UVa. christen its new John Paul Jones Arena.
"They're ranked in the nation, so they are definitely a good team," said swingman Adrian Joseph, who scored a team-high 17 points in 22 minutes off the bench.
"We've just got to go out and practice and start preparing for them. We need to step it up and play much better than we did tonight," Joseph said.
"If I grade everything out tonight, we didn't play well but in one or two areas. We rebounded the ball well and at times we shot the ball well, but we didn't defend over 40 minutes like you'll need to next Sunday," Leitao said.
"We're going to have to impose - the five guys, the seven or eight guys on the bench and the 15,000 people in the stands, will have to collectively impose the will of the basketball team on Arizona if we're going to have the opportunity to win," Leitao said.
- Chris Graham