After another close loss down in Tallahassee to Florida State, the Hoos were hoping to turn around their fortunes at the John Paul Jones Arena Sunday, January 27 against Georgia Tech. Instead, everyone came away with another case of heartache. Once again, UVA botched a halftime lead, this one 10 points tall, to fall in overtime 92-82 to the Yellow Jackets. The players—and Head Coach Dave Leitao—put a good face on things after the game. But the fans? Many walked out with 40 seconds still to play, perhaps so they could be the first to bitch on the websites about the choke-prone Cavaliers.
 Head Coach Dave Leitao warned his team at half time not to get complacent, but the Cavs lost a 10 point lead and fell in overtime to Georgia Tech. |
Offense
“When you’re making shots, it could be like fool’s gold,” said sophomore guard Calvin Baker after the game, and the nine 3-point shots made in the first half turned out to be just that. In the second half and overtime, UVA went a dismal 3 of 18 from beyond the arc—a miserable 17 percent.
“We came out with dead bodies and dead minds [in the second half],” said Leitao.
Despite Leitao’s pronouncement, the team had plenty of scrap in the second half (overtime was a different story), and hustled for 18 offensive rebounds on the game. The Cavs had scoring production from just about every able-bodied member of the team, with Mamadi Diane, Calvin Baker, Adrian Joseph and Jamil Tucker all in double digits by the end of regulation.
The missing link in the scoring chain, however, was Sean Singletary, who was suffering from a hip pointer and ably defended by D’Andre Bell, a much bigger guard. It took overtime for Singletary to get to 11 points (and keep alive his double digit scoring streak, now at 40 games), and he was 5 of 19 from the floor.
“There’s a number of things that we could have done offensively to get the ball 18 feet and down that we work on everyday that we didn’t do,” said Leitao. “Instead of mentally continuing to attack, we just kind of backed up.”
Defense
Let’s look at the bright spot first. Diane did an excellent job shutting down Georgia Tech’s leading scorer, Anthony Morrow, largely by denying him the ball. Morrow shot 25 percent and finished with only 7 points despite averaging 15 points on the year.
Then there’s the rest of the defense. Tech power forwards like Gani Lawal and Zack Peacock were particularly effective at chipping away at the Cavs down low, where UVA’s undersized big men drew too many fouls to play with requisite tenacity. And too often, the men who Singletary guarded made him pay for any relaxation on defense: Maurice Miller finished with 11 points despite suffering an injury in the second half, and his replacement, Matt Causey, made some ridiculous shots in overtime—he finished with 18 points, despite not scoring a single point in the first half.
“Right now, Sean is not Sean,” said Leitao. “Sean played a lot of minutes, there’s a lot of pressure on him to do a lot of things for us, and the times that Sean might have taken a deep breath were the times that Causey made him pay for it.”
Georgia Tech shot 51 percent on the game, and 80 percent in overtime. Tech had the advantage of a deeper bench, but both Joseph and Baker acknowledged after the game that the team didn’t get at it on the defensive side like they should have.
“We haven’t been playing defense very good in the second half,” said Baker. “We don’t play with the same sense of urgency—we get comfortable with that lead. We need to mature.”
Halftime show
The best part of the halftime show was the opening act (we were left without a routine from the dance girls this time around): Erica Seredni, a UVA student and a baton twirling champion of some sort, performed a routine to “Great Balls of Fire,” juggling three batons at once and managing to land everything despite the precarious nature of the act.
Team Acrodunk wasn’t so perfect in their execution. Their act, which involved using a trampoline to dunk bright yellow basketballs, was like a live version of the old arcade game, NBA Jam, though with more miscues and fewer power-ups. They performed a little William Tell act at the end, putting CavMan on a chair in front of the trampoline, taking a ball from his head in midair, and dunking it. But the acrodunker missed the first time and had to do it again. It made me appreciate Seredni even more.
Crowd
It was loud at certain points, when UVA was within a couple of points of the lead, and the turnout was 14,138 officially—the second highest all season. But with 44 seconds left in overtime and the Cavaliers down 7 points—a tough but not insurmountable total for a sharp three point shooting team, especially given Georgia Tech’s atrocious free throw shooting—half the crowd walked out. Singletary had just missed a 3, but one hoped players (and recruits) were somehow blind to the fair-weather nature of many Hoo fans.
Throughout, something seemed off with the crowd, which grew restless and seemed malcontent at times. It took out most of its aggression on the refs, but the fact that the loudest sounds come from booing the officials wasn’t a promising sign.
I thought at first that the walk out might have made a bad impression on the guys from EA Sports, the videogame maker that produces the NCAA March Madness series. They were in attendance to judge the JPJ to possibly replicate in full detail for the ’09 videogame. They noticed that the fans left, but Tyler Vaught, the NCAA March Madness product manager, was understanding.
“We were blown away with how impressive the structure is inside and how it’s set up,” said Vaught, who just visited a much more barebones facility at the University of Oregon. “[The JPJ]’s probably the nicest arena I’ve been in, and that includes some NBA arenas.” He appreciated that at times he could feel the floor shake from the energetic Hoo Crew.
Overall
Compared to his mood after the Virginia Tech game, Leitao was down right chipper. “The season didn’t end today, but obviously at 1-4, it doesn’t look as good as if you were 4-1,” said Leitao. “I don’t think panic sets in, but you certainly have to change your fortunes if you have any level of expectation.”
But Singletary isn’t up to his usual outstanding level—Leitao said because of his injury, he should be playing 25 minutes a game rather than the 41 he did play—and others are going to have to step up even more to fill in while he recovers.
“I know we’ve got the talent, and we’re always in the games,” said Singletary. “We have just got to get over that hump. All ACC games around the country have been close. Losing is frustrating period, no matter how we lose, whether by a little or a lot. We can’t panic, just go into practice and keep working hard and get over that hump.”
It won’t be easy, with three of the next four on the road. “Everybody’s just got to look past this game and look forward to the next one and play with confidence,” said Joseph. “There’s definitely a sense of urgency.”
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