UVa, Duke ready to rock JPJ
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com
February 1, 2007

In November, when Virginia defeated Arizona in the first-ever game in John Paul Jones Arena, the building was so loud that it was impossible to carry on a conversation with a person sitting right next to you.

Early last month, when UVa drilled a school-record 18 3-pointers in its win over Gonzaga, JPJA was almost as deafening.

Then, last weekend, the Red Hot Chili Peppers nearly blew the roof off of the arena with a sold-out concert.

But tonight things could truly get raucous.

Tonight is what Virginia envisioned when it doled out $129.8 million for its new digs.

Tonight, Duke comes to town.

Here’s to hoping that the workers who installed the 41 roof trusses - the largest of which weighs 190 tons - did a good job.

“The crowd has treated us very good,” said Virginia coach Dave Leitao. “It’s given us that energy. We hope to get that same kind of energy [tonight].

“If we do our job, the crowd will be tremendous and will be a big advantage.”

Ten days ago Virginia fans were mentally preparing for another trip to the NIT. But after four straight wins, including the last two on the road, UVa (13-6, 5-2) has put itself in prime position for a run at an NCAA Tournament berth.

The Cavaliers have nine ACC games remaining. If they can win just four of them, they would finish with a 9-7 league record and have an excellent chance of qualifying.

And, if one of those victories is against a team of Duke’s caliber, their chances of their first trip to the Big Dance since 2001 increase further.

“I don’t want to make it more than it is,” said Leitao, when asked about the importance of the game. “It’s one of 16 [league] games. If we win, it puts us in a good position halfway through. If not, we still have to be able to get up the next day and prepare for a game two days later [against Miami]. We have to take things in stride win, lose or draw.”

Duke, ranked No. 8 in the country, is riding a five-game winning streak, including a 75-61 home victory over Boston College on Sunday.

Last season, the Blue Devils, behind an are-you-kidding-me shooting performance by J.J. Redick, trounced UVa by 19 points.

But Duke is a much different team this year without Redick and fellow All-American Shelden Williams.

Josh McRoberts was anointed as the next great Duke player, but that has proven premature. McRoberts has put up nice numbers, but, so far, hasn’t been the dominant player many people expected him to be.

“Josh continues to grow as a leader,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “I think leadership isn’t easy. Just because you name a kid captain doesn’t mean that kid’s going to be a leader, especially when he’s a sophomore.

“He’s our best player, but he’s also a team guy, which I think helps him from a leadership position.”

Duke, Leitao said, has obviously lost a ton of offensive production from last year. However, he believes the Blue Devils are a much better defensive team.

“I think without those two [players], they have kind of dedicated themselves to getting back to playing defense the way Duke has been used to playing over the years,” Leitao said. “A guy like McRoberts has really found a niche, just like [Jon] Scheyer and some of the other guys.

“I think right now they’re playing with a great balance between the defense that they emphasized early on and the improved offense, which all the guys are contributing to.”

After the Cavs’ two wins on the road - highlighted by an unbelievable comeback at Clemson - Leitao is cautiously optimistic about his team’s confidence level.

“I’d like to think that we’re moving in a good direction … but you could lose it any point in time - in practice or especially against a good team like Duke,” he said, “so we just have to continue to grow.”

Virginia freshman Will Harris said he’s been looking forward to playing Duke ever since he started playing basketball.

“People either love or hate them. When I was younger, I really, really wanted to go to Duke, but then as I got older, I didn’t really wanted to be hated that much, so I decided to take a different route,” Harris joked.

“This is definitely a big game. They’re a ranked team, they’re a good team. They’ve won five in a row and are pretty confident right now. They’re coming in here looking for a win, and we just have to go at them.”

Dunks

Duke leads the series 101-47, including a 43-15 mark under Mike Krzyzewski. The Blue Devils have won nine straight and 22 of the last 24 meetings. … Duke’s David McClure is doubtful for the game due to a hyperextended left knee. … The Blue Devils plan on retiring J.J. Redick’s jersey at their game against Florida State on Sunday. … Dick Vitale will not be part of the ESPN crew broadcasting the game - as many Virginia fans had hoped. Mike Patrick and Len Elmore are scheduled to call the action.

 

Cavs will be on guard vs. Blue Devils
By Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
February 1, 2007

Tonight’s slamdance between two of the ACC’s hottest basketball teams, Duke and Virginia, will be a battle of the backcourts.

The college game is all about guards, and this matchup at UVa’s John Paul Jones Arena (9 p.m. ESPN) could be a classic.

It has been awhile since two Virginia guards have been on the kind of roll that senior J.R. Reynolds and junior Sean Singletary have enjoyed during the Cavaliers’ four-game winning streak. Together, they’ve been like a rolling ball of butcher knives, annihilating everything in their path.

Offense vs. defense

The big question on everyone’s minds is whether the Virginia duo can match the intensity of Duke’s defensive-minded guards. Defense is the strength of this young group of Blue Devils, who will attempt to contain their Wahoo counterparts.

Over the last nine games, Reynolds and Singletary have combined to average 44.1 points per outing. The challenge for them tonight will be to put up numbers against a Duke defense that ranks at the top of the ACC in field goal percentage defense against conference teams (49.1).

Cavaliers coach Dave Leitao complimented Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski this week when he said that the Hall of Famer is the best in the league in preparation and is a wizard at taking away opponents’ strengths. Certainly it doesn’t take Dick Tracy to figure out what is required to beat Virginia.

The question is not who, but how?

Pressure? What pressure?

There’s where Coach K’s brilliance comes in, but Duke’s defense is just a blueprint of earlier Blue Devil teams. They pressure the ball, try to make teams start their offense 10 feet farther out than they’re accustomed to starting, deny the heck out of the wings and clog up driving lanes to the basket.

All this has Leitao concerned, but it doesn’t make Singletary flinch. But then again, what does?

“The most pressure we will have faced all year defensively was at Clemson, and we were able to weather that storm,” Singletary told this columnist after Tuesday’s practice. “We know Duke is well-coached and defensive-minded, but they don’t have the athletes that Clemson does. We expect them to try to take us out of our offense, but we don’t think it will be as hard as Clemson.”

Leitao was a little more impressed with Duke’s defense when he talked about how rare it is to get open shots against the Devils.

“When there is an open shot, you work so hard to get it that you’re uncomfortable with it, and so, you tend to miss it,” Leitao said. “You look at [Duke’s] field goal percentage defense and it’s a testimony to how uncomfortable that they make another team feel.”

That’s exactly what happened when Duke beat Boston College recently with guards Greg Paulus, Jon Scheyer, DeMarcus Nelson (the best player on the Devils’ roster in Leitao’s opinion), and freshman Gerald Henderson off the bench, almost working as interchangeable parts as they switch within the system.

They attempt to make opposing guards use up more of the shot clock than they’d like and work harder for shots, which has been a major key to their improvement in putting together a five-game winning streak. But, they can play the offensive end of the floor, too.

“They have guys that are multi-dimensional,” Leitao said. “They can all pass, they can all put the ball on the floor, they can all make shots, so it makes them dangerous in that triple threat position that all players need to be in.

“Conversely, we only have our two guys, but the way [Reynolds and Singletary] are playing, hopefully will be to our advantage because it becomes difficult to stop those two if they are playing off each other as they have been.”

In recent games, the Virginia tandem have built a case for being regarded as the ACC’s best backcourt (Singletary was first-team all-conference last season, Reynolds was third-team), and both are enjoying their best seasons yet. If they’re the best duo in this league, then they are arguably the best in the country.

“If you asked either of us that question, we probably wouldn’t say much ... yet,” Singletary said about being the best. “We’ve been pretty consistent. We know for us to win that each of us has to show up in some way every game. We’re older, more experienced and J.R. is a senior playing with a sense of urgency. We know what it takes to win.”

Leitao has been in the business for a long time and has a good sense of college basketball history. He won’t come out yet and say his backcourt is the best he’s been around, but he doesn’t mind heaping praise on his two guards.

“The backcourt with Richard Hamilton and Khalid El-Amin (when he was an assistant at UConn), featured two guards who were extremely dangerous,” Leitao said. “But our guys are as focused as any, and I’m talking about mentally and structurally more than just the productivity that they’ve given us.

“They’re on a roll that doesn’t come along very often and we’re going to try to ride it as far as it can take us.”

A win tonight would take the Cavaliers on a pretty nice ride, possibly to a 7-2 ACC record by the end of the weekend.

But as Reynolds, who has yet to beat the Blue Devils in his career, wisely pointed out: “They’ve still got Duke across their chests.”

The Cavaliers’ challenge is to not let the mystique of yesteryear beat them, but to rather make today’s Devils do it on the court.

 

Cavs' seniors target Devils
Duke is the only ACC basketball team they haven't beaten
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Feb 1, 2007

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Virginia Tech, Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, North Carolina and Wake Forest came off the list in 2003-04, when J.R. Reynolds and Jason Cain were first-year basketball players at the University of Virginia.

N.C. State and Miami (Fla.) followed in 2004-05; Boston College, in '05-06.

Last month, Maryland joined the list of ACC teams that U.Va. has beaten since Reynolds, a 6-2 guard, and Cain, a 6-10 post player, matriculated in 2003. Only one conference foe has eluded the Cavaliers' seniors.

Duke.

The eighth-ranked Blue Devils (5-2, 18-3) visit John Paul Jones Arena tonight for a game that ESPN will televise nationally. The Cavaliers (5-2, 13-6) are not ranked, but they're coming off back-to-back ACC road wins, and their confidence is soaring.

Unless Virginia runs into Duke at the ACC tournament -- or, perhaps, in the NCAAs -- this will be the teams' only meeting this season.

"Since they're the only team that's still on my list, I got to get them before I graduate," Reynolds said. "It's going to be a big one."

Cain, who scored the game- winning basket Sunday in Virginia's comeback win at then-No. 19 Clemson, said he's not as concerned with what beating Duke would mean for him personally.

"I just want to come in and try to grab another victory for us," Cain said. "We're trying to rack up as many as we can right now just to try to validate ourselves into an NCAA bid."

The victory at Littlejohn Coliseum, where Clemson led by 16 with 8 minutes to play, stretched the Cavaliers' winning streak to four games.

"Right now, we're on a good streak," Cain said. "We had a couple bad breaks, like the Stanford game we lost in the last minute. It's good to finally let one of those moments turn right for us on the road."

For the first time in Reynolds' college career, he'll face a Duke team that doesn't include J.J. Redick, another sharp-shooting guard from Roanoke. Redick has graduated to the NBA, as has Shelden Williams, another All-American for Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski in 2005-06. Still, Reynolds doesn't expect less of a challenge tonight.

"They still got Duke across their chests, no matter who they got on the team," Reynolds said.

Dave Leitao, U.Va.'s second-year coach, said the Blue Devils are "probably the best team in the league at their preparation and taking away another team's strength."

U.Va.'s greatest asset, of course, is its starting backcourt of junior Sean Singletary and Reynolds. Singletary averages 19 points, and Reynolds is close behind at 18.2. Reynolds has scored 87 in his past three games, including a career-best 40 against Wake Forest.

"He's playing as well as anybody in this league," Leitao said. "He's playing as well as anybody I've been around in a long time."

Duke is likely to be without sophomore forward David McClure tonight. McClure, who's averaging 5.3 points and 5.2 rebounds, hyperextended his left knee against Boston College last weekend.

The injury news is better for U.Va. Junior center Ryan Pettinella, who hasn't played since dislocating his left kneecap Dec. 21 during the San Juan Shootout, is expected to be available against Duke. Pettinella, who has started seven games this season, is averaging 5.1 points and 3.7 rebounds.

For Duke, this will be its first game in Charlottesville in more than three years. Krzyzewski said Monday that he'd yet to see U.Va.'s new arena but had heard good reviews.

"I think it's a treat for the conference and for Virginia's program, to have a new facility, especially a facility of that magnitude," Krzyzewski said. "It's what that university deserves and what that program deserves, and I'm happy for them."

 

UVa rally best ever? Some beg to differ
Roanoke native Curtis Staples recalls a comeback at Duke that may compare with the win over Clemson.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129

Curtis Staples still thinks he was party to the greatest comeback in Virginia men's basketball history -- not that he wasn't watching Sunday when the Cavaliers scored the final 15 points in a 64-63 victory over 19th-ranked Clemson.

Staples admittedly gave thought to changing channels when host Clemson pulled out to a 63-49 lead with less than 4 minutes to play, "but, to be truthful, I wasn't feeling well," he said.

"I didn't feel like moving. I've had three or four people ask me why I was still watching."

It was the Cavaliers' fourth straight victory and set up tonight's 9 p.m. showdown with eighth-ranked Duke, which has won five games in a row.

The Blue Devils (18-3 overall, 5-2 ACC) have won nine straight over the Cavaliers (13-6, 5-2), although the oddsmakers like UVa more than they did Sunday.

As opposed to Sunday, when Virginia was an 812-point underdog, Duke is a 112-point favorite tonight.

It will be the Blue Devils' first trip to Virginia's new John Paul Jones Arena, but the significance of that milestone probably will be lost on Duke's players.

There isn't a single Blue Devils' player who played at the Cavaliers' old home, University Hall.

It has been so long since Duke last played in Charlottesville that construction had barely started when coach Mike Krzyzewski last brought a Blue Devils' team to Virginia in 2004.

"I've seen pictures of it and heard a lot about it," said Krzyewski, who does not have a senior on his roster, scholarship or otherwise. "I think it's great for the conference and for Virginia's program to have a new facility, especially a facility of that magnitude."

Virginia has won 10 of its 11 games at the new arena but where the Cavaliers have kick-started their season is with two road victories, their first in more than a year.

There is no record of a UVa team overcoming as large a deficit in as short a period of time as it did Sunday.

Virginia had rallied from a 19-point first-half deficit to defeat Arizona 93-90 in the season's opener, but that was in the first half.

In 1995, the Cavaliers trailed Duke 46-23 with 17:41 remaining in the second half, only to prevail 91-88 in double overtime.

Staples, now in business in the Lynchburg area, was a freshman on the 1994-95 team. He has a tape of the UVa comeback that he will show to anybody who talks about Sunday's comeback in the same breath.

"You can't compare the two," he said.

Clemson, the Division I team who remained undefeated deepest into this season, took an 18-3 record into Sunday's game. In 1995, Duke finished 13-18, its only losing season in the last 24 years.

"It's still hard to go in there," Staples said. "The game was on ABC. They were up by 23! That team had Jeff Capel and Cherokee Parks. "

The Blue Devils also had future first-round NBA draft pick Trajan Langdon, as well as current assistant coaches Chris Collins and Steve Wojciechowski.

What they didn't have was Krzyzewski, who had undergone preseason back surgery. Twelve games into the season, he had turned the team over to interim coach Pete Gaudet and the loss to Virginia was the Blue Devils' fourth in a row.

Duke later made an appeal to have the games coached by Gaudet stricken from Krzyzewski's record.

"It's still on our record," Staples said.

Staples grew up in Roanoke and remembers playing in pick-up games at the downtown YMCA, where a youngster named J.R. Reynolds would imitate his every move. Now, Reynolds is a high-scoring senior at UVa and Staples is watching him.

In 10 or 15 years, you can only imagine them debating the top comebacks in school history, if Staples will allow it.

"You know what I'm going to say?" Staples said kiddingly. "What I'm going to ask him is, 'Did you ever win at Duke? Case closed."

Fact is, the Cavaliers haven't beaten Duke anywhere during Reynolds' career. If they can pull off the trick tonight, nobody will be thinking about the venue.
 

Devil of a challenge for U.Va.
Coming off an important victory over Clemson, Virginia looks to continue its winning ways tonight against No. 8 Duke.
BY DARRYL SLATER
247-4641
February 1, 2007

As their plane soared over North Carolina, most of Virginia's men's basketball players slept soundly. No dancing in the aisles on this trip, though the Cavaliers had every reason to celebrate what could be the seminal victory of this season.

Most of them felt too tired from the comeback they had just completed at Clemson, for their fourth consecutive win, all in the ACC. Perhaps they also were mindful of their final nine ACC games, and figured they better not seed themselves in the NCAA tournament just yet.

Their 9 p.m. game today against No. 8 Duke is as big a challenge as they'll face for the rest of the season. A victory could not only help land them in the top 25 for the first time since late 2004, but also could go a long way in helping them make their first NCAA tournament since 2001. Such wishful thinking seemed impossible in the second half of Sunday's game at Clemson. Virginia trailed by 16 points with 8:47 remaining, and senior forward Jason Cain recognized his teammates' defeated expressions. They had lost 14 of their previous 17 road games. Another defeat seemed imminent.

"You could sort of look on faces, like, 'Here we go again. Here it goes one more time,'" Cain said.

Yet as the Cavaliers scored the game's final 15 points and won 64-63, they got something they desperately needed: contributions from players other than guards J.R. Reynolds and Sean Singletary.

Junior forward Adrian Joseph scored five points in two possessions to close Clemson's lead to 63-62. Then Cain's tip-in with 15.5 seconds left secured the victory. While that was Cain's only field goal, Joseph finished with 11 points, including 3-of-4 on 3-pointers.

Four days earlier, after Reynolds and Singletary delivered a victory at North Carolina State, Virginia coach Dave Leitao said he hoped the guards could carry the Cavaliers far. "I'd like to think the sky's the limit," he said.

He surely knew, deep down, that the Cavaliers reaching their peak required more manpower. Tonight, for instance, Cain and fellow post player Laurynas Mikalauskas must handle Duke's 6-foot-10 sophomore, Josh McRoberts, who is second on the team with 13 points per game and first with 8.1 rebounds.

He is quicker and a better ball handler than most players his size. So Cain's defensive positioning figures to be important, and he ought to heed Leitao's advice to avoid guarding an opponent with his hands.

"I've picked that up a little bit," Cain said. "I've been in enough foul trouble. Sooner or later, I was gonna catch on."

The reality remains that Virginia still leans on Reynolds and Singletary, who score 51 percent of the Cavaliers' points in ACC games. Last year, they accounted for 52 percent of Virginia's ACC scoring.

The home stretch bodes well for Reynolds, whose scoring average in last year's final 10 regular-season games, from February on, was 20.1 points - about three higher than his season average. "I don't know what it is," Reynolds said. "But it's crunch time for us, and we can't have no more mistakes. That's the mentally that I have when I go out there on the court."

Devils deep on defense
BY BRYAN STRICKLAND : The Herald-Sun
bstrickland@heraldsun.com
Feb 1, 2007 : 12:01 am ET

DURHAM -- A season ago, Shelden Williams reigned in the lane for Duke on defense, masking many a mistake by blocking or at least altering a shot on his way to become the school's all-time leader in blocked shots.

As for the evitable breakdowns that Williams couldn't defend, he and J.J. Redick took turns erasing them at the other end of the court, repeatedly answering with baskets of their own to help the Blue Devils outscore 32 of 36 opponents.

This season, Williams no longer mans the middle for the Blue Devils on defense. But in part because the Blue Devils no longer have Williams and Redick on offense either, the youngest team in Coach Mike Krzyzewski's tenure is statistically one the best in ACC history.

"We scored easier last year with J.J. and Shelden, so there were times where you felt like you could win offensively -- or at least the kids did," Krzyzewski said. "This year I think there's even more of a need for defense.

"We're deeper defensively, not offensively, and we have the kind of personnel that can play a little bit better defense."

Even without Williams and with three freshmen in the top seven of the rotation, the eight-ranked Blue Devils are allowing just 56.0 points per game heading into tonight's game at Virginia (9 p.m., ESPN). Just two teams in ACC history yielded fewer points per game over an entire season: N.C. State (54.7) in 1997 and Maryland (55.8) in 1954.

Duke (18-3, 5-2 ACC) will face a stern test tonight on defense against the Cavaliers (13-6, 5-2), whose backcourt of Sean Singletary (19.0 points per game) and J.R. Reynolds (18.2) ranked first and sixth in the ACC in scoring before Wednesday's action.

Two of Duke's last three victories -- over Boston College and N.C. State -- came against teams featuring three players averaging 16 or more points, but in neither case were even two of the scorers also capable of being primary ballhandlers.

The last two times Duke faced a tandem similar to Virginia's were against Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech -- both losses.

"They present a big challenge," Duke point guard Greg Paulus said. "They've had huge nights scoring-wise and also passing the ball. We know they're very dangerous -- getting in the paint and kicking, and they can put up some big numbers in a hurry.

"The fact that both of them can handle the ball or play off the ball, that presents more problems than just one guy shooting and one guy bringing up the ball."

But Virginia coach Dave Leitao, in just his second season in the ACC, already knows that Duke will be as prepared as is possible for his guards.

"Duke is probably the best team in the league at their preparation in taking away another team's strengths," Leitao said. "We have to have a couple of wrinkles just in case their preparation is so good that it takes away those two guys."

Duke's preparation began before the first official practice of the preseason. With Williams and Redick out of the picture and multiple freshmen sure to play pivotal roles, Krzyzewski decided early on to make sure that if nothing else, his team would be confident heading into the season in terms of its understanding of the defense.

"When I came in as a freshman, that was the first thing that was touched upon," Paulus said, adding that this preseason included even more of an emphasis on defense. "Coming out of high school into the college game, you play defense but you don't play every possession. You just don't have all the principles down, and you're not used to having the discipline you need on every possession and the concentration that you need at this level.

"It was the same for the guys coming in this year; we really wanted to teach our principles and philosophy so once our preseason started we weren't scrambling all over the place and we knew exactly what Coach was talking about when he wanted something done."

Still, even with the preseason concentration on defense, college freshmen aren't supposed to be able to play defense at a high level right away. But with Duke playing almost exclusively man-to-man, getting around the learning curve has more to do with developing the proper mentality than it does developing the mental acumen.

"The defense isn't hard to learn, but it's just different than anything you've ever had to learn," freshman Gerald Henderson said. "You're just changing everything that you've ever done on defense -- that's pretty much the hardest thing.

"I wasn't prepared for the intensity that we play defense with or the pressure that we do it with. It's a lot different than high school; not even a lot of teams play defense like we do in college.

"But you get into it because your other teammates are into it, and you know it's important if we're going to win."

NOTES -- Duke likely will be without defensive dynamo David McClure, who hyperextended his left knee in Sunday's 75-61 victory over Boston College. McClure did travel with the team to Charlottesville on Wednesday evening but is listed as doubtful to play. ... Duke will play in the brand-new John Paul Jones Arena for the first time, but regardless of venue, senior walk-on Joe Pagliuca is the lone Duke player to have played in Charlottesville before. The Blue Devils haven't played at Virginia since the 2003-04 season, when they won the fifth game in what is now a nine-game winning streak in the series.

 

TWO HOT TEAMS: Duke, Virginia will square off tonight
By Bill Cole
JOURNAL REPORTER

Jon Scheyer has noticed a change in the Duke basketball team in the past three weeks.

The Blue Devils are playing with a chip on their shoulders, and they are back to beating their ACC foes on a regular basis.

"Before, we just came out and played," Scheyer said. "There was no urgency and no anger in the way we played. You've got to fight to win in the ACC, and that's what we're doing now."

Now, Duke will find out if its new attitude works on the road, at Virginia in a 9 p.m. game. The Blue Devils' most pressing order of business will be to control one of the ACC's top backcourts in their first visit to John Paul Jones Arena.

Duke's change to a more aggressive style came after it had lost its first two ACC games. It has since won five consecutive games and moved from the ACC cellar to near the top of the conference in a quick turnaround orchestrated by Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

"We have a real young group of guys, and I think they were playing as hard as they thought they could and needed to, without knowing that they could play harder," Krzyzewski said. "It doesn't make sense, but if you're coaching it makes sense. Once you get into conference play, it just goes up to a higher level.

"For half of our team, they've never been in a conference game. A lot of it is just learning to adapt to changing conditions. And we're still going to adapt to those situations because half of this team has only played in seven ACC games."

Duke is 18-3 overall and 5-2 in the ACC. It will likely be without Dave McClure, a sophomore forward who injured his left knee Sunday in a 75-61 win over Boston College. McClure hyperextended the knee and is undergoing therapy.

McClure's absence would reduce Duke's bench to three players, not counting walk-ons.

Virginia is 13-6 and 5-2 and boosted its confidence with a stunning 64-63 win at Clemson on Sunday in which it scored the last 15 points. The win in Littlejohn Coliseum was Virginia's second consecutive on the road after a 10-game road losing streak.

"We're a better team than we were a month ago," Coach Dave Leitao of Virginia said. "And that's what we were hoping to do was get better and better. (Sunday) was something I really hadn't been around, as I can recall, a comeback like that.

"I think it raises the level of everybody's confidence and it kind of helps them understand where we're going and the potential that we have, but I don't think it changes us dramatically."

Leitao has been able to count on guards Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds to carry Virginia in the toughest of situations.

Singletary and Reynolds are averaging a combined 37.2 points, nine assists and 8.1 rebounds. Reynolds has scored 87 points in his past three games, including a 40-point outburst in a home win over Wake Forest. Singletary had back-to-back games of 37 points and 33 at home in early January and late December.

The two players have either led Virginia in scoring or have shared the scoring lead in 17 of 19 games. Leitao is in only his second season at Virginia, but he knows that Krzyzewski is a master at devising defenses that take away team's strengths and that Duke will have something planned for Singletary and Reynolds.

 

Reynolds, Singletary hold key for Cavaliers
Virginia will seek to end Duke's nine game winning streak in series; team last defeated Blue Devils Feb. 28, 2002 at U-Hall
Aaron Perryman, Cavalier Daily Associate Editor

The Virginia Cavaliers (13-6, 5-2 ACC) and the Duke Blue Devils (18-3, 5-2 ACC) face off tonight at 9 p.m. at John Paul Jones Arena. The game figures to be the biggest home game of the year for the Cavaliers. Duke and Virginia are currently fourth and fifth respectively in the ACC.

Duke comes in ranked No. 10 in the ESPN Top 25 poll. Interestingly enough, Arizona was ranked No. 10 as well when the Cavaliers defeated them Nov. 12. Duke has been ranked in the AP Top 25 poll when playing Virginia 21 of the last 22 meetings. Duke is ranked No. 8 in this week's AP Poll.

Since losing three straight gamesin early January, Virginia has won four straight, including Sunday's 64-63 nail-biter at No. 19 Clemson. Duke has won its last five games since losing two consecutive games in early January.

The Blue Devils have won nine straight over the Cavaliers. Virginia's last win against Duke was an 87-84 triumph Feb. 28, 2002 in Charlottesville. Duke holds an impressive 107-47 overall record against Virginia, but the Cavaliers are 32-34 all-time when playing Duke at home, including the 2002 win and a 91-89 victory in 2001.

The key to a victory for Virginia this year is the performance of its two guards, senior J.R. Reynolds and junior Sean Singletary, as it has been all season. Reynolds is averaging 22 points per game against ACC foes, while Singletary is close behind, averaging 17 points per game.

"It's becoming true even more than ... I want it to ... that we'll go as far as our two guards will take us," Virginia coach Dave Leitao said.

Duke's prominent players are freshman Jon Scheyer (15 points per game in conference play), junior DeMarcus Nelson (14.6 points per game in conference play) and sophomore Josh McRoberts (13.7 points per game in conference play).

Duke likes to play a slower-paced game than Virginia. The Blue Devils are averaging 71.3 points per game in conference matchups while the Cavaliers are averaging 76.4 points per game. The largest disparity lies in team defense. Duke is only giving up 61.3 points per game in conference play while Virginia is giving up 72.4 points per game.

Though the Cavaliers are playing a high caliber team in Duke, they are used to this level of competition.

"We've already played teams who are considered the top three [conference] teams in Maryland, Boston College, and North Carolina," Singletary said. "We are just going to keep chuggin', keep moving along and try and play defense every night."

Another factor that could possibly be taken into consideration at this point in the season is fatigue.

"You get to this time in the year when managing fatigue is a tough thing, particularly when you have to chase guys around," Leitao said.

Big games always bring in the big crowds, and this game is no exception. An unofficial reported number of over 5,000 student tickets were requested for this game, and there are only 3,000 student seats. Despite threats of bad weather, the University-wide buzz appears to be very high for this game.

With a national television audience watching on ESPN, the Cavaliers are looking to displace another top-10 team.