Crowd woes may not lure Barnes away
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress sports editor
March 4, 2005

Rick Barnes may not be completely happy with the Longhorns’ fan base out in Austin, but apparently not enough to leave Texas for another school.
At least that’s the report we received from a source close to the Texas basketball coach on Thursday. Rumors began surfacing on Wednesday out in the Lone Star State that Barnes wasn’t happy at UT and was looking around. At first, rumors had him linked with possible openings at Indiana and N.C. State, but then Virginia kept popping into the picture.
Apparently, all for naught.
The Texas coach insisted Thursday that he has not talked to Virginia. Because he does not have an agent, no one representing him has apparently talked to Virginia or anyone representing Virginia about its head coaching job, which is still not open.
Pete Gillen is nearing the end of his seventh year as UVa’s head coach and still has six years remaining on his contract. However, even though Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage said he has not made a decision on whether to retain Gillen, and insists such a decision won’t be made until UVa’s season concludes, observers of the program don’t believe Gillen will survive this time around.
The Cavaliers are 13-13, have one regular season game remaining at Florida State on Sunday, then play in the ACC Tournament next week in Washington, D.C.
Our Austin source said Thursday that Barnes is not unhappy at Texas or looking to leave, but would like to see more passion from Longhorn fans. Texas plays in an
18,600-seat building, but averages only around 11,000 fans per game.
Littlepage said earlier this week that a decision on Gillen’s fate will not be delayed as it was last year when the embattled coach was left twisting in the wind until Final Four weekend. This time, Littlepage said his own program will take priority over everything else and that includes his responsibilities as a member of the NCAA basketball men’s tournament selection committee.

What happens next? So, if Littlepage does pull the trigger to end Gillen’s career here, what happens next?
First of all, the groundwork was supposedly taken care of last spring when the two parties negotiated Gillen’s return for this season. It is believed that Gillen agreed to a much lower buyout of his contract than the original document provided, should things not work out this season.
While it may not have been in writing, apparently Gillen convinced Littlepage that this year’s Virginia team would be good enough to contend for the upper echelon of the ACC and an NCAA bid. Neither have happened.
If Gillen is released, it is our opinion that Virginia needs to hit a home run with its next hire.
Barnes certainly would be this columnist’s first choice. Let’s call him 1A and Kentucky’s Tubby Smith would be 1B. That’s only because I’ve been around Barnes some when he was in
the ACC and talked to him during his first brush with the Virginia job when Terry Holland resigned as coach.
Barnes won at Providence, won at Clemson for goodness sakes, and has elevated the Texas program, where he has five McDonald’s All-Americans on his roster. Virginia has only had nine McDonald’s All-Americans (we accidentally omitted Tom Sheehey from that list last week) since they’ve been naming a high school All-America team.
Smith certainly needs no introduction after what he has done at Kentucky. One of our colleagues was in Lexington the other night for Kentucky’s Senior Night and he said there were a lot of whispers amongst the Wildcats crowd about Virginia and Tubby ... and real concern from some people.
What if you can’t get a Tubby or a Barnes? Certainly one name high on the list has to be DePaul’s Dave Leitao, who has done a solid job with the Blue Demons and has a strong academic background. He was former associate head coach at UConn and probably has links to UVa president John T. Casteen III, who returned to Virginia from Connecticut.
After that, throw out any one of a dozen names who could be a candidate for the job. There’s not a lot of Hall of Fame types or potential HoF types out there who are available or who make sense. But that’s what Virginia needs if it is serious about taking on Duke and Carolina for ACC supremacy.

Not a commit. A suburban D.C. newspaper was wrong on Thursday when it reported that Gwynn Park High School (Brandywine, Md.) linebacker Rondre Smith had committed to Virginia.
The Cavaliers had been recruiting Smith for the 2005 class signed last month, but felt the 6-2, 225 prospect had some unsettled academic issues. Smith has not been signed and Virginia has not accepted his commitment as of yet.
Instead, he plans to attend Hargrave Military Academy of his own volition after graduating from Gwynn Park this June. Virginia will then re-recruit him next season out of Hargrave.

Cavs vow not to fully fall to pieces
With Pete Gillen's job in extreme jeopardy, UVa hopes for some kind of stretch turnaround.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129
The Roanoke Times

CHARLOTTESVILLE - In the same media room where he was introduced as Virginia men's basketball coach nearly seven years ago, Pete Gillen spoke for one minute and 58 seconds Wednesday.

It was probably the shortest postgame news conference of his UVa coaching tenure and it may have been the the last one he will conduct at University Hall. The media grew quiet when Gillen was asked if he thought it was his final home game.

"We'll see ... we'll see," said Gillen following an 82-72 loss to North Carolina State. "Time will tell ... time will tell ... time will tell. We've still got one game left and then the ACC Tournament."

Virginia (13-13 overall, 4-11 ACC) needs a victory Sunday at Florida State (11-17, 3-11) to keep from joining the Seminoles in the ACC cellar.

"We're not going to let it fall apart," said UVa freshman Sean Singletary, who scored a team-high 17 points before fouling out with 2:09 remaining. "I'm not going to be shy about it because I know I need to step up and be a leader."

Singletary's frustration was evident during the late stages of Wednesday night's game, not entirely as the result of the Cavaliers' uninspired showing. On his fifth foul, he felt he was grabbed by Wolfpack star Julius Hodge, the reigning ACC player of the year.

"Julius Hodge is a veteran and he acted like I was holding him," Singletary said. "Really, he was holding me. He was flopping. That just happens to me. It's something I've got to learn, something to play through."

Surprised by Virginia's spread offense in a 66-64 loss to Raleigh, N.C., the Wolfpack (17-11, 7-8) took command from the start Wednesday night, jumping to a 12-2 lead as the Cavaliers missed nine of their first 10 shots.

UVa never trailed by more than 10 points until it was reduced to fouling at the end of the game. The score was tied twice early in the second half but the score went from 40-40 to 48-40 during a stretch when UVa senior Elton Brown missed both ends of two two-shot free-throw opportunities.

"I'm with him," Singletary said. "A friend of his got shot earlier, so I know he had a lot going through his mind."

According to Singletary, Brown's friend was shot - not fatally - when he was talking to Brown via cellphone. Neither Gillen nor Brown mentioned anything about it.

"That's a lot to think about when you're getting ready for a game," Singletary said, "but Elton played hard. You can live with it when somebody makes mistakes when they're playing hard."

Statistically, it was not one of Virginia's worst games. The Cavaliers shot 42.4 percent from the field and lost the battle of the boards, 34-32, but committed only 10 turnovers.

"I don't think it was offensively," Singletary said. "It was just defensively that we folded. We didn't get to loose balls. They had a lot of second-chance opportunities. I just felt there wasn't much fight on our behalf."

One of the few bright spots for the Cavaliers was the play of 6-foot-10 sophomore Jason Cain, who finished with 13 points and eight rebounds. Cain was 5-for-5 from the field and had a basket disallowed for offensive goaltending when a bucket would have brought UVa within five points with 5 1/2 minutes left.

"Whatever my team needs on a given day, that's where I'll try and help out," Cain said. "If I could only rebound and not score, it wouldn't matter if we won. It's hard to feel good about anything right now."

Cavs must think they'll never miss
Prosser, Gillen take different view of timeouts
By Doug Doughty
THE ROANOKE TIMES

After ranting for years about Pete Gillen’s approach to calling timeouts, I’m ready to move on.

Here’s my latest pet peeve: players not following their shots.

In Virginia’s case, it’s a whole team that doesn’t follow its shots.

Former Cavalier Billy Langloh was scouting the Cavaliers’ game with North Carolina State for the Seattle SuperSonics. I asked him what would have happened if one of his former coaches, Morgan Wootten or Terry Holland, had seen him not following a shot.

“I’d have been sitting on the bench,” he said.

Langloh was sitting next to former University of Richmond star Johnny Newman, who spent more than 10 seasons in the NBA.

“Do you think Johnny Newman followed his shots?” I asked Langloh.

“He didn’t just follow his shots,” Langloh said. “He dunked them.”

We got a good laugh at that. I’m not sure how much Langloh watched Newman play. I don’t have a clear vision of Newman’s game, but the conversation was all about fundamentals.

I’m sure that UVa will miss Devin Smith when he completes his eligibility shortly. He’s the Cavaliers’ most dangerous shooter, he has an assortment of inside moves and he plays hurt. Generally speaking, he doesn’t shy away from the boards.

On the other hand, whenever he launches a 3-pointer from the wing, he’s going to stand and watch till the ball either swishes through the hoop or misses. He’s not going to go after it. He isn’t alone, I might add. The team’s next-most prolific 3-point shooter, J.R. Reynolds, isn’t quick to follow his shots either.

Some of that has to be coaching. I’m guessing it’s the same laissez-faire attitude that allowed Elton Brown to continue to disregard double- and triple-teams and take the ball to the basket or shoot low-percentage fadeaways.

Brown might be remembered for the 4-for-19 performance at the free-throw line that contributed mightily to back-to-back losses to Maryland and North Carolina State in home games UVa could have won, but almost as glaring is his 3-22 assist-turnover ratio over the past 10 games.

For a player to be as undisciplined as Brown after four years, it all falls back on the people who are doing the disciplining -- or not doing the disciplining.

GILLEN DIDN’T SEEM like himself Wednesday night, failing to call a timeout as State jumped to a 12-2 lead. Finally, things were back to normal, when, following a TV timeout with 7:22 left in the first half and the score tied 20-20, Gillen called a timeout with 6:37 left and the score still 20-20.

In a recent ACC coaches’ teleconference, Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser indicated that he and Gillen had debated Gillen’s philosophy when Prosser worked for him at Xavier. Prosser called a timeout with less than two minutes elapsed in the second half Sunday against UVa, but his explanation suggested that he does not subscribe to Gillen’s stop-the-bleeding approach.

“I don’t like to call a lot of timeouts,” Prosser said. “Everybody’s different in that regard, but I like for [the players] to try and feel their way out of situations. I tell them all the time, when they’re out in the real world, they’re not going to call timeout and call ‘coach.’ You can’t call timeout in life if you can’t deal with stuff.”

TO WATCH 1,000-point scorer Taron Downey being recognized Sunday at Wake, it was hard not to think that Virginia got the wrong prep-school point guard in 2000-2001, when Downey was at Fork Union and Keith Jenifer was at Hargrave Military Academy.

In fact, the Cavaliers would have been better off with Jenifer’s Hargrave teammate, Timmy Smith, who scored 37 points for East Tennessee State on Thursday night. Jenifer didn’t score as many points in his two-year UVa career (222) as Downey has scored this season (280).

ONE QUESTION the media didn’t get around to asking Gillen during a one-minute, 58-second news conference Wednesday night was why, trailing 67-59 after a Sean Singletary basket with 2:49 left, he didn’t try to play defense for a couple of possessions. It was only four seconds before Jason Cain fouled Julius Hodge -- the first of seven UVa fouls in the final 2:45.

By then, State had been in the double bonus for nearly seven minutes, with the Cavaliers having committed their 10th foul with 9:30 left.