U.VA. NOTES
Richmond Times-Dispatch Mar 16, 2006

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK: J.R. Reynolds and Sean Singletary have eligibility remaining, as do the other six scholarship players on the men's basketball team. For Billy Campbell, however, U.Va.'s loss at Stanford on Tuesday night was the final game of his college career.

"This has been a dream come true," Campbell said in a radio interview afterward.

Campbell, a walk-on guard from Atlanta, played in 26 games and totaled 34 points, 26 rebounds, 16 assists and 10 steals this season. Those numbers don't reflect his contribution to first-year coach Dave Leitao's program.

"Billy has been a tremendous, tremendous part of our family and has added so much in terms of character and substance," Leitao told reporters late Tuesday at Stanford. "He's a guy that we can use as a model for how we want people to be in our program."

LONG WAY FROM HOME: Virginia learned Sunday night that it would play an NIT opening-round game 48 hours later on the West Coast. The Cavaliers spent most of Monday traveling. Not surprisingly, they looked sluggish in a 65-49 loss to the Cardinal.

U.Va.'s best players, Singletary and Reynolds, were a combined 11 for 32 from the floor. They had eight turnovers and only five assists between them.

"Singletary is a better player than he showed tonight, and so is Reynolds," Stanford coach Trent Johnson said. "I [attribute] that to fatigue."

Of his team's cross-country trip, Leitao said, "Obviously, it's a tough thing to do, but I don't think that you [use it as an excuse]. What I thought it could do was affect our shooting a little bit, because you might come up short, but you gotta play games, and guys who love to play basketball, they play through things. That is not nearly the reason why we didn't play as well as we're capable."

The Cavaliers finished 15-15 after losing five of their final six games.

IN THE CREASE: Not since March 13, 2004, when Princeton won 8-7 in Charlottesville, has U.Va. lost at home in men's lacrosse.

The Cavaliers failed to make the NCAA tournament that season, but that's not likely to be an issue this year. The second-ranked Cavaliers are 7-0 heading into their game Saturday afternoon at Towson. U.Va. will try to stretch its home streak to 17 victories when defending NCAA champion Johns Hopkins visits Klockner Stadium on March 25.

The Cavs are off to their best start in 14 seasons under coach Dom Starsia, who has guided them to two NCAA titles.

"The areas of concern we had going into the season are starting to play out a little bit," Starsia said. "I think we have a chance to be a pretty good lacrosse team."

As a senior last year, Jack deVilliers took most of Virginia's faceoffs. His replacements - Charlie Glazer and Drew Thompson - have exceeded Starsia's expectations. So have the two freshman starters on defense: Mike Timms and Matt Kelly.

Virginia is likely to be without freshman midfielder Max Pomper for the rest of the season. Pomper, who played in U.Va.'s first three games, tore his Achilles tendon and will have surgery, Starsia said.

HOMECOMING: At a news conference early this month, football coach Al Groh officially introduced his four new assistants. One guy, of course, looked very familiar.

Mike London, who spent four seasons as Groh's defensive line coach at U.Va., is back as defensive coordinator. He spent last season with the NFL's Houston Texans, whose base defense, like Virginia's, was the 3-4.

London, a University of Richmond graduate, coached Houston's defensive line.

"We're elated about the fact that Mike could come back not only with an integral knowledge of our system, our university and our players, but it couldn't have worked out better for us in that when Mike left to go to the NFL, he went to a 3-4 team," Groh said.

"The way I think of it is Mike was pretty accomplished at teaching this defense, and all he did was go off and get his Ph.D. to come back and continue teaching this defense, and most particularly and most importantly, to provide the type of leadership that's necessary for his unit on the defensive side of the ball." -Jeff White
 

UVa improved under Leitao
By Andy Bitter
Lynchburg News & Advance
March 16, 2006

Dave Leitao said it upon his arrival in Charlottesville. He said it when three players were purged from the roster before Christmas. He said it when against all odds Virginia jumped out to a 4-2 start in the ACC. And he said it up through the team's difficult finish.
This season was about laying the foundation for building a successful team in years to come.

In that case, the Cavaliers' surprising success can just be considered a little bonus.

The standings indicate half-game improvement for Virginia, from 14-15 in Pete Gillen's final season to 15-15 in Leitao's first, but overlook a far more important factor - direction. Under Leitao, the Cavaliers are moving forward, not backward.

A popular pick to finish in last place of the ACC, what with a new coach, the loss of three seniors and a lack of depth, Virginia's seven conference wins and seventh-place ACC finish was nothing short of remarkable.

The Cavaliers used what they had - two pretty good guards, a knack for getting to the offensive glass and a surprisingly strong homecourt advantage - to put together one solid season.

Their seven ACC wins equaled or eclipsed Gillen's mark in each of his final four ill-fated years with the school. Sean Singletary became UVa's first all-ACC first-teamer since Bryant Stith in 1992. And Virginia made a trip, albeit brief, to the postseason after a one-year absence.

However, there were bumps and bruises along the way. Offensively, the Cavaliers often devolved into a two-man show, putting the burden on J.R. Reynolds and Singletary to make every basket. When one was shut down or out of commission, it usually doomed the team's chances (for proof, watch a tape of the Fordham loss).

Beyond that, Virginia was not a deep or experienced team. It wasn't often UVa went past eight deep and no team in the ACC had fewer starts by seniors (2). Only Georgia Tech had more starts by underclassmen than the Cavaliers.

That's why there's plenty of optimism regarding next season, when Virginia ditches the 41-year-old University Hall and moves across the street into the state-of-the-art, $129.8 million John Paul Jones Arena.

Perhaps more important is that Leitao will bring in a full recruiting class, highlighted by 6-foot-9 small forward Jami Tucker and 6-foot-5 shooting guard Soloman Tat, a pair of rivals.com top 100 recruits. The class will get Virginia's scholarship numbers up to the NCAA limit of 13. That will lighten the load on the current group of players and enable Leitao to employ the more aggressive brand of defense on which he built his reputation.

The returning Cavaliers aren't pushovers, either. Reynolds and Singletary have already earned every coach in the league's respect after this year.

Forward Jason Cain found a niche on the offensive boards and Adrian Joseph, when he's on the mark, is the kind of third scorer good teams need.

Freshman Mamadi Diane showed flashes of being an athletic swingman that can make an impact at both ends of the floor, while classmate Laurynas Mikalauskas is a load on the block whose value will continue to improve if he can maintain his energy without getting into foul trouble.

Leitao has said repeatedly that he is building this program to succeed in the future. After one year, he appears to be ahead of schedule.

Virginia Report Card

Frontcourt

Success depends on what category you look at. When it came to rebounding, this group excelled. Jason Cain ranked seventh in the conference and Laurynas Mikalauskas was a spitfire off the bench. But offensively, this group struggled. At times, UVa wouldn't even throw the ball into the post. Mikalauskas had a decent post game, but most of Cain's points came off second-chance opportunities. Tunji Soroye was essentially in the game just to block shots.

GRADE: C-

Backcourt

Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds are two of the ACC's best. Singletary avoided any kind of sophomore slump and is poised to be one of the ACC's top players next season. Reynolds developed into more than just a shooter. At times, he took games over. More importantly, the two emerged as the team's leaders, embracing head coach Dave Leitao's message from the get-go. T.J. Bannister's season never really got going because of a recurring sports hernia injury.

GRADE: A-

Bench

The Cavaliers were not deep. Rarely did Leitao go past the third player on the bench. Mikalauskas was a jolt of energy whenever he entered the game but was unrefined. Mamadi Diane looked comfortable at home but rattled on the road. Bannister was never fully healthy. And Billy Campbell produced about as much as one could expect from a walk-on. With eight scholarship players, Virginia simply didn't have the numbers to have an effective bench.

GRADE: C

Coaching

If not for Roy Williams and North Carolina's end-of-season surge, Leitao probably would have won ACC coach of the year honors. The Cavaliers lost four of their top six scorers from last season and had to adapt to a new coach and new system with an incredibly limited roster. Still, Leitao had UVa out-scrapping people for wins with rebounding and defense, two things that weren't hallmarks of the Pete Gillen era. To milk seven ACC wins out of this group was impressive.

GRADE: A

Overall

For a team that was almost unanimously picked to finish in last place of the ACC, Virginia had an impressive season. The Cavaliers got seven ACC wins, their most in four years. They knocked off the defending national champs, North Carolina. They beat their state rival three times. And they made the National Invitation Tournament before bowing out in the opening round, something that at the beginning of the season seemed far-fetched.

GRADE: B-
 

Dismay replaced by excitement
Cavs try to put tough loss behind them, focus on next season
By Whitelaw Reid / Daily Progress staff writer
March 16, 2006

PALO ALTO, Calif. - In the wake of one of his team's most lackluster performances, Virginia coach Dave Leitao sat on a dais at the Maples Pavilion and answered the question that was on the minds of many in Wahoo Nation: Does a 65-49 loss to Stanford in the opening round of the NIT take away from all the good things his team accomplished this season?
"I'm sure over the next few days, like any coach whose season comes to an end, you get reflective," Leitao said. "We were able to do some things, but at the same point in time you never want your season to come to an end. I'm disappointed that it is, [but] obviously I think we grew and we learned a lot."

Virginia (15-15, 7-9 ACC) won almost twice as many ACC games as it did last season, knocked of two ranked opponents and played with a fire that had been missing for a long time.

However, against Stanford, there wasn't much intensity for a good portion of the game.

In his postgame remarks, Cardinal coach Trent Johnson said the fatigue from having to travel cross-country may have hurt Virginia.

Leitao admitted it might have been a factor.

"Obviously it's a tough thing to do," said Leitao of the 3,000-mile trek, "but I don't think that you use that [as an excuse].

"What I thought it could do was affect our shooting a little bit because you might come up short, but you have to play games. Guys who love to play basketball play through things."

Virginia shot just 32 percent in the first half and allowed Stanford to shoot 52 percent. The Cavaliers trailed by 13 at the break. That, essentially, did them in.

Virginia was a lot of things this season, but a comeback team wasn't one of them. The biggest halftime lead the Cavaliers ever came back from was a three-point deficit to Wake Forest on Feb. 4.

Virginia guard J.R. Reynolds said the Cavaliers just ran into a good team in Stanford.

"They were very good - the way they moved the ball inside and out," said Reynolds, who scored 12 points on 5-of-12 shooting. "They hit big shots and 3s. Everybody knows their role on the team and they don't make many mistakes."

Stanford, which plays at Missouri State on Friday night, continually had wide-open looks from 3-point range. For the game, the Cardinal were 7 of 14 from behind the arc. The Cavaliers were just 1 of 10.

Virginia players hardly got any points off drives to the basket.

"We just weren't cutting hard and being aggressive," Reynolds said. "We didn't get to the free-throw line that much. It was just offensive stagnancy.

"It's real frustrating to come across the whole U.S. and play this way, but they had a good team and did a good job."

Except for the first two minutes of the game, when it jumped to a 6-0 lead, Virginia seemed lethargic.

"It was a lack of energy," said Virginia guard Sean Singletary, "which is something that hurt us throughout the whole season. It's something we need to fix in the offseason."

With up to six new players arriving on the grounds next season, it should be a fairly easy thing for Leitao to rectify.

This season, if players didn't bring their "A" game on a given night, they still received playing time -a byproduct of having just eight scholarship players.

Next season, Leitao will have more options. That's something Singletary and Reynolds said they are both looking forward to.

"It's real exciting," Reynolds said. "This team is just headed in a positive direction. Once [the new recruits] jump on board and settle in, we're going to work our butts off over the summer. That's the great thing about it - we're only going to get better.

"This season has been a season of ups and downs. Unfortunately it's over right now, but we're going to get back in the gym and just work harder - harder than we did this year. In order for us to make the [NCAA] tournament, we have to work hard over the summer, and then again in the fall to get better."

Added Singletary, who scored 13 points against Stanford: "We're definitely excited to get working together with a new team."

Some much-needed R&R

Reynolds believes Singletary was more hampered by a hip injury the last couple weeks than he let on.

"I think it's been bothering him a lot," Reynolds said. "He's just been trying to push it as much as he can, [but] just can't do the things that he normally can do."

Singletary, who had a couple of ice bags on his body after the game, looked like he needed a vacation.

"I'm going to get healthy and go right back at it," Singletary said.

Good experience

Virginia freshman Laurynas Mikalauskas, who had 11 points and six rebounds against Stanford, said playing in the NIT will serve him and fellow freshman Mamadi Diane well in the future.

"We're disappointed with [the loss]," Mikalauskas said, "but we have to start working again for next season. I believe we can be really good next year.

"It was a big experience for us traveling to California and playing a team like Stanford. It's going to be big for us as we get ready for next year."

Diane had just four points on 1-of-9 shooting.

A Pattern?

In his first season at DePaul in 2002-03, Leitao also lost in the first round of the NIT. The next season, he took the Blue Demons to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Leitao's predecessor, Pete Gillen, took the Cavaliers to four NITs and one NCAA Tournament in his seven years. Gillen was 0-5.

Campbell's farewell

Virginia loses just one player to graduation, senior walk-on Billy Campbell. In his final game, Campbell had zero points and two assists in 20 minutes.

"We say goodbye to Billy Campbell," Leitao said, "who has been a tremendous part of our family and a guy who's meant so much in terms of character and substance - a guy who we can use as a model for how we want people to be in our program."

The search continues

Even after the final game, Leitao found himself answering questions about the problem that haunted Virginia all season: Finding a third scorer to take the pressure of Singletary and Reynolds.

"It's been frustrating all year in that we have to be a little unbalanced in our attack and rely so much on our two guards having to score the ball very well," Leitao said.

"We have two guys, two warriors, who have done everything we've asked them to do all year. Hopefully in the future we don't have to count on them [as much]."

 

The ACC, robbed in this year's NCAA?
Sean McLernon

What happened to ACC basketball this season?

The conference is supposed to be the toughest in the country. It has produced three of the last five national champions and consistently puts teams in the Final Four. Yet somehow, the Missouri Valley Conference got the same number of teams (four) in this year's NCAA tournament as the 12-team ACC.

For the first time in my lifetime, probably for the first time ever since the field was expanded to six rounds, only one-third of the ACC will be playing in the Big Dance. When you consider how much success ACC teams have had in the tournament and how high the conference's RPI was this season (No.3 in the country), the decision to admit only four squads to the 65-team field is mind-boggling.

The NCAA tournament selection committee, chaired by U.Va. Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, insists that they do not consider the number of teams from each conference and instead look to choose the 65 best squads regardless of league affiliation. While this is clearly the best way to go about the process, it still doesn't change the fact that the committee does not believe a .500 record or better in the ACC merits a bid.

While I don't think the committee should set benchmarks that automatically qualify a team for the tournament, such as a .500 record in a top-notch conference, the achievement should at least catch the committee's eye and weigh heavily when they work to pick the 34 at-large teams in the field. And when you look closely at Florida State and Maryland, the two teams that reached that mark this season, it seems odd that they were left out of the tournament. Not when teams like Utah State and Air Force get at-large bids. Not when four teams from the Missouri Valley Conference are awarded berths in the tournament. Not when the 11-team Big Ten, who lost to the ACC for the eighth straight season in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, gets six teams in.

Florida State not only finished 9-7 in conference play, but beat No.1-ranked Duke in the final week of the regular season. And if it weren't for the shoddy officiating at Cameron Indoor in January, which led to the suspension of the three ACC officials working the game, the Seminoles would have beaten Duke on their home floor as well.

FSU did have an out-of-conference schedule that left much to be desired and did lose in the first round of the ACC tournament to Wake Forest, but that still doesn't change the fact that the Seminoles went 19-9 overall and played well enough in the ACC to finish alone in fifth place.

Maryland won its last two regular season games and beat Georgia Tech in the opening round of the ACC tournament to finish 19-12 overall while playing eight games against opponents ranked in the top 25. When you consider the 8-8 conference record on top of that, the Terrapins should be dancing right now instead of hosting an 11 a.m. contest Saturday against Manhattan in the NIT.

Even though this year's ACC may not have been as strong as it was last year, the conference still boasts solid teams from top to bottom. The Missouri Valley Conference, on the other hand, includes teams like Drake, Evansville, Indiana State and Illinois State, all of which finished well under .500 overall this year.

Bradley and Northern Iowa were improving their tournament profiles by beating up on these doormats while squads like Maryland and Florida State had tough competition almost every night during the ACC season. The two MVC teams tied for fifth in their conference with records of 11-7 against in-conference competition, but still got the nod over Maryland and Florida State.

In the end, nothing really happened to ACC basketball this season. The conference lost some of its big name players to the NBA Draft, but was still ranked the No.3 conference in the country and still provided a higher level of play than anything the MVC could produce.

Somewhere along the line, however, the selection committee lost respect for the ACC. Considering Virginia was only a couple of wins away from being in a similar position to Maryland this season, the Cavaliers can only hope this was a momentary lapse in judgment and not the beginning of a new trend.

If only to put all doubts to rest, I propose that next year the ACC take on the Valley in the inaugural ACC-MVC Challenge. I mean, the ACC has dominated the Big Ten all these years, why not move on to a conference that is apparently the ACC's equal? Once the MVC fails to win a single game in the Challenge, maybe then fifth and sixth place teams in the ACC will get the respect they deserve come NCAA selection time.