San Juan shocker
Cavs fall to Appalachian State in Shootout opener
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com | 978-7247
December 20, 2006

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico - According to WebMD.com, symptoms of sun or heatstroke can be mental changes, including confusion, delirium or unconsciousness; and skin that is red, hot and dry.

Apparently, it must also include horrendous team defense, poor shooting and taking an opponent for granted.

How else to explain Virginia’s shocking 80-69 loss to Appalachian State in the first round of the San Juan Shootout on Tuesday night?

“This is the fourth game in a row that we haven’t brought it from a shooting standpoint,” said Virginia coach Dave Leitao, as sweat dripped down his face in a dingy hallway outside of the team’s locker room at Mario Morales Coliseum.

“It’s either going to be there or it’s not going to be there - I’m not going to rely on it. You have to rely on the other end of the floor. That’s what wins games for you, and that’s what cost us the game tonight.”

ASU guard Nathan Cranford gave Virginia fits all game long. He finished with a game-high 24 points, including 6 of 10 from 3-point range.

Meanwhile, backcourt mate D.J. Thompson did a splendid job of orchestrating the Mountaineers’ offense. The 5-foot-8, 170-pound senior continually penetrated Virginia’s defense in notching 17 points and five assists.

ASU (8-3, 3-0) shot 54 percent from the field, including a whopping 13 of 26 from behind the arc. Virginia (6-2, 1-0) shot 39 percent, sinking just 2 of 13 3-pointers.

“We made shots early and it gave us confidence on both ends of the court,” said ASU coach Houston Fancher, whose team led 41-28 at the half.

In the Dave Leitao era, UVa still has not won a regular-season road game outside of the state of Virginia.

Fancher said playing the game at a neutral site - with less than 100 fans in the stands - was a great advantage.

“It sort of evens the playing field a little bit. We had lost three ACC games, but they were all on the road in hostile environments,” Fancher said. “Down here, it was just two teams playing with barely enough people in the crowd to start a fight.”

ASU came into the game with a 5-66 all-time record against ACC opponents. The Mountaineers had not defeated an ACC team since 2000 (Clemson) and had dropped games to Clemson, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech this season.

Against the Hokies, ASU scored just nine first half points and showed no signs of being able to hang with an ACC-caliber team, let alone beat one.

“I assume that’s the tape [Virginia players] saw,” Fancher said. “I would be thinking the same thing about our team if I saw us playing that way. At Virginia Tech, the shots just didn’t fall. The rims were a little tighter and we were a little tighter.

“But we weren’t going to be in awe here. We knew they’re a potential top-25 team and knew it would be a tough battle. … I don’t think they expected quite as much from us as we expect from ourselves.”

The part of the loss that stung most for Virginia fans was watching former Cavalier Donte Minter contribute to the win. Minter, who transferred last December, had nine points and two rebounds in just nine minutes of action.

In the second half, Minter was the best big man on the floor. He commanded double teams - something no Virginia player has seemed capable of - and dished out to open shooters.

“That was a great victory right here,” said Minter, with a humongous smile on his face. “This is on another level. I can’t believe it. I never expected we would play this well, but I knew we had a great shot at winning.”

How does the victory rank?

“This is up there,” Minter said. “I’m not going to say this is as good as winning the state championship in high school, but this is up there.”

Virginia was led by J.R. Reynolds’ 20 points, but that came on 4 of 16 shooting. In the first half, Leitao screamed at Reynolds to “wake up.”

After a Sean Singletary steal and drive to the hoop, Leitao turned to his team and said, “He’s the only one who wants to play today!”

However, Singletary got in foul trouble and finished with only 14 points on 4 of 14 shooting. He also committed four turnovers.

Adrian Joesph played one of his best games of the season - he had 16 points and missed just one shot - but he wasn’t taking any solace in the performance.

“It’s a bad feeling right now,” Joseph said. “You have to play hard and execute. When you do that, good things happen, and we weren’t doing that.”

Virginia will now play Utah in a consolation bracket game at noon today. The Utes lost to Central Florida on Tuesday.

“They have a motion offense and a big 7-footer who they go to a lot,” Leitao said. “He’s going to give us problems if we don’t defend him.”

Leitao scoffed at the notion that his team looks like a completely different squad when it plays on the road.

“That has nothing to do with it,” he said. “We’re just not playing real well in practice. It’s not like I haven’t seen this coming.

“We’ve got to be tighter, rally the troops and become better every day. Right now, whatever the reason is for the disjointedness, it doesn’t matter. We’re not a very good team.”

Dunks

Ryan Pettinella was once again a bright spot for Virginia. The junior big man had eight points and eight rebounds in 24 minutes. … Lars Mikalauskas and Tunji Soroye played a combined five minutes. Neither player scored. … Minter said it was a nice change to watch Leitao yelling at somebody besides him. “I saw it for a half of a year, and know what he’s capable of,” Minter chuckled. … How do you know when you’re at a college basketball game outside of the United States? When pina coladas are sold at the stadium concession stands.

 

Defense lost in Caribbean tradewinds
By Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
December 20, 2006

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico - Win after win, week after week, Dave Leitao had sensed disaster looming for his Virginia basketball team because of one simple reason: bad defense.

For Leitao, even the thought of his players performing poorly on defense is a disgusting thought, enough to send the emotional coach into a frenzy. You know, like those cartoon figures when smokes blows out the ears, the eyes rattle around like tossed dice, coming up snake eyes and all that comes out is a bunch of #*&%$!

After Tuesday’s lackadaisical defensive effort by the Cavaliers, it’s a wonder that the roof didn’t get blown off the Mario Morales Coliseum by Leitao’s ranting in an 80-69 upset loss to Appalachian State.

No, that’s not a typo.

Appy State?

Yep, that’s the same Appy State that scored nine points in the first half of a loss at Virginia Tech. The same Mountaineers that had only beaten five ACC opponents in 65 tries - until Tuesday.

Don’t think for a minute that this exotic locale had that much to do with it. Throw away any of those Bermuda Triangle theories. The reason the Wahoos didn’t take care of business can be traced back to opening night when they somehow overcame a bad defensive start and stunned 10th-ranked Arizona.

“If you look at it, we got into a hole [against Arizona] because of a lack of defensive intensity, but were able to come back,” said Leitao after the loss. “The next two games we weren’t real good defensively, and so if you look at it, we haven’t been real consistent. Even the other night against Hampton, it was a good victory, but rather sloppy.”

Minutes after this loss was probably the only time the Virginia coach had been quiet all night. He spent most of the evening huffing and puffing on the sidelines, bellowing out orders for his players to pick up the intensity.

He might have as well been spitting into the Caribbean tradewinds.

Sleepwalkers

The Cavaliers looked like they were sleepwalking from the get-go, caught on their heels by an aggressive, unheralded Appy team out for ACC blood. ASU’s 3-point barrage caught UVa on its collective heels and before the Cavs could blink, they found themselves down 30-12 with 9:21 remaining in the first half.

The closest Virginia came after that was 10 points on three second-half occasions: at 51-41 with 14:26 to play; then at 64-54 (5:53); and 66-56 (5:31). Each time, the Mountaineers would toss in another shot from Bonusphere to pull away.

Even at that point, Leitao wasn’t never confident that his team could come back because he could spot the little things that told him it wasn’t going to be the Cavs’ day.

“I never looked at the score as an indication of where we were,” he revealed. “We weren’t making stops and if you don’t make stops it doesn’t matter because at some point they’re going to keep scoring. So, the score was rather meaningless to the game. It was how we were playing and we weren’t playing very well.”

For the game, ASU shot 54.2 percent from the floor, 50 percent from beyond the arch (13 of 26), making UVa’s faulty shooting of 38.9 and 15.4 (2 of 13 on 3’s) looking even worse.

Some Cavs offered up excuses after the game, like Adrian Joseph, who was the only Virginia player that shot well (7 of 8, 16 points), who blamed the lack of focus on the surroundings.

“Being in Puerto Rico, with such a great atmosphere, there was a lack of concentration,” Joseph said. “Everyone was not there mentally and that hurt us.”

Co-captain J.R. Reynolds wasn’t real happy upon hearing that reasoning. Carribean, Schmarribean.

“We came here for a reason. We didn’t come down here to enjoy the nice weather or to sightsee,” the senior guard said. “We wanted to come down here and win games. We need to take care of business.”

That was a matter that Reynolds planned on taking up with his younger teammates upon returning to the team hotel that night, but he has already grown tired of reminding the Cavs why they came to the San Juan Shootout.

“You tell guys, but they should know on their own,” said Reynolds. “Shouldn’t have to tell them over and over again. That’s what growing into a mature man is all about.”

Leitao may have known what was coming, but Reynolds said the players felt they were still in it at halftime, down 41-28. They had been down by 19 against Arizona and won.

But that night, they used defense to mount the rally. Defense was nowhere in sight this time around.

“Coach has been preaching to us that we’re going to need to get stops on defense and that if we didn’t, sooner or later it was going to catch up to us and it did tonight,” Reynolds said. “It’s more mental. You’ve got to put more effort into it. You’ve got to want to do it. You got to want to stop somebody. That’s the important thing right now if we want to win.”

Appalachian State assistant coach Richard Morgan, a former Cavalier star in the late ’80s said that the Mountaineers believed they had a chance to upset Virginia if they could contain Reynolds and Singletary, but never in his wildest dreams did he think his team could dominate the Wahoos in such a manner.

“We didn’t think we could run some of our stuff on their defense, but we were surprisingly able to,” Morgan said.

Reynolds scored most of his team-high 20 points at the line, where he was 11 of 14. Together, he and backcourt mate Singletary were a combined 8 of 30 from the field (1 of 9 on treys).

Now, here’s Leitao’s dilemma heading into today’s game against Utah, upset losers to Central Florida prior to UVa’s game on Tuesday. Leitao needs to stop the bleeding, but realizes that until his team buys into defense, things could get ugly.

“As we’re getting ready to turn the page into 2007, if we can’t dig down on [the defensive] end of the floor, then we have to outscore people,” Leitao said. “This is the fourth game in a row that we haven’t brought it from a shooting standpoint.”

Virginia has not shot above 40 percent but once in those four outings and Leitao’s patience is wearing thin in terms of counting on living and dying with the offense.

“I’m not going to rely on [shooting],” he said. “You have to rely on the other end of the floor. Ultimately, [defense] is going to win games for you and right now it cost us a game tonight.”

Whoever said defense wins championships probably had a few nights like Dave Leitao.

 

Appy St. surprises Cavs
The Mountaineers don't look like underdogs as they sink 13 3-pointers and shoot 54 percent.

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico -- Appalachian State, a 32-point loser at Virginia Tech just nine days earlier, went 13-of-26 from 3-point range Tuesday and beat Virginia 80-69 in the first round of the San Juan Shootout, becoming the first Southern Conference team to beat the Cavaliers in 30 years.

Virginia, a 10-point favorite over the Mountaineers -- the nation's 140th-best Division I men's basketball team according to USA Today -- fell behind 15-3 after Appalachian State made four 3-pointers and a 3-point play in the first 512 minutes.

The Mountaineers (8-3) increased their lead to 18 points and 30-12 and the Cavaliers (6-2) never could reduce the deficit to single digits.

UVa trailed 67-56 when junior post man Ryan Pettinella went to the free-throw line with just under 5 minutes remaining, but Pettinella, a 29.1-percent free-throw shooter, missed both attempts.

That was part of a four-possession sequence in which Virginia also had three turnovers.

"It's not like we haven't seen it coming," said UVa coach Dave Leitao on his postgame radio show. "I didn't want to say anything, but right now, we're not a very good team."

Virginia has less than 24 hours to lick its wounds before meeting Utah in a consolation game at noon today. The Utes were upset 67-61 by Central Florida.

Senior guard J.R. Reynolds from Roanoke had a game-high 20 points for the Cavaliers on Tuesday but made only four of 16 shots from the field.

Reynolds and All-ACC backcourt mate Sean Singletary were a combined 8-for-30 from the field, including 1-for-9 on 3-pointers.

Singletary had six of his 14 points in the final 1:29, by which point the outcome no longer was in doubt. Singletary picked up his second foul with 9:21 remaining in the first half and was on the bench for extended periods of both halves.

Virginia, which finished 2-for-13 on 3-pointers, had no answer for 6-foot-2 Mountaineer left-hander Nate Cranford, who, made four 3-pointers in the first 10 minutes.

Cranford later knocked down a pair of 3-pointers after UVa had closed to 53-42 early in the second half. He finished with a career-high 24 points.

All-Southern Conference guard D.J. Thompson added 17 points. Appalachian also got nine points in 9 minutes from Donte Minter, a former UVa postman who never played for Leitao before leaving the program last December.

Appalachian got six points from another transfer postman, 6-7 Davis Bowne, who began his college career at Division III Hampden-Sydney. UVa outrebounded the Mountaineers 33-20 but could not exploit Appalachian's three-guard lineup with inside offense.

UVa shot 38.9 percent, compared to the Appalachian State's 54.2.

The Mountaineers, whose staff includes first-year assistant and former Salem High and UVa star Richard Morgan, meet Central Florida in the semifinals at 4 p.m.

 

Appalachian State topples Virginia
Cranford scores 24 in Mountaineers' 80-69 win in first round of San Juan Shootout
GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico

Appalachian State built a big lead early and never let up yesterday on the way to stunning Virginia 80-69 in the first round of the San Juan Shootout.

Senior guard Nathan Cranford hit 6 of 10 3-point shots and led the Mountaineers (8-3) with a career-high 24 points. D.J. Thompson added 17 points, hitting 3 of 4 3-point attempts.

The victory was the first for Appalachian over an ACC team since a win over Clemson in January 2000. The Mountaineers had lost to Clemson by 30 points and to Virginia Tech by 32 earlier this season.

"We learned a lot of things from the Clemson and Virginia Tech losses, and Virginia may have taken us for granted," said Coach Houston Fancher of the Mountaineers. "They probably saw the Clemson and Virginia Tech games, too.

"This was a great win. We won't take it for granted, and try to be as focused and ready to go for the next two here."

Appalachian will play Central Florida (7-1) at 4 p.m. today in the semifinals of the eight-team tournament. Central Florida was a 67-61 winner over Utah yesterday.

Yesterday's game marked a homecoming for ASU guards Eduardo Bermudez and Ryann Abraham, both Puerto Rico natives, and was the first game for the Mountaineers' Donte Minter against his former team.

Minter, a 6-8, 250-pound junior, played two seasons at UVa before transferring to ASU. He finished with nine points in nine minutes in his third game with the Mountaineers, and said that the victory over his former team meant a lot to him personally.

"I had been looking forward to this game ever since I first transferred here," Minter said. "Things didn't work out at Virginia like I had hoped, but I'm glad to be here. This is an exciting win for this entire team."

The Mountaineers jumped to a 15-3 lead and, sparked by hot-shooting Cranford and a 13-point run, extended their lead to 30-12, their largest of the game.

"Our kids were extremely focused from the start," Fancher said. "We made shots early and went from there."

The Mountaineers shot 54 percent overall, and 50 percent (13 of 26) from 3-point range against a Cavaliers team that was holding opponents to 24-percent 3-point shooting. UVa (6-2) hit just 2 of 13 3s (15 percent) and shot 39 percent overall on the way to its second-lowest scoring total of the season.

"This is huge for us confidencewise," Cranford said. "We really wanted to play well for Eddie and Ryan, and Donte with him coming from Virginia, and it also was a chance for us to prove something.

"We came out set on winning. We executed our offense very well. We had scored only nine points in the first half against Virginia Tech. We wanted to make sure that didn't happen again."

ASU led 64-48 after a 3-pointer by Doug McLaughlin-Williams with 7:15 left but the Cavaliers, who got 20 points from J.R. Reynolds, got as close as 66-56 with 5:30 left.

The Mountaineers had a 7-0 run over the next four minutes, however, and sealed the victory.

"Nate shot the ball extremely well and our guys did a good job getting him open with screens," Fancher said. "D.J. took just five shots and probably played his best game of the season. Donte established himself inside and I think really gained some confidence."

UVa's previous loss to a current Southern Conference team was in 1974 against Davidson. The Cavaliers had won 13 straight games against SoCon teams.

ASU's 8-3 record is its best since an 11-3 mark in 2002-03.

"We probably won't play a team that's bigger than Virginia is, and this is a team that was in the top 25 a couple of weeks ago," Fancher said. "I think it reaffirms to us what we can do.

"We just need to do it on a consistent basis."