UVa wins, but it's not pretty
Cavaliers edge Tarzans for 7th place
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com | 978-7247
December 22, 2006

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico - As you would expect, many Virginia basketball fanatics have been in dire straits the last two days as their beloved Cavaliers have completely tanked against inferior competition.

Following losses to Appalachian State and Utah, one fan on a fan message board wrote, “If we lose to Puerto Rico, we should scrap basketball altogether.”

The fan was referring to the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez - Virginia’s opponent in the seventh-place game at the San Juan Shootout on Thursday.

Well, the Cavaliers didn’t lose to UPR-Mayaguez - but they came kind of close.

In a way, Virginia’s 59-52 victory over the tournament host was the most embarrassing performance of its trip.

UPR-Mayaguez, a Division II school that is now 0-9, looked more like a rec team that you see down at your local YMCA than a college basketball outfit.

Six of the team’s players were listed at 5-foot-10 or smaller. The squad’s tallest player, Josue Rodriguez, was listed at 6-foot-6, but looked closer to 6-4.

“It was bad,” said J.R. Reynolds, who finished with only nine points. “No disrespect to that team, but for them to score 50 on us … it was just like the other team [Utah] scoring 90 on us.”

Virginia (7-3) actually trailed by as many as eight in the first half. For the game, they shot just 42 percent from the field and committed 19 turnovers. The Cavaliers’ leading scorer, Adrian Joseph, only had 10 points.

The worst part of the defeat was the fact Virginia has probably lost starting big man Ryan Pettinella to a knee injury. Pettinella, the transfer from Pennsylvania, went down in a heap of players in the first half and could be heard screaming throughout the arena (which wasn’t hard since there were only about 38 people in attendance - not counting two guys with mops).

All of this made for a very brief postgame press conference with Virginia coach Dave Leitao.

To say Leitao’s frustration was palpable would be the understatement of the century. Leitao became agitated when he was asked a question about the team’s offensive struggles by radio color commentator Jim Hobgood.

“It’s the third game in a row that you asked me the same question, and I’ll answer it the same way,” Leitao said. “The shots will get better and go in when you play better defense.”

Virginia held UPR-Mayaguez to 34-percent shooting. However, Leaito said his team’s defense was just as bad as it had been in the two previous losses.

“We just played a team that wasn’t as good as the teams that we played the two days before,” he said.

UPR-Mayaguez, which lost to Vanderbilt by 43 in its opening game, was the sharper team from the get-go.

Right off the jumpball, the Tarzans’ Williset Del Valle cruised down the floor for an easy layup. Omar Velasquez and Diego Garcia knocked down 3-pointers, and Pedro Colon crashed the boards for an uncontested put-back.

Before Virginia knew what was happening, it was 10-2.

UVa guard Sean Singletary played his third straight sub-par game. He finished with just seven points on 2-of-13 shooting.

“The only thing I concern myself with Sean is his health,” Leitao said. “He’s still battling getting back to being healthy. I’m sure once he’s better, we’ll get better performances.”

Somehow, Virginia managed to claim a one-point lead going into the half. However, the team’s late surge didn’t pacify Leitao. When the second half began, he had three freshmen on the court - Will Harris, Jamil Tucker and Jerome Meyinsse.

After some improved play - which was highlighted by a couple of baskets from Lars Mikalauskas - Virginia seemed to get its act together. The Cavaliers led by as many as 13.

However, Virginia didn’t finish strong. UVa didn’t score a bucket in the last 4:04 and allowed the Tarzans to score the game’s final six points.

“We tend to play to the level of our competition sometimes, and we can’t do that,” Reynolds said. “We have to get over that.”

Freshman Will Harris was staying positive.

“Sometimes good teams struggle, and we’re struggling right now,” Harris said, “but I’m sure that we’re going to get back to the states, get back to practice and pick it up.

“I’m not worried or flustered by the outcomes, because sometimes in order to succeed you have to fail first. We didn’t play to our abilities, but we’re going to work hard in practice and get it together.”

Added Reynolds: “We need to believe that we’re a great team. Once we start believing we’re a great team, we can stay out of trouble.”

And keep those Internet message boards a little more positive.

Dunks

Pettinella, who had a brace on his left knee following the game, was able to walk on his own power. However, he said he could feel something “ripping” when he fell to the floor. He will have an MRI when he returns to his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. … Reynolds was the lone Cavalier named to the All-Tournament team ... Leitao was also worried about Singletary’s durability. “You play three games in three days,” he said. “That puts a lot of pressure on him.” … Reynolds and Mamadi Diane have suffered from food poisoning the last few days. “A few of our guys didn’t feel well,” Leitao said, “but if you talk to guys on other teams, I’m sure they have their issues, too.” … The last time Virginia’s high scorer had as few as 10 points in a win was back in the 1982 season. Jeff Jones, Tim Mullen and Jim Miller scored 10 apiece in an overtime victory over Wake Forest in the ACC Tournament semifinals. … Virginia’s next game is Dec. 28 against American, where Jones is the head coach.

 

Cavs will get back to basics
By Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
December 22, 2006

GUAYNABO, P.R. - When the plane carrying Virginia’s basketball team takes off today from Luis Munas Marin Airport, the Cavaliers probably shouldn’t look back over this tropical setting.

Their trip to the San Juan Shootout wouldn’t be mistaken for an episode of Fantasy Island. If the Cavs came here looking for paradise, they were certainly disappointed.

No seventh heaven

After getting pounded by Appalachian State and Utah in the first two rounds of this eight-team tournament, Dave Leitao’s team finally snapped its two-game losing streak with a far from impressive 59-52 win over University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez on Thursday.

All the Cavs got for their trouble was claim to seventh place, barely escaping a Division II team with hardly a player over 6-foot-4 on its roster. In fact, when Virginia finally took a 13-12 lead over UPR a little more than seven minutes into the game, it marked only the second time the Cavaliers had owned a lead in the entire three days of basketball.

And if you think that an unimpressive win like this squared things up between Leitao and his players, think again.

“We just played a team that wasn’t as good as the two teams that we played the two days before,” said a testy Leitao, who was clearly unhappy with his players.

On the rocks

No doubt, the Virginia entourage bussed away from Mario Morales Coliseum with a strained relationship between the coach and the players.

Leitao couldn’t understand why his team performed so poorly, particularly on defense, where they displayed a lack of desire. The first two days he kept pounding away at them, holding nothing back. Well, maybe until halftime of the second day, when he realized his ranting wasn’t going to change anything.

The players gave the impression that they would have rather been hanging out at Puerta de Tierra beach or on a sightseeing tour of Old San Juan, or almost anywhere other than a near empty gymnasium for three days.

How this event makes any money is a mystery to this columnist. It’s not televised and there’s little visible ticket sales. There were no more than 50 fans at Thursday’s UVa game and if you removed Leitao’s family, there were even less.

The atmosphere at this arena, about a 25-minute drive from downtown San Juan, would have made a football game at Duke seem like the Rose Bowl. Radio crews at courtside almost spoke in whispers so as not to distract players at the free-throw line. Fans could easily hear - for better or for worse - coaches barking at their players.

What the week boiled down to for Virginia was three days that will either make or break this basketball team. The Cavaliers, who up until taking control of the UPR game, had led for a total of 46 seconds in the first two contests, didn’t resemble the same team that had compiled a 6-1 record prior to jetting to the Caribbean.

Leitao had recognized his team’s lack of defensive prowess beforehand, but even he would have to admit the absence of fire in his squad once it touched down in Puerto Rico.

After a two-day break, they will reassemble for practice back at John Paul Jones Arena on Christmas Day, predictably a practice they aren’t likely to forget.

“I’m sure it will be the hardest practice we’ve even had,” said UVa co-captain J.R. Reynolds, who contributed nine points and eight rebounds in the win. “That will be a special Christmas present for us.”

More likely it will be a run-until-you-puke kind of practice, followed by one of those “Come to Jesus” meetings with Leitao determined to turn his players in an opposite direction and delete Puerto Rico from their memory banks.

“We’ve got to just get back in the gym and believe in one another, that we’ve got each other’s back,” said Reynolds. “And it’s got to start with defense. Once we get that established the rest of our game will be fine.”

That’s what Leitao believes, too, and would rather not wait until Christmas to unwrap the mystery as to why his team lost its desire to play basketball. He would rather be back on the practice floor first thing today.

“If something’s not going right, the last thing you need to do is leave it alone,” Leitao said. “You’ve got to go back after it.

“We’ve got to get back in the gym and we’ve got to get better,” said a coach who knows that Gonzaga, Stanford, North Carolina, Boston College and Maryland loom directly in his team’s future. “I think any coach in a situation where you come off a loss or you come off a bad performance or whatever the case may be, you get back to the things that make you good. For us, we’ll try to build this team the same way we try to build this program, based on some fundamental ideals and we’ve got to get back to them.”

Leitao believes that Virginia’s offense, which was horrible for three days, was directly affected by its defense, which was even worse.

In covering Virginia basketball for the past 25 years, the past three days were the worst this columnist has ever seen a Cavalier team perform, other than 2005 when Pete Gillen’s team basically gave up five minutes into the game and was unmercifully pounded 110-76 by North Carolina. But that was Carolina, not Utah, not Appy State, not a Puerto Rican team that had ‘Colegio’ emblazoned across their jerseys, reminding this writer of John Belushi’s character in “Animal House.” You know, when he wore the sweatshirt that simply read: “College.”

Christopher Columbus once stepped foot on this soil looking for the New World. Leitao left here today hoping to discover how to reverse the fortunes of his basketball team once they arrive in Virginia.

He said he has faced equally challenging circumstances as a coach, but his quest will be to help this team regain its confidence without pushing too hard for fear of losing them. It’s a delicate line he must negotiate and perhaps a few days off might help, even though the coach would rather get after it immediately.

When Reynolds was asked if the short break will help, his opinion was opposite of his coach’s.

“Definitely,” the senior guard said. “We need to get away from everything, our coach, from each other, and kind of relax and evaluate. Like Coach said, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and find out who we are.”

Reynolds admitted the three days had been a stressful situation.

“It’s more on [the players end],” said Reynolds. “That’s the way [Leitao] is going to act ... if we play sorry, then he has a right to try to motivate us and do everything he can in his power to get us playing right. But we just couldn’t [play right] on this trip.”

Leitao believes there’s only one way to get the confidence back and predictably it’s via hard work.

“You know what? We’ll get back in the gym and we’ll assess all those kinds of things,” the coach said. “Confidence is a delicate thing. It comes from repetition and one thing I see is we’re not repeating the same stuff over and over, and so, when you don’t do that your confidence wanes.”

Reynolds admitted the team is down and that most every team in the country goes through a troubling stretch at some point of the season.

“It’s about how you respond,” Reynolds said. “We got knocked down the first two games and we kind of responded in this game. We know what we have to do. Now, we just have to do it.”

Christmas Day is looming. Merry Christmas.

 

Hallick backs out of verbal commitment
From staff reports / Charlottesville Daily Progress
December 22, 2006

Knowing that two expected starters on Virginia’s offensive line - RG Ian-Yates Cunningham and C Jordy Lipsey - are set to graduate after the 2007 season, Al Groh and his coaching staff have placed a focus on piecing together the future of that unit in the upcoming recruiting class.

That puzzle got a little more confusing over the past few days.
Brad Hallick, a three-star offensive line commitment for Virginia, announced on Thursday that he was the first commitment for new Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh. Hallick had given a verbal commitment to UVa in May.

According to published Internet reports, Hallick’s decision was made after his scholarship offer was pulled by Virginia’s coaching staff. The staff had reason for their decision – after giving his verbal commitment, Hallick elected to take official visits to numerous schools, including Michigan, Penn State and Stanford.

Virginia, now boasting 22 commitments, remains in the hunt for numerous offensive linemen such as Anthony Castonzo, John Elliott, Lamar Milstead, Richard Muldrow and Mitchell Schwartz.

 

Cavaliers end slide at tourney
Virginia trails winless P.R.-Mayaguez in the second half, but rallies for a San Juan Shootout win.
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico -- The University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, a winless Division II program, held a second-half lead against Virginia on Thursday before the Cavaliers rallied for a 59-52 victory at the Mario Morales Coliseum.

Nobody had more than 10 points for Virginia (7-3) but the Cavaliers stepped up defensively in the seventh-place game at the San Juan Shootout.

"It's about time," senior guard J.R. Reynolds said in a postgame radio interview.

After watching Appalachian State and Utah shoot 62 and 54 percent, respectively, Virginia limited the Bulldogs (0-9) to 34-percent shooting from the field.

At 42 percent, Virginia wasn't much better and Sean Singletary's shooting slump only got worse.

Singletary, a first-team All-ACC selection last year as a sophomore, connected on only 2-of-13 shots from the field, leaving him at 8-for-36 (22 percent) for the tournament. Singletary was 1-for-12 on 3-pointers over three games.

"The only thing that concerns me is his health," UVa coach Dave Leitao said, indicating that Singletary is still feeling some aftereffects of off-season hip surgery. "He's still battling."

For the third game in a row, the Cavaliers' opponent jumped to an early lead, this time at 10-4. Moreover, just as soon as Ryan Pettinella scored his -- and Virginia's -- second basket, he was helped from the floor with a knee injury that kept him sidelined for the rest of the afternoon.

UVa's other starting post player, Jason Cain, was so ineffective that he played only 4 minutes.

Getting most of the minutes in the post were freshman Jerome Meyinsse, who had five points and four rebounds in 18 minutes, and Lauris Mikalauskas, who had a season-high eight points in 14 minutes.

Mikalauskas had three straight field goals for the Cavaliers during a stretch of the second half when Virginia stretched a 43-38 lead to 56-43.

The Bulldogs, seven-point losers to Northwestern one day earlier, led 30-29 after scoring first to start the second half.

Mayaguez had ended the first half on a 6-0 run, hitting a 3-point buzzer-beater after Virginia shot too early -- and missed -- on the previous possession.

The Cavaliers also failed to distinguish themselves at the end of the game, when Reynolds and Singletary both missed the front end of one-and-ones in the final minute.

Leitao used the same lineup that had been starting but inserted junior Adrian Joseph and Will Harris in place of Cain and Mamadi Diane to start the second half.

Diane did not play in the second half until the closing minutes.

UVa's three able-bodied scholarship freshmen each played at least 18 minutes and walk-on Andy Burns made a cameo first-half appearance, but Leitao said that any determination on future playing time would be made in practice prior to the Cavaliers' Dec. 28 home game with American.

The Cavaliers' holiday break will end when the players convene again Christmas Day.

"We'll get our Christmas present when we get back," Reynolds said with a slight chuckle. "I do think this was a great learning experience. It was kind of frustrating, but I'll be glad to get back to work."

 

Giving up on Cain not the UVa answer
Transfers finding success elsewhere
By Doug Doughty

If the first thing Dave Leitao did after an ejection Saturday was issue an apology to school president John Casteen and athletic director Craig Littlepage, what’s he going to do when he gets back from Puerto Rico?

I’m not suggesting that Leitao needs to apologize for his team’s performance in the San Juan Shootout, but Virginia fans have to be much more disturbed by the team’s play than about Leitao’s dealings with the refs.

If I’ve been consistent about one thing in my 30 years at The Roanoke Times, it’s in the philosophy of “When in doubt, blame the coach.” Either Virginia doesn’t have good players or it has good players who aren’t playing well. I’d be more inclined to believe the latter, but, if it’s the former, then who recruited them?

In Virginia’s case, most of the players were recruited by Leitao’s predecessor, Pete Gillen, but you could make the case that most of the best players are Gillen recruits. The Cavaliers haven’t gotten much out of Leitao’s ballyhooed first full recruiting class, but it’s still early.

It’s basically the same Virginia team, with added experience and depth, that went 7-9 in the ACC last year and already has beaten Arizona this year, albeit at the John Paul Jones Arena, the only place where the Cavaliers possibly could erase a 19-point lead. Virginia also came from behind in the second half to win its ACC opener against visiting North Carolina State.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Virginia’s reliance on its backcourt and that doesn’t bode well when Sean Singletary shoots 22.2 percent from the field, as he did in three games (8-for-36) in Puerto Rico. The only other player capable of carrying the team is J.R. Reynolds, who averaged 18 points for the tournament but was only 15-of-41 from the field.

No one expected post man Jason Cain to carry the team, but here’s a guy who was UVa’s best player during the first 2-3 weeks of preseason practice. Leitao said it, Reynolds said it, Singletary said it.

What’s the deal with Cain playing four minutes Thursday in a 59-52 victory over Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and never taking off his sweats in the second half? It was Cain’s shortest stint in the last 49 games.

Cain is UVa’s most gifted post player. He’s the Cavaliers’ best rebounder, he can run the floor, he can block shots, he has good free-throw mechanics, he even has range out to the 3-point line. He’s not the most consistent guy, nor is he the most confident guy. But, when you play him for four minutes, you risk losing him.

Lauris Mikalauskas got on the floor for 18 and 14 minutes in UVa’s final two tournament games and you would have thought he had been buried after three consecutive three-minute outings. So, maybe there is hope for Cain. I don’t think the Cavs are going anywhere without him.

WASN’T IT INTERESTING, four hours after the seventh-place game between Virginia and Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, that two former Virginia players faced off in the championship game of the San Juan Shootout?

Derrick Byars is in his second year as a starter for Vanderbilt, where he is second on the team in scoring with 14.5 points per game, but we need to be fair. Byars would have completed his UVa eligibility by now; plus, he left Charlottesville more than one year before Leitao’s arrival.

On the other hand, there are three other players currently on Division I rosters who would be eligible for Virginia this season – Donte Minter, recently activated by San Juan finalist Appalachian State; Gary Forbes, who is starting at Massachusetts, and T.J. Bannister, who is sitting out a redshirt season at Liberty.

Media gadfly and notorious second-guesser Jeff White charged this week that I never liked Minter or Bannister, but that’s not entirely true. I didn’t like the way that Minter shot every time he touched the ball and I never thought that Bannister was starting material, but they both could have helped this Virginia team in smaller doses.

Almost surely, White would remind me that Forbes only left UVa in the fall of 2005 because he was academically ineligible, but I’ve always felt that somebody dropped the ball by not staying on top of Forbes during the transition from Gillen to Leitao in the summer of 2005.

Forbes has started 10 of 11 games for UMass (9-2) and is playing more than 30 minutes per game. He is third on the team in scoring (11.5) and third in rebounding (5.3).

Forbes has some of the same drawbacks he always had – a low shooting percentage (37.8) and a bad assist-turnover ratio (35-31) – but I thought he might have helped the Cavaliers get the 2-3 wins they needed for an NCAA Tournament bid last year and he might be helping them now.

The only current player whose size and ability to attack the basket resembles Forbes’ is injured freshman Solomon Tat, but that’s another story.

To me, it all comes back to the recent trend of Division I coaches to recruit over players, taking commitments that clearly would place them over the 13-scholarship limit. Understood in that concept is the reality of players transferring, becoming academically or otherwise disappearing (Sam Warren), but sometimes the best answer to a problem is sitting on your own bench.