For many seasons, these tournaments around Thanksgiving time ended with the Virginia basketball team lifting a trophy. Over the last two seasons, however, the Hoos have been left trying to lift their spirits instead.
Last season, UVA opened the Fort Myers Tip-Off event with a lopsided loss to Wisconsin, 65-41. At the Baha Mar Hoops Bahamas Championship this week, the Cavaliers followed their 64-42 loss to Tennessee on Thursday night with an 80-55 drubbing by St. John's. The rough two days in the Bahamas dropped Virginia to 3-2 on the season under interim coach Ron Sanchez.
"This was a great test. You go up against two of the top teams in the country, some of your warts are going to show," Sanchez said. "Obviously, those two teams are top teams in the country not only because they're athletic and physical, but because they're mature and older as well. Our team is not as mature, not as old. We're a young group. That's OK. What we realize, we have to continue to focus on eliminating losing. For us, that means getting back in transition and eliminating easy baskets. We've got to do a much better job on the glass. And the third is we've got to take care of the basketball a lot better. ... We have to do a much better job in those three areas. That's the one thing that was exposed in this tournament to me."
Those areas certainly were a problem in the two losses. Over the course of the two days, UVA committed 34 turnovers and allowed 29 offensive rebounds that led to a combined 80 points. That's a quick explanation for how the Hoos fell by such large margins. It marked the first time the program lost back-to-back games by 22 or more points since 2007-08 when Xavier and Duke handed out losses of 38 and 22 points.
Friday's game with St. John's started to fall apart under a flurry of dunks and 3-pointers in transition in the first 10 minutes. Kadary Richmond's dunk at the 15:21 mark gave the Red Storm the lead for good, while Sadiku Ibine Ayo and Simeon Wilcher added three straight jumpers for 8 more points that made it 16-7. Virginia spent the rest of the contest trying to stay attached on the scoreboard, but they were never closer than 3 points again and St. John's had a double-digit lead for the final 27:14. That included a 39-26 halftime advantage.
In other words, unlike the Tennessee game where UVA at least remained somewhat close into the second half, this game spiraled quickly. The message at intermission was to try to split the game into small segments and rally, but the Hoos simply didn't have the firepower to get that done.
"The main message was there's not a 13-point basket, we're going to have to continue fight and win the four-minute games. Each four-minute segment, we were trying to win," UVA junior guard Isaac McKneely said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. "But St. John's, credit to them. They're a really good basketball team. They were hitting shots, played really good defense, just all around a really good team. They just took it to us. They out-toughed us and everything."
With that as the overview, some takeaways from a disatrous game two in the Bahamas.
Turnovers And Uncomfortable Offense
Virginia finished the loss to St. John's with some tough numbers in the box score. The Hoos shot 18-45 (40.0%) from the floor and 10-18 (55.6%) from the free throw line. They committed 16 turnovers, which on a day with 60 possessions came out as a 26.7% turnover rate. UVA managed .917 points per possession.
Individually, Elijah Saunders and McKneely had better outings than a day earlier when each made only one shot. Saunders went 4-7 shooting for 12 points and 3 rebounds. McKneely made 3 of 9 shots, all 3's, plus a free throw to record 10 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, and 4 turnovers. Andrew Rohde added 11 points while going 2-2 from 3-point range, while Blake Buchanan had 6 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 assists. Saunders hit a 3-point shot and scored around the rim, something Sanchez said would be important as this season unfolds.
"Elijah's three-level scoring is really important to the future of this season," Sanchez said. "His ability to shoot the three, to put the ball on the ground like he did today, and also take advantage of guys in the post whether it's a bigger guy or a smaller guy is huge for us. Because if not, we'll end up doing what you said which is taking a bunch of 3-point shots. Elijah's the one guy that I feel can score on the left block and the right block and we've got to find more ways to get him more touches down there."
The last part of that comment really an be expanded to the entire offense - the Hoos need to find more ways to be successful on offense. Through five games this season, the only truly successful looking performance came in last week's win against Villanova when Virginia shot 51.0% and made 14 3-pointers. Otherwise, the players seem to go through long stretches unable to create rhythm or to establish a plan of attack. Some of that was to be expected as the program decided to shift to a different set of schemes this season, but the Baha Mar tourney exposed the growing pains currently underway. Time will tell if this personnel will be able to turn that around.
The St. John's game, meanwhile, gave a further glimpse at some of the struggles. Virginia had some success driving to the baseline and finding a cutter in the middle early, but the Storm also adjusted and created turnovers out of those passes on numerous possessions too. Otherwise, some high-low looks got the ball down low for some baskets but there were also situations where the pass recipient was stuck without much room to operate. Beyond those two concepts that sometimes worked, UVA didn't find a lot of success with ball screens or hand-offs. Those two elements are a much bigger part of this base offense so that's one reason things bogged down.
Without those actions creating an advantage or forcing the help defense to slide repeatedly, it was not only difficult to score, it also left players vulnerable to turnovers. There were quite a few situations in this game where St. John's knocked the ball free and Virginia was not strong with possession. Among the Hoos' 16 turnovers, St. John's recorded 13 steals.
"The whole point of this trip was to see where we're at," McKneely said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. "Tennessee and St. John's, both really good competition, they're going to be really good teams in March. To work on, we're going to have to take care of the ball better and we're going to have to get better at rebounding because we got out-toughed on the offensive glass and they kept taking our ball and a lot of that is on me, I had a lot of turnovers."
Virginia Falls Apart With Transition Defense
Those turnovers spilled over to the defensive end where the Red Storm tallied 18 points off turnovers. Many of those came in transition or against unsettled defense. So while the stats tagged St. John's with 11 fastbreak points, there were many possessions where UVA was technically back on defense, but nowhere close to ready to defend. Unlike the level the best Virginia teams reach with finding matchups and stopping early threats, the Hoos had trouble Thursday night locating players. That led to some lob dunks, to some rough closeouts that got exposed with quick drives, and to some wide open 3-point attempts.
Whether a result of turnovers or not, it resembled some past clunkers in the transition department when teams like Washington, North Carolina, NC State, or others just never let the Wahoos get settled on defense. That has not been a common sight over the years so Friday's issues were all the more glaring as a result.
Statistically, the Cavaliers managed just 20 defensive rebound while allowing 11 offensive rebounds that led to 13 second chance points. The Red Storm shot 32-61 (52.5%) overall, 10-24 (41.7%) from 3-point range, and committed just 7 turnovers. They registered 19 assists on 32 made baskets. They scored 1.356 points per possession. When you slice it up, St. John's piled up 30 points from 3-point land but also scored 40 points in the paint. That's a sign of little resistance from the defense.
None of those stats were a result of a single player getting hot either. In fact, 8 of 11 St. John's players that saw action shot 50% or better in the game. That included RJ Luis Jr., who had 18 points on 7-14 shooting, Kadary Richmond, who had 12 on 6-9 shooting, and Deivon Smith, who had 10 points on 4-6 shooting.
How Will The Hoos Respond?
In the end, the two days in the Bahamas clearly exposed some of the flaws for this team. Virginia had trouble rebounding and defending, particularly some 3-point opportunities that were under no stress. On offense, creating paint touches or gaining advantages took a lot of effort. Generally, scoring always seemed difficult and even when the Hoos looked for easy chances, they ended up empty - take a couple of early examples of pushing the ball to the basket in transition against St. John's, only to be denied or blocked at the rim.
Physical play was bothersome and a contributor to many of those challenges on both sides of the ball. That certainly helped cause some of the turnovers against the Storm. And there's no doubt that it played into the rebounding numbers.
That brings Virginia back to Charlottesville with a lot of areas to address. The looming question, of course, is how will these players respond? UVA has faced some sluggish games early in the season before, but still found a way to be more competitive down the road and in conference play. While many of the current assistant coaches were around for those teams' improvements, it's different now with a different head coach. Throw two blowout losses into the mix and it can be a tricky situation for a roster full of newcomers and incoming transfers.
"How they're going to handle it is TBD. I haven't had a chance to really visit with them yet," Sanchez said. "This is part of the journey. One thing I told them is that it's a long season and the one thing that we did here is we learned a lot about ourselves. The question is how are going to use that knowledge. Are we going to grow or are we going to wallow in it?"
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