The first 20 seconds in Louisville showed exactly what kind of day it was going to be for the Virginia basketball team in a packed KFC Yum! Center.
The Cardinals won the tip, but Dai Dai Ames forced a quick turnover to get UVA on the break. With Jacob Cofie trailing behind him, Ames went up for a contested layup, but missed and Cofie was unable to follow up the miss. On the other end Elijah Saunders fouled Louisville
sharpshooter Reyne Smith to give the career 89.5% free throw shooter three shots at the charity stripe.
The opening sequence set the tone as Louisville cruised to a season sweep of Virginia with an 81-67 win, the first consecutive victories for the Cardinals over UVA since 1989 and 1990.
“Today we played hard, we just didn’t finish our executions,” UVA interim coach Ron Sanchez told the Virginia Sports Radio Network after the loss.
Saunders led Virginia with 19 points and 10 rebounds, his second career double-double with both coming in a Cavalier uniform. Meanwhile, Isaac McKneely finally ended his drought from distance hitting a three late in the second half after missing 12 straight going back to the Stanford game. He finished with 10 points on 4-9 shooting.
For Louisville, Smith continued his good play against the Cavaliers this season with 19 points on 4-11 shooting from 3-point range. That led four double-digit scorers for the Cardinals as Terrence Edwards Jr., J'Vonne Hadley, and James Scott contributed 16, 13, and 12 respectively.
The loss drops Virginia to 8-10 (1-6 ACC) on the season for the program’s worst start since 2008-09, Dave Leitao’s final year in Charlottesville. UVA also picked up its 10th loss on the season, the first time since the 1969-70 season under coach William J. Gibson that the Cavaliers have had double-digit losses by mid-January.
Here are three takeaways from Virginia’s fifth straight defeat.
Louisville Re-energized, Virginia Going Through The Motions
Trips to the KFC Yum! Center in the last decade have been memorable for Virginia. Clinching ACC regular season titles, De’Andre Hunter’s buzzer-beater, and even the 2019 NCAA Sweet 16 and Elite 8 are among the memories from the building. The arena was even dubbed by some fans as "JPJ West."
The last two seasons only brought misery for Louisville fans during the 12-52, two-year reign of Kenny Payne as head coach. But Saturday was a reminder how quickly the energy inside an arena can change with the right coaching hire. In his first season at Louisville, former College of Charleston coach Pat Kelsey
already has accumulated 14 wins in 19 games, eclipsing Payne in such a short time. The KFC Yum! Center fans delivered on their end against Virginia with 18,233 fans in attendance for one of their highest marks in the last couple of years.
The Cardinals looked the part of the more energized team on Saturday with the Hoos in town. Kelsey’s team defended aggressively, forced 15 turnovers, grabbed 10 offensive rebounds, and played off a lively crowd. For its part, Virginia actually shot better than Louisville (47.1% to 43.3%), but on fewer
attempts and the Cardinals lived at the free throw line by making 23 of 27 versus 19 total attempts for Sanchez’s group.
When asked postgame by Jimmy Miller of the Virginia Sports Radio Network about the team’s energy and effort, Sanchez said it comes in different levels.
"I don’t think this team has ever quit, they always play hard," Sanchez said. "What we’re trying to do is go beyond that. Playing hard with good, smart execution, playing hard with your wits about you. When you can play hard when you’re tired, that’s a true maturity in an athlete."
Starting with a Virginia loss to Louisville at John Paul Jones Arena on Jan. 4, the Cavaliers have dropped five straight between a California roadtrip and a last-second buzzer-beater defeat to SMU just a few days ago and then the sweep completion by the Cards. The energy level waned for the Hoos again Saturday, similar to their losses to Cal and Stanford.
Louisville’s first made field goal came after the Virginia defense made back-to-back stops, but kept letting the Cardinals keep the possession alive with offensive rebounds. The trouble on the boards remains a consistent theme this season as the Cavaliers rank 179th nationally in offensive rebounds allowed. It continued to rear its ugly head as the game progressed. Louisville's first points of the second half came from offensive rebounds too.
“We knew they had the first possession, we said in the locker room lets get the first stop,” Sanchez said. “We got the stop and then we didn’t get the rebound. The next possession we got the next stop, we got the switch that we wanted and then a point guard grabbed the offensive rebound.”
In this day and age of college basketball, a program’s energy can rekindle quickly like Louisville has under Pat Kelsey, but it can also drop off quickly like this season for Virginia.
Youth Movement
One of the few bright spots this year in what is turning into one of the darker seasons of Virginia basketball are the flashes from younger players.
True freshmen Jacob Cofie and Ishan Sharma have had plenty of moments, while Blake Buchanan has re-emerged in the last two games against SMU and Louisville to show what coaches and fans were hoping to see from day one for the sophomore.
Saturday showed Sanchez might be starting to lean more into a youth movement at Virginia with results not improving. With one of the ACC’s youngest rosters already and inexperience tossed out by Sanchez as one of the team’s biggest crutches, a bigger youth movement may seem out of place, but it might be all that is left.
Against Louisville, Sanchez turned more towards younger players for bigger minutes with Ishan Sharma (23 minutes), Dai Dai Ames (28) and Anthony Robinson (14) seeing their roles extended, while more experienced options like Taine Murray and TJ Power sat on the bench until the closing minute. Minutes have fluctuated throughout the season, even Cofie only played 10 minutes against the Cardinals, but this seemed like a shift for Sanchez.
“Anthony Robinson gave us a tremendous lift off the bench, I think Ishan made a couple of shots today so that’s another one,” Sanchez said.
Robinson’s career-high 14 minutes were the most eye-catching as the redshirt freshman has struggled to see playing time this season, even when it is clear the Cavaliers could use a 6’10”, 250-pound big man on the court. Sanchez said the plan heading into the Louisville game was to get Robinson more minutes moving forward.
For his credit Robinson took advantage of these minutes with a career-high 7 points and 5 rebounds and was the only Cavalier with a positive plus/minus in double-digit minutes.
“It’s just natural talent," Sanchez said about Robinson. "He’s got physical talents where he can run and jump and make some plays at the rim. His growth is really understanding all the movements that are going on at the same time. This is really new for him where he has to guard multiple actions and do so many different things. He’s growing in that space. We’re trying to find a way to give him more time here to allow him to grow and help us. He did a fantastic job.”
Sharma also continued his recent run, making multiple 3-pointers for the fourth straight game for 6 points. Buchanan brought energy off the bench again after his first career double-double against SMU, scoring 9 points and grabbing 5 rebounds.
Playing young players is a double-edged sword in today’s game because of the transfer portal. An uptick in minutes and productivity could lead to better results or at least player development, but it could also lead to more opportunities in the portal, especially after a coaching change. A flip of the coin, but with no NCAA Tournament to play for and a program already caught in transition, there is little risk on the other side of the coin.
Eyes Shift To A Different Tournament Race
For the last decade, mid-January was typically the point some fans would start looking at bracketology more regularly, but this year Virginia fans have little reason to give even a cursory look. While the NCAA Tournament hopes are long over, there is a different tournament the Hoos find themselves squarely on the bubble for: the ACC Tournament.
With the additions of Cal, SMU, and Stanford, only the top 15 teams will make the trip to Charlotte for this year’s ACC Tournament.
After winning six ACC regular season titles in the last decade, just making the conference’s tournament never seemed like a realistic concern for Virginia until now. The Cavaliers are 1-6 in the conference and sit second-to-last in the ACC standings, only above 0-7 Miami. Boston College was 1-5 entering the weekend, while NC State, Georgia Tech, Cal, and Notre Dame all have just 2 wins each.
The thought of missing the ACC Tournament is something on the mind of coaches and players as well.
“These next three games are really important for us in order to make the ACC Tournament,” UVA forward Elijah Saunders said.
Those next three games Saunders references come against fellow ACC bottom dwellers. Boston College (Jan. 21) and Notre Dame (Jan. 25) come to JPJ, while the Hoos play at Miami (Jan. 29) for that stretch. Whoever emerges from that ACC scrapheap would feel better about chances of making it to Charlotte in what is turning out to feel like a European soccer style relegation battle (shout out Mamadi Diakite, who joked about ACC relegation in 2020).
The work to avoid being left out of the ACC Tournament will likely have to come soon with the tougher ACC games against Pitt, Clemson, UNC, Wake Forest, and Duke coming once the calendar flips to February.
“Just keep our heads up,” Saunders said. “It’s a long season left and we’ve got some games that we have to win coming up here down the stretch going into February.”
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