In a game most relevant for the race to not get left out of the ACC Tournament, the Virginia basketball team showed maybe there is a little separation between the teams at the bottom of the ACC with a dominant 74-56 win over Boston College.
The victory ended a five-game losing streak for the Cavaliers, the program’s worst since 2010, and gave interim coach Ron Sanchez and company their first win of 2025. Both Boston College and Virginia entered the game 1-6 in ACC play and sitting in the danger spot of missing the ACC Tournament, which will only take the top 15 out of 18 teams in the conference this season.
"Winning is hard," Sanchez said postgame. "Anybody that takes winning for granted has either never worn a uniform or been on the sideline or has not been part of a team. Winning is hard, everybody wants to win, so it’s nice to get off that slide and hopefully start a streak. Every streak starts with one."
Playing inside the much friendlier confines of John Paul Jones Arena, the Cavaliers got out to a rare comfortable lead by halftime Tuesday night. Virginia shot 9-15 from 3-point range and scored 41 points before the break, the most in a first half this season for the Hoos and the most in any half over their last five games.
Isaac McKneely led all scorers with 21 points on 6-9 shooting from distance, while Virginia also received double-digit scoring efforts from Andrew Rohde with 16 and Elijah Saunders with 10. Fred Payne came off the bench for Boston College to lead the Eagles with 17 points, while UVA held leading scorer Donald Hand Jr. to just 5 points on 2 shots in 22 minutes before he was ejected from the game in the second half.
The victory sets Virginia up with a chance to run off a few wins with upcoming games against Notre Dame, at Miami, and against Virginia Tech, all teams in the lower half of the ACC standings as well.
"The message going into this game was get this one and this can carry us into the next few games," McKneely said. "Hopefully we can get a little win streak going because we definitely need it."
Here are three takeaways from the first win of the new year for the Cavaliers.
Isaac McKneely Finds His Groove
The last two weeks might go down as one of the roughest patches in Isaac McKneely’s Virginia career.
One of the best shooters in program history, currently ranking second all-time in career 3-point percentage behind Kyle Guy, McKneely had made 7 of his last 26 3's (26.9%) over the last four games. But throughout his slump, which included 12 straight misses from deep at one point, Sanchez never said much to his leading scorer other than keep shooting.
"IMac has missed shots, but he's taken really good shots, I kind of call them IMac shots when he's coming off a pin down, his feet are set, and he's shooting it," Sanchez said. "The only thing that we encourage him to do is not to pass those up. I tell him I don't care how many you've missed, if you're open IMac, shoot the ball."
The open and at times in-rhythm 3-pointers were bound to start falling eventually and Tuesday night was that night for McKneely. He finished with 21 points and tied a career-high with 6 made 3's against Boston College. The type of shots were the same and even against a struggling Boston College defense the amount of space looked the same as previous games, but McKneely showed little hesitation finding his shots. The junior said he has kept his routine the same throughout the cold streak because of his tedious nature, maybe adding a few extra shots at the end of workouts.
"It's a blessing to have a coach that believes in you," McKneely said. "The past couple games haven't been my best games obviously, but as a shooter it was great to see a few go down today. I just had that next shot mentality of no matter what if I miss a few in a row I'm still going to hunt the shot with extreme confidence just because I believe in myself, I believe in the work I put in."
Roger Ayers: The JPJ Bouncer
When long-time ACC official and holder of thousands of airline miles Roger Ayers took the mic in the second half, he was playful over the JPJ speakers.
"Believe it or not this play is under review as well," Ayers said as officials went into their second review in about 40 seconds.
Ayers was not playing around though. In a short span of time and on two different plays, Ayers ejected both Boston College leading scorer Donald Hand Jr. and Virginia's Elijah Saunders with Flagrant Two foul calls.
"I didn't see much there either, but they made the calls," Boston College coach Earl Grant said. "We had a high-level official leading the charge in Roger Ayers, so usually he gets it right most of the time."
The first came with 6:31 in the second half when Hand Jr. pushed off on Andrew Rohde, making contact with Rohde's face. The review took so long that in addition to the officials' review timeout, the game went into the media timeout early. The result of the long pause in play was Hand Jr. was ejected from the game.
For most it might have been just another game between two struggling ACC teams, but Hand Jr. is a Virginia native and his dad, Donald Hand, is a former standout player in the UVA program.
"I didn't see anything malicious, Donald Hand Jr. doesn't have a malicious bone in his body, so I know it wasn't anything that he was trying to do," Grant said. "It's unfortunate, he's from Virginia, his dad played here, so unfortunate that he couldn't play that game."
Less than a minute later, Ayers was back at the monitor after Elijah Saunders elbowed Boston College's Chas Kelley on a box out. This review was much shorter and Sanchez believes could have been Ayers staying consistent.
"I'm going to assume that because they ejected one player, even if the other one was close, they were going to make the same call, which I respect," Sanchez said. "I think all coaches just want things to be called the same way both sides."
Andrew Rohde Growing In Point Guard Role
As soon as Andrew Rohde grabs a box score after games, he immediately scrolls to near the very end searching for the turnovers category.
"Definitely something I've been trying to work on is cutting my turnovers down this year," Rohde said.
The former St. Thomas transfer was thrust into being Virginia's primary ball-handler this season after playing mainly in an off-ball role his first season in the program. The results have been up and down with Rohde ranking 16th in the ACC in assist/turnover ratio at 1.7 on the season.
Early in the year more athletic teams swarmed Rohde, who had nine multi-turnover games in his first 10 games. But as of late Rohde has turned a corner in his ball security. In his last eight games, Rohde has 38 assists to just 7 turnovers. This was highlighted by Tuesday's performance against Boston College as he posted 16 points, 6 assists, and 4 rebounds with 0 turnovers. In that recent eight-game stretch, Rohde has a 5.4 assist/turnover ratio.
"Andrew is obviously the tip of the sword there because he handles the ball so much for us," Sanchez said. "Between him and Dai Dai [Ames], they have to carry that weight the most. Really proud of his attention to that. It's something we've sat down and talked about and discussed. It's something that he's trying to emphasize and has intentions to be really good with the ball and to have this kind of stat line today it's a reward for the hard work he's putting in in practice."
Strong assist/turnover ratios have been calling cards for Virginia point guards in recent years, including Reece Beekman who Rohde considers as a mentor as both are Milwaukee natives. Against the Eagles, Rohde displayed a level of calmness with the ball similar to his role model and also displayed a high-level of passing IQ.
Over the last couple games, Rohde has developed a nice two-man game with the bigs like Blake Buchanan and Elijah Saunders on screens and dribble handoffs which leads to open looks for them or himself with 4 of his 6 assists going to bigs on Tuesday. McKneely also proves to be a beneficiary because of the accuracy and vision of Rohde.
"When he comes off ball screens he sees everything, he sees the tag, he sees the help off the weak side, he just sees the floor really well," McKneely said. "As a shooter I love this because he puts the ball right in my chest and all I have to do is just go up and shoot it."
While Rohde was thrust into the role, he has settled into being Virginia's main creator offensively as the year has progressed.
"Definitely just game by game, just building that experience and getting that growth every time," Rohde said.
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