After starting the season with some struggles outside of Charlottesville, the Virginia basketball team has uncovered a little road magic over the last month. The Cavaliers got rolling early and won 83-75 at Wake Forest on Wednesday night for their latest successful trip.
That marked the Hoos' fourth road win since Jan. 29, a stretch where they've gone 4-1 in ACC road games. It started with an 82-71 win at Miami and UVA also prevailed at Pittsburgh 73-57 and at Virginia Tech 73-70 prior to the victory at Wake. The one road loss in this span came at North Carolina this past Saturday.
The peformance extended some recent success for Virginia (14-14, 7-10 ACC) in Winston-Salem. UVA has won six of the last seven games between the teams at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
"It's hard to win here and that's a credit to [Coach Steve Forbes] and his program and the quality of basketball his team plays," Virginia interim coach Ron Sanchez said. "Today we played really well and we earned a road win."
A fast start helped ignite a strong first half for the Wahoos as they scored 44 points for their highest scoring half of the season. They scored points on 7 of the first 10 possessions and went on to shoot a blistering 63.0% in the first half. That broke down as 17-27 shooting with 6-11 from 3-point range (54.5%) while six players posted at least 4 points. The Cavaliers scored on 63.3% of their possessions in the first half to the tune of 1.467 points per possession.
The final 3:30 of the first half proved crucial as UVA expanded a 5-point lead into a double-digit advantage by intermission. Virginia made 5 straight attempts, all jumpers, as Andrew Rohde, Isaac McKneely twice, Dai Dai Ames, and Jacob Cofie delivered those big shots. That stretched the lead to 44-33 and UVA parlayed that cushion into enough to win. Wake climbed as close as 2 points in the second half, but never fully rallied from that late first-half flurry.
"I think getting started well offensively definitely helps," Sanchez said. "These offensive starts kind of ignite your defense and right now I think our offense played really well today. We took care of the basketball. I think we had 8 turnovers, a couple of those were moving screens. ... The way we're taking care of the ball definitely helps our offense as well. Making shots is really important. Just really happy that the guys started the way we did and that we ended it the way we did today."
Here are some more takeaways from the Virginia win at Wake Forest.
The 3's The Thing
The Hoos fired away from 3-point range in Winston-Salem and it paid off in a big way. It may have been the decisive factor as UVA went 10-22 shooting from 3 (45.5%), while Wake went 2-14 shooting from 3 (14.0%). That's a +24 advantage in the points column from downtown.
The hot shooting night ran contrary to the season-long numbers against the Demon Deacons. They entered the game leading the ACC and ranked No. 26 nationally in 3-point percentage defense at 30.4% allowed. On the other hand, it's one of Virginia's best offensive options as the team entered the game No. 34 nationally by shooting 37.3% from 3-point range. The Cavaliers clearly won the strength on strength battle.
It wasn't one hot stretch either. UVA had it going throughout from varying sources as five different players hit at least one and three players hit multiple triples. Elijah Saunders made the first 3-pointer at the 18:16 mark of the second half, while McKneely knocked down the last one with 6:00 remaining in the game.
That final one capped an incredible performance from McKneely. He poured in 27 points on 10-14 shooting overall, which included a 4-7 shooting effort from beyond the arc. That's his seventh game with at least 20 points and a season high. He has reached double figures in 10 of the last 11 games while averaging 18.0 points in that span. He has made multiple 3's in 21 of UVA's 28 games.
All of that has been with defenses keying on him.
"I-Mac's ability to stretch the floor and end a drought - we had a couple of possessions there where they cut the lead down and we drew a couple of actions for him and he delivered to give us some separation," Sanchez said. "To be able to do that as a marked man on the scouting report is really impressive. So when he's going, our job is to make sure that we continue to find him and feed him and let him kind of carry the offensive load."
Andrew Rohde was the third Wahoo with multiple 3's in the game as he made 2 of 4 attempts. A pair of long-range jumpers from Taine Murray and Ames came at critical times to complete the 3-point parade. For Murray, he canned a corner 3 at the 10:00 mark of the second half, which helped settle things when Wake Forest made a push. For Ames, his only 3 of the night closed the aforementioned burst to end the first half. He created space with the dribble, stepped back, and drained the shot with 5 seconds left that gave UVA that key 44-33 lead.
"One of them was a one-on-one individual play by Dai Dai to end the half, which was fantastic for him," Sanchez said. "He's done that a couple of different times when we put the ball in his hands and he made the right decision."
Two Zones
Ultimately, neither team did much defensively to slow down the other. Both shot 56.0% for the game and both took 20 free throw attempts. While UVA hammered away from outside, Wake attacked the basket and scored 52 points in the paint. That's the most given up in that category this season by Virginia.
With stops being scarce, both teams turned to a 1-3-1 zone at times during the game.
Virginia didn't run it often, pulling it out of the hat late in both halves in particular. The end of the first half came in a big spot, though. McKneely had just made a 3-pointer with 39 seconds remaining when UVA called its use-it-or-lose-it timeout to set up the zone. Wake's Hunter Sallis drove to the baseline against the look, but missed the pull-up jumper and that set the stage for Ames' 3-pointer and the Hoos' double-digit lead.
The visitors needed that little extra margin, in part because of the Demon Deacons' zone move. Unable to get stops, the hosts fell behind by 14 points at the 18:38 mark of the second half. After Ty-Laur Johnson scored a basket plus an and-one free throw to cut it back to 11 a few moments later, Forbes went to the zone. That produced a shot clock violation and Virginia produced just 6 points over the next 6 minutes. During that span, Wake whittled the margin down to 5 points.
Sharing The Load
While McKneely's big night provided a big part of the story, Virginia got contributions from multiple spots in the win. Four players scored in double figures and six had at least 8 points.
The three players joining McKneely with double digits combined for 39 points on 12-21 shooting (57.1%). Ames posted 14 points on 5-11 shooting with 3 assists, and 2 steals. He has registered 10+ points in seven straight games. Rohde added 13 points on 5-8 shooting with 4 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals. He has hit double figures in 12 games this season.
The third member of the trio turned out to be Jacob Cofie, who tallied 12 points on 2-2 shooting with 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 block, and 1 steal. He made 8 of 10 free throws to generate most of his scoring output. It's the ninth time this season for him to crack the double-digit barrier, but the first since Jan. 25 against Notre Dame. That came on a night where Anthony Robinson was unavailable (foot injury).
Two other Wahoos almost got there too. Murray finished with 9 points on 4-8 shooting with 4 rebounds and 3 assists. He had a sneaky offensive rebound putback in the second half to help seal the win. Saunders contributed 8 points on 3-7 shooting with 6 rebounds and 1 steal.
In the end, that balanced attack is the way Virginia often tries to play offensively. The Hoos dished out 16 assists on 29 made shots.
"The team is playing really unselfish basketball. It's fun to watch offensively," Sanchez said. "They share the ball well, they play for one another, the guys are playing their roles to a really high level with tremendous buy-in. I'm just really pleased with their effort on that side, their selflessness, and their desire to play for one another. I'm trying to coach them as little as I can in some areas, but definitely just encourage them to continue to play that way."
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