Thursday, November 15, 2007
Cavalier player pool big enough for Brandenburg
UVa-Miami revisited
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's UVa Insider is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Thursdays in season.
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As of Wednesday night, minutes after Virginia’s 92-53 victory over Howard, John Brandenburg was the only recruit whose letter-of-intent had arrived in the Cavalier men’s basketball office.
That didn’t mean there was any concern about the commitments made by Sylven Landesberg and Assane Sene, but NCAA guidelines prohibited coach Dave Leitao from discussing anybody but Brandenburg on the first day of the fall signing period.
Brandenburg is a 6-foot-11 post player from St. Louis who had modest statistics last year but has a promising upside and was recruited by the likes of Florida and Kentucky. Brandenburg picked UVa over Stanford.
“Obviously, we’re extremely happy to have a guy like that for a number of reasons,” Leitao said. “Last year, we needed to address our backcourt. This year, we needed to address our frontcourt.”
The first thing that Leitao mentioned about Brandenburg as a player was his athleticism.
“He’s got bounce,” Leitao said. “He’s got a pretty good touch, which, if he works real hard, which I think he will, will develop into a pretty good post option on offense.”
Brandenburg is an outstanding student who “matches perfectly the Virginia student-athlete [model], a guy who’s dedicated to being the best he can be in the classroom,” Leitao said. “He’s been terrific in preparation that way.”
As a player, Brandenburg sounds a little bit like Jason Cain, a senior post player on the Cavaliers’ 2006-2007 NCAA Tournament team. Leitao didn’t agree with that.
“He’s [Brandenburg] more of a 5-man,” Leitao said. “Jason was a guy who grew late, so he had some perimeter ability. John is more of a back-to-the-basket guy right now.”
AFTER WATCHING VIRGINIA’S first two games, the obvious question in my mind was, how does Leitao play all these players?
Virginia has 13 scholarship players but, actually, it’s more like 15 because, while Ryan Pettinella and Calvin Baker don’t count against the Cavaliers’ total, they have been Division I scholarship players at one point, Pettinella at UVa and Baker at William and Mary.
It’s been difficult for Leitao to find time for everybody in the first two games and that’s with Tunji Soroye and Solomon Tat sitting on the bench while recuperating from injuries. In a 39-point blowout, scholarship players Jamil Tucker, Jerome Meyinsse and Will Harris played three, five and nine minutes, respectively.
Players like freshman Mike Scott (two minutes in the opener) and Harris are coming off injuries and Leitao has had the luxury of bringing them along slowly, but what’s going to happen when everybody gets well?
First of all, on a 17-man roster, which in Virginia’s case includes walk-ons Andy Burns and Will Sherrill, it’s almost impossible for everybody to be able-bodied and healthy at the same time.
Winning helps but Leitao’s going to face some tough decisions in upcoming games. You look at some of the Virginia teams that have overachieved – such as Pete Gillen’s first team in 1998-1999 and Leitao’s first team in 2005-2006 – and they had very little depth. Nobody was looking over his shoulder because there was nobody behind him.
My guess is that the three veteran perimeter players – Sean Singletary, Adrian Joseph and Mamadi Diane – will get consistent minutes. As for the rest, it’s important to repeat something Leitao said in the preseason.
"If anybody wants minutes, significant minutes, 25 [or] 30 minutes a game, well, be the best rebounder on the team," Leitao said.
“Get a dozen or 15 rebounds. Or, become a defensive force. If you really want to play, that'll surely get you on the court."
GIVEN THE RESPONSBILITY for meeting deadlines after the Virginia-Miami football game, I had 15 minutes of tape to which I’d never listened, much less transcribed. Here are some of the highlights as I listen to it now.
From quarterback Jameel Sewell:
“I don’t remember what game it was – I think it was Duke – but our tight ends caught almost 20 passes and, ever since then, people have been locked up on them and dragging them and not letting them get off the line, just holding them all the way down the field.”
Beating Miami 48-0 “says a lot for us but we’ve got to stay focused and take advantage of this window we’ve got. We’ve got a good team coming in to play us and they want our blood.”
“There was a lot of opportunity for our playmakers to make play because [the Hurricanes] play a lot of man defense. I don’t know how many people know, but we’ve got a lot of playmakers on this team.”
“It’s really unforgettable. Just having this crowd out here and booing [Virginia], I was just trying to feed off that. The negative energy, we just turned it into positive energy.”
From defensive end Chris Long:
“We have to be careful of not being satisfied and not sitting on our butts for a couple of days and listening to the ‘Oh, you guys or this,’ or ‘you guys are that.’ We didn’t listen to them when they were dogging us.
“This [Virginia win] didn’t take away from the history of this university playing football and this building. The history is undeniable [as are] the feelings you get when you walk in this stadium. It’s real. I’m just honored to be a part of it.
“There’s still areas we can improve in, believe it or not, after tonight.”
From coach Al Groh:
“If somebody asked to sign up for nine and that would be the end right now, we probably wouldn’t have taken the deal. If it was deal-or-no-deal for nine but it had to end right now, we probably wouldn’t have taken the deal.”
