Thursday, November 30, 2006
Lack of inside game already a Cavalier problem
Soroye's shotblocking could help
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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It was hard to keep a straight face Wednesday night when Purdue men’s basketball coach Matt Painter and his players kept referring to their victim, Virginia, as an NCAA team.
Some day, Virginia may play in the NCAA Tournament again. And, it could happen this year. But let’s not forget that this is a team that was picked to finish eighth in a conference that sent four teams to the NCAA Tournament last year.
And, as had been evident even before Wednesday, Virginia still has some issues, most notably the absence of an inside game offensively. When Purdue started covering Virginia’s perimeter players out to 30 feet, the Cavaliers did not score from the field over the final 5:49 in a 61-59 loss at Mackey Arena.
In last Saturday’s print edition of The Roanoke Times, I noted that no ACC football team over the past six years has had a greater disparity between its home record and road record than Virginia. The Cavaliers are 18-6 at home and 7-17 on the road in conference games over that span, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the men’s basketball disparity isn’t as glaring.
You might not get Leitao to admit it, but I thought there were some positives to come out of Wednesday night’s game. In the final minutes, when he twice blocked Carl Landy shot attempts, junior Tunji Soroye showed that he can provide an element that the Cavaliers haven’t had until this point.
Of course, the Cavaliers might have remembered that Soroye is a shotblocker but he hadn’t played in any of Virginia’s first four games while recovering from Nov. 9 surgery for a “sports” hernia. To me, it was significant that he was on the floor at the end of the game.
The fact that Mamadi Diane could go 7-for-11 from the floor, including 3-for-6 on 3-pointers, represented a step forward given his poor road shooting last year. Diane was 1-for-4 to start the game Wednesday night, then made six straight shots before a miss from the lane that would have put UVa ahead by three with 1:40 left.
Leitao declined to point a finger at his two seniors, J.R. Reynolds and Jason Cain, but they need to play better. In addition to going 1-for-7 from the field and committing six turnovers, Reynolds missed both of his free-throw attempts en route to a seven-point night.
Three days after his “breakout” 22-point game against Maryland-Eastern Shore, Cain committed two or three needless fouls and was limited to 14 minutes against the Boilermakers. He never actually fouled out and maybe Leitao was trying to save him for the final minutes, but I’m not convinced that Leitao wasn’t trying to send him a message.
Cain needs to be on the floor because he has the most offensive potential of the UVa big men. Lauris Mikalauskas displayed some nice inside moves last year, but he simply has been robbed of his jumping ability by chronic ankle problems this fall. He played four minutes Wednesday night and did not have a point or a rebound.
Ryan Pettinella, a transfer from Penn, scored four early points against Purdue but he can’t play at the end of games because of his inability to make free throws. Pettinella, who hit 47 percent in two seasons as a Quaker, is 2-for-10 so far this year and his form is scary. He makes ex-Cavalier bricklayer Nick VanderLaan look like Larry Bird.
Pettinella was the only of Virginia’s four 2006 signees to score. None of the freshmen scratched, Will Harris in nine minutes and Indianan Jamil Tucker in four. Solomon Tat was in streetclothes for the fourth straight game while nursing a sore groin.
For the time being, Virginia will have to rely on its veterans, including Adrian Joseph, who hit two 3’s and contributed 10 rebounds against the Boilermakers. When Joseph, Diane, Singletary and Reynolds are on the floor, UVa has four legitimate 3-point shooters and it’s hard to guard all of them.
There will be times when all four aren’t hitting and it might be a good idea to find a way to score inside. Virginia should be able to beat N.C. State on Sunday in Charlottesville, the Wolfpack’s 71-67 victory over Michigan notwithstanding, but winning in Charlottesville hasn’t been the problem.
