Thursday, December 21, 2006
Giving up on Cain not the UVa answer
Transfers finding success elsewhere
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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If the first thing Dave Leitao did after an ejection Saturday was issue an apology to school president John Casteen and athletic director Craig Littlepage, what’s he going to do when he gets back from Puerto Rico?
I’m not suggesting that Leitao needs to apologize for his team’s performance in the San Juan Shootout, but Virginia fans have to be much more disturbed by the team’s play than about Leitao’s dealings with the refs.
If I’ve been consistent about one thing in my 30 years at The Roanoke Times, it’s in the philosophy of “When in doubt, blame the coach.” Either Virginia doesn’t have good players or it has good players who aren’t playing well. I’d be more inclined to believe the latter, but, if it’s the former, then who recruited them?
In Virginia’s case, most of the players were recruited by Leitao’s predecessor, Pete Gillen, but you could make the case that most of the best players are Gillen recruits. The Cavaliers haven’t gotten much out of Leitao’s ballyhooed first full recruiting class, but it’s still early.
It’s basically the same Virginia team, with added experience and depth, that went 7-9 in the ACC last year and already has beaten Arizona this year, albeit at the John Paul Jones Arena, the only place where the Cavaliers possibly could erase a 19-point lead. Virginia also came from behind in the second half to win its ACC opener against visiting North Carolina State.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Virginia’s reliance on its backcourt and that doesn’t bode well when Sean Singletary shoots 22.2 percent from the field, as he did in three games (8-for-36) in Puerto Rico. The only other player capable of carrying the team is J.R. Reynolds, who averaged 18 points for the tournament but was only 15-of-41 from the field.
No one expected post man Jason Cain to carry the team, but here’s a guy who was UVa’s best player during the first 2-3 weeks of preseason practice. Leitao said it, Reynolds said it, Singletary said it.
What’s the deal with Cain playing four minutes Thursday in a 59-52 victory over Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and never taking off his sweats in the second half? It was Cain’s shortest stint in the last 49 games.
Cain is UVa’s most gifted post player. He’s the Cavaliers’ best rebounder, he can run the floor, he can block shots, he has good free-throw mechanics, he even has range out to the 3-point line. He’s not the most consistent guy, nor is he the most confident guy. But, when you play him for four minutes, you risk losing him.
Lauris Mikalauskas got on the floor for 18 and 14 minutes in UVa’s final two tournament games and you would have thought he had been buried after three consecutive three-minute outings. So, maybe there is hope for Cain. I don’t think the Cavs are going anywhere without him.
WASN’T IT INTERESTING, four hours after the seventh-place game between Virginia and Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, that two former Virginia players faced off in the championship game of the San Juan Shootout?
Derrick Byars is in his second year as a starter for Vanderbilt, where he is second on the team in scoring with 14.5 points per game, but we need to be fair. Byars would have completed his UVa eligibility by now; plus, he left Charlottesville more than one year before Leitao’s arrival.
On the other hand, there are three other players currently on Division I rosters who would be eligible for Virginia this season – Donte Minter, recently activated by San Juan finalist Appalachian State; Gary Forbes, who is starting at Massachusetts, and T.J. Bannister, who is sitting out a redshirt season at Liberty.
Media gadfly and notorious second-guesser Jeff White charged this week that I never liked Minter or Bannister, but that’s not entirely true. I didn’t like the way that Minter shot every time he touched the ball and I never thought that Bannister was starting material, but they both could have helped this Virginia team in smaller doses.
Almost surely, White would remind me that Forbes only left UVa in the fall of 2005 because he was academically ineligible, but I’ve always felt that somebody dropped the ball by not staying on top of Forbes during the transition from Gillen to Leitao in the summer of 2005.
Forbes has started 10 of 11 games for UMass (9-2) and is playing more than 30 minutes per game. He is third on the team in scoring (11.5) and third in rebounding (5.3).
Forbes has some of the same drawbacks he always had – a low shooting percentage (37.8) and a bad assist-turnover ratio (35-31) – but I thought he might have helped the Cavaliers get the 2-3 wins they needed for an NCAA Tournament bid last year and he might be helping them now.
The only current player whose size and ability to attack the basket resembles Forbes’ is injured freshman Solomon Tat, but that’s another story.
To me, it all comes back to the recent trend of Division I coaches to recruit over players, taking commitments that clearly would place them over the 13-scholarship limit. Understood in that concept is the reality of players transferring, becoming academically or otherwise disappearing (Sam Warren), but sometimes the best answer to a problem is sitting on your own bench.
