The Virginia men’s basketball team travels to Montreal this weekend for a set of three exhibition games against opponents from the area.
Saturday, the Cavaliers will play two matches at Concordia, against St. Lawrence College in the morning and Concordia in the afternoon. The Cavaliers then will play McGill Sunday.
The team is allowed 10 practices to prepare for the trip, and it began preparing Aug. 19. Freshmen Sylven Landesberg, John Brandenburg and Assane Sene, however, were prohibited from joining practice until the first day of University classes Tuesday. Virginia coach Dave Leitao said these trips out of the country to play exhibition games are permitted once every four years, and noted the timing of the trip immediately after the graduation of point guard Sean Singletary was no coincidence.
“I’ve tried to leave [Singletary] out of the equation,” Leitao said. “But the fact of the matter is you have a personality change as well as a talent shift, and some new personalities have to come to the forefront.”
The rest of the 2008-09 schedule was also released Tuesday. Non-conference highlights include two road games at Syracuse and at Minnesota in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge during Thanksgiving Break and a matchup with Xavier at home after the Musketeers blew out the Cavaliers by 38 points in Cincinnati last January.
“The biggest challenge I think we’ll have all year is how slowly or quickly we’ll be able to grow,” Leitao said. “That particular stretch of days [between the Syracuse and Minnesota games] on a Friday and the following Tuesday — with travel and everything else and the holiday at the front end of it — will test us.”
In the conference portion of the schedule, Virginia will see North Carolina, Clemson and Florida State in both home and away contests, in addition to the usual two-game series with Virginia Tech and Maryland.
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