January was not kind to the Virginia men’s basketball team, which came away with a 1-5 record over the course of the month. After dropping their last four contests to a slew of tough ACC squads — including an embarrassing home loss to Florida State, in which Virginia made just three first-half field goals — the weary Cavaliers could use a refreshing game against a weak, non-conference opponent to work out the kinks.
Unfortunately for Virginia, its schedule requires it to travel to Cameron Indoor Stadium to take on No. 1 Duke.
Virginia (7-9, 1-4 ACC) enters Sunday’s game with a dismal 1-4 record on the road, while Duke (18-2, 5-1 ACC) boasts a perfect 12-0 record at home. Needless to say, the Cavaliers will have their hands full playing in Cameron Indoor Stadium, where the infamously raucous Cameron Crazies are sure to compound the team’s challenges on the court. In the teams’ previous meeting at Cameron Indoor Jan. 13 of last season, the Blue Devils never trailed, eventually blowing the game open to a 22-point victory.
“I heard the environment is real loud and crazy, so just going down there, it’s going to be an experience,” freshman guard Sylven Landesberg said.
The experience will be eye-opening for the young Virginia squad. In order to hang tough with the more seasoned Duke team, the Cavaliers will need to adopt a newfound sense of maturity.
“When good teams with good veteran leadership and that kind of thing start to struggle, particularly on the road, there’s a mind-set that you can count on,” Virginia coach Dave Leitao said. “Most young people are searching for their own way. When you’re going through this for the first time, you think of it in that way as opposed to having experienced this a number of times, and then you say, ‘OK, this is what we have to do ... if we box out, if we do this, then we’re gonna be all right’.”
If Virginia is to have any kind of chance of winning this game, it is imperative that the Cavaliers get off to a strong start. Time and time again this season, the Cavaliers have dug themselves into inescapable holes early in games. Last week’s 16-point first-half effort against Florida State is the latest example. Although the Cavaliers fought back valiantly and actually out-scored the Seminoles in the second half, they simply could not overcome their 14-point halftime deficit.
Duke showed what it is capable of doing to slow-starting teams. Last week against Maryland, it held the Terrapins to 15 points and took a 25-point lead into halftime, never looking back and going on to win by 41.
To avoid the same fate as Maryland, Virginia must contend with Duke’s stout defense, which gives up just 59.5 points per game. Leitao’s bunch will have to find ways to handle Duke’s intense ball pressure and minimize turnovers, something that has been a recurring problem this season for the Cavaliers as they have an assist-to-turnover ratio of 0.9, which is 10th in the ACC. Against Florida State they committed 19 turnovers and dished out just eight assists.
“I thought [the turnovers Saturday] were turnovers of not being aggressive,” Leitao said. “Then when we were aggressive, we weren’t smart because we drove into a help defender that took the ball from us, or deflected it, or whatever.”
On the defensive end, Virginia must figure out how to slow down the sharp-shooting Duke sophomore forward Kyle Singler, who leads the Blue Devils in scoring with 16.8 points per game, as well as the high-flying Gerald Henderson, who has put up 17.8 points per game in his last 11 games.
If the Cavaliers can somehow keep the Duke guards in check, they can keep this game close. Duke lacks a legitimate interior presence on offense; 7-foot-1 sophomore Brian Zoubek provides the Blue Devils with defense and rebounding but is rarely looked to for scoring.
Virginia’s lineup changes will be another point of interest in this game. Last week, Leitao re-designated the starting two-guard position to Calvin Baker, who replaced senior Mamadi Diane, who has continued to slump offensively. The most puzzling personnel decision, however, surrounded Jamil Tucker, who only played 11 minutes against the Seminoles despite scoring a career-high 21 points in the previous game against Maryland. Tucker racked up 10 points in that 11-minute span. On his radio show Monday night, Leitao explained that Tucker’s lack of playing time was due to an off-court matter.
Whoever Leitao puts in the game Sunday needs to do something to lift the Cavaliers out of their collective shooting funk. Virginia is the only ACC team shooting less than 30 percent from 3-point range, something Leitao attributed on his radio show to the loss of players such as Sean Singletary and Adrian Joseph, along with the team’s inability to find a consistent outside shooter.
The only conceivable advantage Virginia will have against Duke on Sunday is its eight-day layoff since its last game against Florida State. The Cavaliers should be well-rested to take on the Blue Devils, who are coming off a grueling 2-point loss Wednesday at Wake Forest, after the Demon Deacons put in the go-ahead bucket with 0.8 seconds on the clock. On the flip side, however, as ESPN announcer Dick Vitale put it in the second half of Duke’s Wednesday loss, “Virginia has the luck of playing Duke after a possible L.”
By now, though, every Virginia player understands that nothing comes easy in the ACC.
“It’s the toughest league, that’s what everybody came here for,” sophomore guard Jeff Jones said. “We’ve just gotta keep practicing, keep working hard.”
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