The other day, I sat down with the Virginia men’s basketball schedule — an oxygen mask at the ready — to see if I could find another Cavalier win the rest of the season.
Home against Maryland the last game of the year — maybe. Home against Virginia Tech Wednesday — a possibility. At N.C. State Saturday — unlikely, but don’t rule it out.
Yesterday against No. 12 Clemson was on the list of “ain’t gonna happen.”
So, it’s only natural that this game was the one. The way the fans, and even the players, reacted after Virginia sealed the 85-81 overtime victory, you would have thought they just clinched the ACC title.
“There was a lot of excitement — dancing,” sophomore Mike Scott said.
“I get to get a haircut, ‘cause I wasn’t cutting my hair ‘til we got a win,” freshman Sylven Landesberg added.
The last time Virginia went on an eight-game losing streak was in 1998; the Cavaliers broke the streak with a win against Clemson — at home, in overtime, by four points. Go figure.
Nevertheless, before the game, I had a 10-plus point victory by Clemson in the bag. Before tipoff, however, wasn’t the only time when I was sure Virginia would get trounced. The next moment was halftime; as well as Virginia showed in the first half, Clemson played equally lousy. The Tigers had 13 first-half turnovers— many of them unforced — and shot a paltry 1-of-11 from three-point range.
Sure, the Cavs had 13 turnovers in the opening period as well, but that is more acceptable against Clemson coach Oliver Purnell’s full-court, trapping defense.
“We certainly weren’t sharp offensively [in the first half] by any measure,” Purnell said.
My halftime conviction that Virginia would go down was confirmed with 16:26 remaining in the second half. After Wahoo fans were overjoyed by both a Virginia lead at the break and the return of Sean Singletary for his jersey retirement ceremony, Clemson dropped 14 straight points to pull ahead by six.
If there was a time for Virginia and its fans to quit, it was then. I know I had pretty much thrown in the towel.
So how did Virginia manage to bounce back? Perhaps Singletary — who talked to his teammates the day before the game and spoke with reporters following the halftime ceremony — said it best.
“I see signs of life,” Singletary said. “They haven’t been hanging their heads at all, and coach [Leitao] has been real good in motivating them, so they’re [going to] be okay.”
Singletary’s sentiment was evident in many areas. It showed on the defensive end, where Virginia played its best 40 minutes of man-to-man defense this season. It showed in overtime when, on Clemson’s first possession, the Cavaliers drew a five-second call as Clemson senior center Raymond Sykes failed to find a teammate out of the post.
“We talk about change, and before you can change the outcome, of changing the way you approach how they’re [going to] play defense,” Leitao said. “I’ve seen it the last few practices and the last week-and-a-half, in that there’s much more conversation, there’s attention to detail and there’s competition. Guys are upset when people score on them.”
Leitao’s mentioning of the better defense “the last week-and-a-half” was when I smacked myself on the head for failing to at least recognize the possibility that Virginia might win yesterday. Why? Because, as bad as Virginia has been all season, the Cavs have been on an upward trend since the second half against Boston College Feb. 4.
In that game — after yet another woeful first half — Leitao put a second-half starting lineup on the floor that few ever imagined they would see: Calvin Baker, Jeff Jones, Sylven Landesberg, Solomon Tat and Assane Sene.
This was a move that I applauded Leitao for — something drastic had to change, and perhaps tinkering with the lineup was the right move. Though the Cavaliers went on to lose that game, they won the second half by 10 and played with the kind of passion that had been absent for nearly the entire conference season.
Since then, Leitao has stuck with that lineup to start games, and Virginia has continued improving. North Carolina hammered the Cavs again in Chapel Hill, but they managed to hang with the Tar Heels for the first half, and ... Well, let’s face it — it’s North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The next game, they led an exceptional Florida State team at halftime in Tallahassee, marking the first halftime lead for the Cavs since Jan. 6 against Brown. Virginia went on to lose by 11, but had the Cavs made a few more of their many open looks, the story might have been different.
Which brings us to yesterday against Clemson. Should we have expected Virginia to beat a top-25 team at home? Of course not.
Nevertheless, I, in any case, was shortsighted in my firm prediction. I looked at Virginia’s recent scores, looked at what Clemson did to Duke Feb. 4 — the Tigers slaughtered the Blue Devils 74-47 — and came to what I thought was the obvious conclusion: another defeat in blowout fashion. I neglected my own words praising Leitao for making the right change at the right time a few weeks ago against Boston College. I denied the possibility that Leitao’s change could result in an upset as big as this one.
Now, I look at the schedule again, and I see Virginia Tech coming up Wednesday. After Virginia fell to the Hokies Jan. 10, I went so far as to call Virginia the inferior athletics program not only based on performance of the revenue-generating sports, but also in terms of personnel and atmosphere.
Here’s hoping that for the second straight game, Virginia shuts me up.
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