Cavaliers Now

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Basketball Lights Up Villanova

Isaac McKneely and Andrew Rohde led a hot-shooting Virginia team to a 70-60 win over Villanova.

Val Prochaska

Virginia Atgletics
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Three minutes in, a composed Villanova Wildcat team had jumped out to a 9-2 lead over the Virginia Cavaliers.  Six straight made threes – yes, you read that right – and the Virginia Cavaliers had a 23-14 lead and were effectively never challenged again.

Plus

A win is a win is a win.  After beating up on sub-standard competition, Virginia was ready for a real test.  Unfortunately, it’s been three years since Jay Wright patrolled the sidelines for Villanova, and this Wildcat team is reeling.  Virginia had one of their best shooting nights in recent memory and it was only a 12-4 closing run in garbage time that allowed Villanova to make this game look respectable.

Plus

Isaac McKneely.

Plus

Ok, let’s talk about McKneely’s game.   iMac was 6/6 from deep, 8/9 overall, and led all scorers with 23 points.  McKneely has always been a great shooter, but emphasis for Isaac this year was for him to be more aggressive about hunting his shot, and the offense has been re-worked to give him more opportunities.  Outside of a steal-and-flush, the best Virginia shot is an Isaac McKneely three pointer.  Of course it’s just three games, so small-sample-size caveats apply, but McKneely is now connecting at a 64.7% clip from deep.

Plus

Andrew Rohde played his best game as a Cavalier.  After being a game-time scratch versus Coppin State, a game in which Dai Dai Ames played pretty well, Cavalier Nation was bracing for a “quarterback” controversy.  Ames got the start against Villanova, but head coach Ron Sanchez used a lot of three guard lineups and Ames and Rohde shared the court for 24 minutes.

Here’s what I wrote about Ames vis a vis Rohde following the Coppin State game:  It could take Rohde three games to match Ames’ 13 points in this game.  Well, Rohde put a lie to that statement, as he did score 13 points.  More impressively, he connected on his first three attempts from deep and was the central character in that blitz of six made threes.  Who had three consecutive makes on their Bingo card?  Rohde also had a team high four assists and he cut his turnovers by half from the Campbell game.

Plus

When you have Rohde connecting on his first three treys, and Isaac McKneely a perfect 6/6, it’s going to be a good night.  The rest of the team was a respectably 5/15 as four other players made threes on the night.  Here are all of them:

Minus

Jacob Cofie has been a revelation this young season, and he frequently drew the assignment of guarding Nova’s Eric Dixon.  Dixon is their best player, and he’s a respectable shooter from three, but two times Dixon easily pump-faked Cofie en route two a pair of threes.  Villanova made a minor run late in the first half, and it was aided by a Dixon 4-point play that resulted from a Cofie foul.  He’s young, presumably he’ll get better.

Read Matt’s takeaways from the game here: Virginia Basketball Storms Past Villanova 70-60 | Key Takeaways

Plus

With 4.1 seconds remaining in the first half, Ron Sanchez called timeout.  Tony Bennett would never have called a timeout in such a situation, and it was always one of my few criticisms of Bennett.  Sanchez drew up a beautiful play that isolated Elijah Saunders at the rim, but he couldn’t hold on to the ball.  It was still a great play.

Plus

Eric Dixon is a huge man, standing at 6’ 8” and tipping the scales at 260 pounds.  He’s averaging 26 ppg and shooting 52% from deep.  Stopping him would take a community effort.  And the Virginia defense was up to the task.  Dixon did score 20 points.  He went 5/5 from the charity stripe and 3/6 beyond the arc.  It looks great on paper, but on the court? Those were some of the least-impactful points I’ve seen in a while.  Saunders, Cofie, Rohde and even Blake Buchanan all made life difficult for Dixon.

Minus

Villanova employed a full-court press from the opening tip-off.  For the most part, it didn’t bother Virginia.  At the 8 minute mark, I wrote in my book: 

Positive: No press no affect.

Yep, affect. 

The grammar gods are angry gods.  From that moment on, Virginia struggled against the press, turning the ball over four times and having to burn a timeout once.  Villanova went on a 12-4 closing run to end the game, largely on the strength of Virginia’s struggles in the back court.

Plus

As an added bonus, Virginia Tech was run off the court by Penn State in the second half of the Baltimore doubleheader. Tech had one of the most disheartening offseasons in the ACC – rafts of players left via the portal – but the replacements that Mike Young brought to Blacksburg do not look up to ACC standards.

Full Highlights

Next Up: The Cavaliers travel to the Bahamas for a pair of back-back games next Thursday and Friday. The Thursday game is against No. 11 Tennessee, and it will likely be the most significant game of Virginia’s non-conference portion of the season. Game time is at 9:30pm and the game will be on CBS Sports Network.

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Val Prochaska
VAL PROCHASKA

Val graduated from the University of Virginia in the last millennium, back when writing one's senior thesis by hand was still a thing. He is a lifelong fan of the ACC, having chosen the Tobacco Road conference ahead of the Big East. Again, when that was still a thing. Val has covered Virginia men's basketball for seven years, first with HoosPlace and then with StreakingTheLawn, before joining us here at Virginia Cavaliers on SI in August of 2023, continuing to cover UVA men's basketball and also writing about women's soccer and women's basketball.