Virginia Cruises Past Longwood

Senior Billy Campbell matched his career high of 8 points and set a new personal best with 5 assists against Longwood.

In what proved to be a 35-point yawner on a night that featured career-best performances by Billy Campbell and Mike Forkin, the Cavaliers were anything but ecstatic with their 91-56 win over Longwood on Wednesday. Instead, Coach Dave Leitao and team leaders talked about a lack of mental focus, basketball maturity, and the need to get back to work the rest of the week.

Why the glum outlook? Leitao cited a lack of mental execution and sustained effort. After all, the Lancers shot 59.1 percent in the first half and pulled down 14 offensive rebounds in the second half. Virginia also forced just 7 second-half turnovers by the visitors. UVa did hold Longwood to 18.8 percent shooting after halftime and won the overall battle on the boards, 40-35.

“Knowing coming in that at this time of year games like this are very difficult to play as much emotionally as anything else, I tried to make sure we got our team ready to play the game much more from the neck up,” Leitao said. “In games like this, you’re going to have to play through as much the psychological part of it as the physical and I don’t know that we did a real good job in that area. I thought they were very, very loose, especially in the first half. I don’t know by not setting the tone that we did anything today to get ourselves better prepared for the stretch run of our regular season. I’m disappointed in that.”

“We’ve been talking for two days mostly about maturity and handling games like this the right way and I don’t know, especially the first half, that we handled our business very well,” he added. “It entered into our guys’ minds who we were playing. We played to the competition, and no disrespect to Longwood, but we played to the competition level as opposed to playing to whatever our level is supposed to be.”

Not that the coach would give back the win.

“I’ll take the win. I’m not going to give that back,” Leitao said. “They know when we get back to the gym tomorrow, I’m not going to be real happy. To their credit, it’s not like we’ve struggled every day to find a rhythm or to find our way to play defense. I think we can recapture it, [but] I just worry that you can’t be up and down emotionally at this time of year as much. I think, again, we’re still learning and we’re not as mature as we need to be. That’s why we’ve won a lot at home, and not a lot on the road. … That’s always a by-product of not being as experienced or as mature as teams need to be.”

UVa’s Sean Singletary scored 20 points and added 4 assists in the win over Longwood.

Sean Singletary , who scored more than 20 points for the second straight game, echoed his coach’s thoughts. He visibly tried to get his teammates going numerous times in the first half, but the energy level never really picked up. Singletary finished with 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting; he also logged 5 rebounds and 4 assists. The point guard also matched his career-high of 4 made 3-pointers.

“I was definitely trying to pump everybody up because that’s just my job,” Singletary said. “Early in the year against lesser competition, I hadn’t played as well and coach has really helped me with that mental approach to the game.”

Other Cavaliers had good outings statistically as well. Jason Cain made 4 of 5 shots to finish with 8 points and 3 rebounds, while Laurynas Mikalauskas went 4-of-4 shooting for 9 points. J.R. Reynolds made 4 of 9 3-pointers and finished with 16 points and 3 assists. T.J. Bannister, who returned after missing 4 games, had 2 points and 5 assists.

Campbell, meanwhile, played 21 minutes and tied his career-high of 8 points. He also dished out a career-high 5 assists. Forkin had a career-high 5 points and a career-high 3 rebounds in just 7 minutes.

Still, the Cavaliers were focused on getting back in the gym for practice and preparation as a road date with Florida State looms on Saturday at 4 p.m.

“We probably played down to the level of competition. … That just speaks to our level of maturity and we have to mature more as a team,” Singletary said. “[Practice] will just be as upbeat as usual. Coach will be [talking about] little things like he always is, but he’s leading us in the right direction.”

“We’ve got to look at the film and get back to work to understand what we’re on this journey for and most importantly what we’ve got to do to give ourselves a chance to be successful,” Leitao said. “We’re not a team that can just yawn your way through, score when you feel like it, and win and move on. We’re not that good, not that experienced to be able to do that. We have to play a certain way and I don’t that we got that accomplished today.”