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Dave Leitao’s team lost its first game of the year on Saturday. |
The Virginia basketball team lost its first game of the season on Saturday, falling 74-60 to an athletic and scrappy Seton Hall team in The Philly Classic. The Pirates pestered the Cavaliers in to a poor shooting night and came up with numerous key offensive rebounds en route to the 14-point win.
In the end, Dave Leitao attributed Seton Hall’s success to its assertive play and a healthy dose of confidence.
“I give credit to them for being athletic, but more than anything they were aggressive and we weren’t,” Leitao said on the Virginia Sports Network. “When you give a team confidence, what [they] may normally do, [they] do better. They drove the ball better. They shot the ball better. They defended better. They rebounded better. They did everything better because they got a really good injection of confidence. A lot of it has to do with them. Credit to them. A lot of it has to do with us and that we never really challenged them for a whole lot, loose balls or anything like that.”
The Pirates gained that confidence midway through the first half. After a close battle in the early minutes, Seton Hall took control with a 16-4 scoring burst. SH moved to the front at 19-18 as part of the run, which eventually pushed the advantage to 33-22 – after acquiring the lead, the Pirates never trailed again. They led 40-29 at halftime and spent much of the second half with a lead of at least seven points.
In fact, Virginia only climbed closer than that once after intermission. The Hoos opened the second frame with an 8-2 run, which was capped by an Adrian Joseph 3-pointer, to cut the 11-point deficit to five with 15:59 remaining.
But Seton Hall had the answer, a theme that developed any time UVa tried to make a push in the second half. The early run was answered first by Brian Laing, who tapped in a missed shot to give his team a 44-37 lead. After Virginia missed two 3-pointers on its next possession, Jeremy Hazell drained a trifecta of his own on the other end while being fouled. Though Hazell missed the free throw, his team once gain led by double digits 47-37 and UVa never got as close as five again.
Laing finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal, while Hazell had 11 points, 5 rebounds, and 1 steal. Other standouts included Eugene Harvey , who had 16 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal, and Paul Gause, who had 8 points and a good defensive night.
“They were, starting from the outset, much more aggressive I thought than we were,” Leitao said. “I thought we did a poor job of keeping the ball out of the paint, which was a big part of our gameplan. And once they got to their comfort zone, I thought it gave them a lot of confidence and they started making more shots. They stretched out the lead in the first half – we never recovered and played back on our heels after that.”
Playing from behind, the Cavaliers’ struggles were evident on the offensive end in particular. The team never found any rhythm on that end of the floor, relying frequently on difficult dribble drives – Seton Hall kept active hands around the ball and challenged attempts near the rim – to create shots inside or outside. While the penetration-and-pitch method is a common attack plan for the Hoos, they simply couldn’t knock down open outside looks consistently Saturday. They shot 32.8% for the game (20 of 61), including a 7-of-28 showing on 3-pointers (25%).
Sean Singletary led the way offensively with 23 points, but he hit just 7 of 20 shots (2 of 9 on 3-pointers). Singletary added 7 rebounds and 7 assists while committing 5 turnovers. Adrian Joseph scored just 6 points, but had 16 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 assist. Mamadi Diane was the only other Hoo in double figures with 12 points; he added 8 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 blocks.
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