Everything Ron Sanchez said before Virginia vs. SMU

Virginia head coach Ron Sanchez spoke with the media on Monday on the ACC Coaches Teleconference, talking ahead of the SMU game.

On 2nd half struggles: “I’ll tell you that we have a lot of dialogue about some of the things that are happening to the squad in the 2nd half. Obviously the preparation for games is really good, the way that we get started, the way that we’re competing for 25-30 minutes of the game. I think part of it for us is experience, guys that haven’t been through some challenges in basketball where they know that one or two possessions are being down five or six points, it’s not the end of the game. You have a lot of time left. A lot of these players are inexperienced. They don’t really have any shared experiences to tap back into. Right now, we feel like a lot of it comes down to just having been there before and understanding how to kind of come out of those situations.”

On Virginia having played SMU before: “I mean the benefit is that you have your own footage to identify mistakes that you’ve made. You can take tap into their their games since then and see what they’re doing differently, how you defended some of the things that they’re doing, also how they guarded you and how they defended you and try to take advantage of some things there. First is just more of continuing to get better, celebrate things that we did well against them and try to do those things again and then identify the areas we made mistakes and then try to improve from that.”

On morale after three straight losses for Virginia: “You know in sports, losing impacts, obviously the locker room. Guys kind of get down a little bit after not performing well. I think that the group is really trying to figure out how do we get back to that competitive endurance to finish games and we’ve shown flashes of it in the past, how do we tap back into it? I think as a whole, the group really likes one another. They enjoy competing, they enjoy being in the locker room, they enjoy being on the floor together. Just got to get back to the point where we’re just competing a little harder down the stretch of games.”

On defensive performance lately: “I’ll go back to what I said earlier, man. We got eight new guys to this thing. For us to think, oh, these guys are just going to figure this thing out very quickly, I don’t want to use the word foolish, but you know you got to go through some some experiences with some guys in order for you to get better and better and better in what we do defensively. For this group is just being on the floor, continuing to build on those fundamentals every day in practice. The only thing that we can control is having a good practice today and try to impact how much better we get defensively and try to get guys to take one more step forward.”

On the toll of the road trip out west: “I mean, it’s a long trip and having to depart early because of the weather just made it even longer. I don’t want to lose the fact that it was a long trip for the guys, but overall, I think it was a good trip. It was well-organized. Our staff did a fantastic job with it. We’ll find out here how things continue to go for us. We’re going to plan well. Like I told you last week, we’ve got a good plan in place, and we’re going to stick to it. Hopefully, we have enough rest, and we have tremendous amount of energy on Wednesday. That’s what it’s all about, how hard can we compete on Wednesday and how much energy we have.”

On corrections that can be made to 2nd half performance based off SMU game: “That was more just execution down the stretch. We were in the game. We had a couple of possessions that we turned the ball over in a row. We didn’t secure the ball. We were being plagued by by turnovers and offensive rebounding so it’s more of that than much of anything else.”

On interaction with former Virginia coach Tony Bennett and other coaches who’ve helped him: “Well, it’d be foolish for me not to take advantage of the relationships that I have not only with Tony, but with other coaches. I talk to a lot of my friends, some that have been through situations that I’m in now. We can talk X’s and O’s and all of those things, but there’s an emotional component to this thing as well so I’m tapping into every resource that I have when it comes to really managing this situation with our players, with our travel, everything we have going on and trying to see how I can be the best coach that I can be for them and for the university.

“I’ve talked to Tony, of course. Richie McKay is a dear friend as well. I got coach Larry Brown who lives in Charlotte now, is another guy that I talked to. I have a list of friends that I do reach out to. Just guys that can share a nugget here or there. Obviously, I talked to Tony’s dad, Big Bennett as well. Just people that have been through it consistently and they’ve been fantastic .

On Ishan Sharma moving into Virginia’s starting lineup: “Thought he did a really good job. Our offense got off to a really good start against Stanford in the first 10 minutes or so, but again his lack of experience in the defensive side showed and you expect that from a first-year guy who’s getting his first start, but I thought he did a really good job of helping us get started well offensively. Shot the ball really well.”

On development of Virginia forward TJ Power: “To us, TJ is still a first-year guy. He doesn’t have a tremendous amount of playing experience. We’re just trying to coach him up, coach him up defensively. He was in the gym this morning getting shots up We’re behind the scenes still investing into all our guys into their individual development. We feel that if they can get one percent better we as a team get one percent better. Guys will continue to get opportunities here and I’m hoping that any of them could have a breakout game here and there and that will inject into their confidence and continue their play throughout ACC play.”