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LOCATION: Charlottesville, VA
CONFERENCE: Atlantic Coast (ACC)
LAST SEASON: 14-16 (.467)
CONFERENCE RECORD: 4-12 (9th)
STARTERS LOST/RETURNING: 1/4
NICKNAME: Cavaliers
COLORS: Orange & Blue
HOMECOURT: University Hall (8,457)
COACH: Pete Gillen (Fairfield '68)
record at school 14-16 (1 year)
career record 288-144 (14 years)
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ASSISTANTS: Tom Herrion (Merrimack '89)
Walt Fuller (Drexel '97)
Scott Shepherd (Robert Morris '91)
TEAM WINS: (last 5 years) 25-12-18-11-14
RPI (last 5 years) 11-57-29-91-93
1998-99 FINISH: Lost in conference first round.
ESPN.com Clubhouse
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Pete Gillen has the road Mapp for success. He has Chris-crossed the country and found everything he needs for a successful team at Virginia. You gotta Hand it to him, it's a Hall of a team he has put together. It's so elementary, my dear Watsons. Feel free to throw out all the semi-funny one-liners you can think of. Gillen, the comedian-basketball coach, certainly will. And, when the season ends this year, he and the Virginia fans can grin broadly at their successes. At least that's what they all hope.
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Blue Ribbon Analysis |
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BACKCOURT B BENCH/DEPTH B+
FRONTCOURT C INTANGIBLES B+
Coach Pete Gillen likes to make people laugh. He's pretty good at it. He also likes to recruit. He's pretty good at that, too. His freshman class this year was second only to Duke, both in the ACC and in the country, if you listen at all to the recruiting analysts. With his up-tempo style, it's little wonder that high school players find Gillen's team appealing. The Cavaliers, eventually, will become one of the most exciting teams in the country to watch. He is already in line for a bumper crop for next year, no small feat considering he lost his top recruiter, Bobby Gonzalez, who left Virginia and became head coach at Manhattan. But don't let the expectations get out of hand, Wahoos. Let things develop slowly. Let the freshmen learn their places. Don't get overly excited. Gillen likes the fact that his fans want big things. He's just not sure he can deliver them just yet. "If you have expectations, that means you usually have good talent and good numbers," Gillen said. "I don't mind that at all. I'd rather have higher expectations and the talent that goes with those expectations than the opposite. "But we have to mesh and blend. It's going to take some time to put our pieces together, to get the proper chemistry and to get our guys playing together smoothly. We are very excited about the season, but understand that we're still rebuilding. You don't come into the ACC and go from last place to the top of the mountain without it taking some time." At least the Cavaliers are headed up the mountain, instead of tumbling down it, as they were before Gillen arrived. |
For a team that has finished last in the weakened ACC two years in a row, there is an awful lot of optimism rushing through the streets of Wahoo-land. With good reason. Gillen, one year after taking over the struggling program from Jeff Jones, has the Cavaliers ready for a rocket ride back into the upper division of the ACC. Many fans think that will happen this year, thanks to what recruiting analysts believe is one of the best classes in the country. Gillen went out and filled nearly every need his depleted roster had, except, perhaps, for a dominant big man. This year, his toughest problem may be deciding who to play for how long. That's a far cry from figuring out which of the 500 students in an open tryout would keep the Cavaliers from being the biggest embarrassment in the history of the ACC. That's what Gillen faced last year, when he had only seven scholarship players, only one of whom was taller than 6-8. Things got worse after the first game, when 6-9, 243-pound junior center/forward Colin Ducharme (6.0 ppg, 5.0 rpg) broke his ankle and missed the rest of the season. Cavaliers' fans prepared for the worst, but Gillen gave them hope for the future by winning 14 games, including four in the conference. Both numbers were better than what Jones did in his final year with two All-ACC performers on his team (Curtis Staples and Norman Nolan). "We knew coming in it was going to be a difficult and challenging situation," said Gillen, who finished second in balloting for ACC Coach of the Year to Duke's Mike Krzyzewski. "And it certainly was a challenge. To play in the premier basketball conference in the country with seven scholarship players and to lose one of them after the first game was really an absurd situation. "I thought our players played with a lot of courage, dignity, tenacity and heart. They maximized what they had from their talent and energy standpoint." What Gillen is trying to say is that he had very little to work with, hardly enough bodies to have a five-on-five scrimmage. He scrapped around for five walk-ons during the open tryout, two of whom remain on the roster this season, a testament to the respect they earned from their coach now that he has a lot more talent from which to choose. Gillen not only changed the grim outlook of the program, he vastly changed the Cavaliers' style. Jones used the same halfcourt, bang-'em-up system he learned from Terry Holland. It was based on physical, zone defense, and it was harder to watch than a made-for-TV movie with Tori Spelling. Gillen introduced basketball his way an up-and-down the court style that caught the attention of fans, basketball experts and, most importantly of all, high school recruits. Logic said the coach, with such a limited roster, should have slowed things and waited for the cavalry to arrive in a year or two, kind of the way Rick Barnes did at Clemson and Herb Sendek did at North Carolina State when they took over teams with little resources. But Gillen refused to change his style. "Our players gave it their best shot," Gillen said. "When you throw your best pitch and a guy hits a home run, you wish he hadn't hit the home run, but you can't feel too badly because you threw your best pitch. "We threw our best pitch last season, and to win 14 games with our limited number of scholarship players and no seniors, I think that was a significant accomplishment. We tried to take some positive steps in a very difficult situation." Gillen may be faced with another difficult, though far more enjoyable, situation: Who's he going to play? The coach went out and found a large recruiting class of five highly regarded players. Add Notre Dame transfer Keith Friel, who sat out last year under NCAA transfer guidelines, and Gillen has 12 scholarship players and three walk-ons from which to choose. The only regular player missing from last year is 6-11 center Kris Hunter, the skinny shot blocker who agreed not to return for his final year of eligibility. But Gillen has two proven scorers returning in 5-11, 178-pound junior guard Donald Hand (17.1 ppg, 4.8 rpg) and 6-6, 198-pound sophomore forward/guard Chris Williams (16.8 ppg, 7.5 rpg), both of whom were impressive while playing out of position. Hand, whose 41 points against N.C. State marked the highest-scoring game in the ACC last year, was a scoring point guard in the mold of former Wake Forest standout Randolph Childress in that he looked to score first and pass second. With the arrival of 6-1, 185-pound McDonald's All-America freshman point guard Majestic Mapp (16.8 ppg, 6.0 apg at St. Raymond's HS/Bronx, N.Y.), Hand might be better suited as a shooting guard. Mapp, a Top-20 prospect who was an All-New York City and all-state player as a high school senior, seemingly has the credentials to immediately run the offense. He could be one of four freshmen point guards who see action in the ACC, along with Duke's Jason Williams, Maryland's Steve Blake and Clemson's Ed Scott. Hand, one of the league's most improved players, did a little of everything for the Cavaliers last year, leading the team in scoring, assists, steals, free-throw percentage, three-point goals and minutes played. He improved his scoring average by more than 12 points a game the second-biggest jump from one season to the next in Virginia history and his .862 free-throw percentage also led the ACC. Gillen knows he can count on Hand to score, but he doesn't want to. Hand sacrificed a good shooting percentage to score points, which is not the best way for a running team to be successful. Gillen wants to see more consistency, better defense and more passing from Hand. "He will definitely play some two-guard because his first instinct is to shoot," Gillen said. "We want to move him off the ball at times." However, it's crowded on the Virginia perimeter. Chezley Watson (8.3 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 84 assists, 38 steals) started 26 games at shooting guard last year, but the 6-1 junior may be relegated to being a defensive specialist because he showed little aptitude for scoring. That means 6-5, 198-pound sophomore forward/guard Adam Hall (10.8 ppg, 4.5 rpg), who came on strong at the end of last season, can also earn some more time in the backcourt if he improves on his consistency and outside shooting, the two areas Gillen asked him to work on in the off-season. Friel, a 6-4, 195-pound junior (8.9 ppg, 2.0 rpg at Notre Dame in 1997-98), was one of the Big East's most dangerous outside shooters during his two years with the Fighting Irish. Gillen hopes people have forgotten about the smooth shooting guard. He will have to compete with 6-4, 195-pound freshman guard Roger Mason (18.7 ppg, 5.5 rpg at Good Counsel HS/Gaithersburg, Md.), a versatile perimeter player whom Gillen thinks could be a sleeper in the freshman class. He was voted the best high school player in the Washington, D.C., area last year. Finally in the backcourt, fan favorite Josh Hare (3.6 ppg, 2.5 rpg) is there to provide depth. The 6-2, 205-pound junior, who averaged more than 20 minutes in his 17 games last year, is one of the five walk-ons Gillen found during the student body tryout who is still on the team. Six-foot-two, 191-pound sophomore guard Jason Dowling (0.3 ppg, 0.4 rpg) is the other. The team's other walk-on, 6-6, 187-pound sophomore guard Cade Lemcke (1.1 ppg, 0.3 rpg), was recruited to play for the Cavaliers. All three will be around to provide backcourt depth, though their playing time will likely be greatly reduced. At small forward, Gillen is again loaded with options. Williams, voted last year's ACC Rookie of the Year, spent most of his first year on campus playing out of position at power forward. Gillen hopes to move Williams to small forward this season, so 6-7, 245-pound freshman gem Travis Watson (16.0 ppg, 10.7 rpg at Oak Hill Academy/Mouth of Wilson, Va.), the top player in Virginia's recruiting class, will have a spot at power forward. Williams, an unheralded forward from Alabama, was amazing last year, almost always playing against bigger opponents. He led the team in rebounding, despite giving up so much height, but was able to use his quickness to his advantage. "Chris can certainly play the three spot as well as the four, because he is so versatile on the floor," Gillen said. "He's more comfortable facing the basket, but he can go inside and post up." If he does play at small forward, that puts Gillen in a quandary about how to use 6-6, 210-pound Willie Dersch (10.2 ppg, 2.8 rpg), the team's only senior. Dersch, a high school All-American who came to Virginia with high expectations, was a strong leader last season, but his career just hasn't gone as planned. Does Gillen play him regularly in his final season, or does he go ahead and start building his team for next year? "Willie is going to be a very important player for us," Gillen said. "He is very versatile. We're going to need for him to have another good season like he did a year ago, and hopefully step it up for his final year of college basketball." Inside, the Cavaliers still have only one player taller than 6-9. Last season, Virginia was out-rebounded by an average of nearly seven boards a game. The return of Ducharme, who has some experience banging with some of the ACC's top post players, should help resolve that lopsided statistic. Gillen also has some other options this year, including 6-8, 239-pound junior forward Stephane Dondon (14.2 ppg, 8.5 rpg at Collin County (Texas) Community College last year) and 6-10, 240-pound freshman center/forward Jason Rogers (18.3 ppg, 11.9 rpg at Robert E. Lee HS/Staunton, Va.). Dondon, a native of France, was the final player added in Gillen's fine recruiting class. "He is a power forward who is also comfortable facing the basket," Gillen said. "He can shoot the perimeter shot, score inside and rebound. He gives us some strength and athleticism that we need inside. I think he will compete for a starting job." There's already been talk that Rogers might redshirt this season, but that was before Hunter decided to leave school. The Cavaliers will likely need him, if only because he gives them some size they sorely need. Still, he needs to be stronger to play in the ACC. There is little question that Watson can help immediately. He was a co-captain of the Oak Hill team that finished 31-0 and finished No. 1 in USA Today's list of top 25 high school teams. "I felt he was the top player on the top team in the nation," Gillen said. "He's a great rebounder who outlets very well on the break. He's very unselfish and likes to pass the ball. I think Travis is going to be an impact player as a freshman." Gillen's biggest challenge and one of the primary reasons the Cavaliers probably won't crack the ACC's upper division just yet is fitting everyone into their proper roles and developing team chemistry. He still doesn't know how all his young players will handle his up-tempo style. But he certainly likes having more options. "Hopefully, with a lot more depth, quickness and athleticism, we'll be better adapted to play our up-tempo style. We recruited for that purpose, to get players who can press and run and move their feet. I think we will be better at our style of play." Gillen admits it won't be easy keeping everybody happy, but he thinks competition for playing time will make the Cavaliers better this year. "Competition never hurt anybody," Gillen said. "Competition is something you learn from and you grow from. It's not something you're afraid of or worry about. Competition brings out the best in competitors, and hopefully it will bring out the best in our team."
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