UVA Rolls Over NC State

By Whitelaw Reid
Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: February 24, 2008

Heading into Sunday afternoon’s game against N.C. State, Virginia coach Dave Leitao waxed poetic about Wolfpack freshman J.J. Hickson.

“He’s got a tremendous feel for what he’s trying to do,” Leitao said. “He has a pair of the strongest hands you’ll see. He swallows every basketball around him. That’s what makes him the rebounder he is. He’s strong and has a touch.

“You can put a check mark next to a lot of different categories of things that he does very well regardless of the fact that he’s a freshman.”

But at John Paul Jones Arena on Sunday, that’s exactly what Hickson looked like - a freshman.

The 6-foot-9, 242-pounder, who came into the game leading State in scoring (15.2 PPG) and rebounding (8.7 RPG), looked nothing like the player that some people have said ought to head to the NBA after this season.

Virginia’s stingiest defense of the season was the reason for that.

UVa notched a JPJ-record 16 steals, forced State into a whopping 25 turnovers and held Hickson to seven points en route to a convincing 78-60 victory in front of an announced crowd of 13,630.

The victory, Virginia’s second straight, pulled the Cavs to within a game of 11th place Florida State in the ACC.

“I’m not going to judge one way or another as to where this puts us or what it does,” said Leitao, when asked about the team’s mini-surge after losing seven straight. “I know we have a ton of work to do. As of today we’re still not anywhere closer to where we were before today. We’re in 12th place out of 12 teams. We have our work cut out from here on out.”

Virginia senior Sean Singletary was the game’s high scorer with 21 points. He also added six assists.

But the captain’s biggest contributions came on the defensive end. Singletary had a career-high seven steals and set the tone with his feistiness.

“You could just tell how passively they were dribbling the ball,” said Virginia sophomore Calvin Baker. “Sean was really aggressive on defense. He could also tell, too. That was as aggressive as I’ve ever seen him play on the ball.”

Singletary, who had missed the last two days of practice while he attended the funeral of a family friend, said it was a collective effort.

“We had good on-the-ball pressure,” Singletary explained, “but the key was the guys off the ball and how they were guarding their man. N.C. State had to make decisions and with our pressure it was tough for them to do that.”

The Wolfpack (15-12, 4-9) looked nothing like a team that boasts at least three future NBA players. They committed 17 turnovers in the first half alone.

After Brandon Costner hit a jumper to pull N.C. State to 17-13, the Wolfpack totally disintegrated.

State committed four turnovers in less than four minutes as Virginia went on a 9-0 run to take a 26-13 lead. The spurt was highlighted by a Jeff Jones steal and pass to Jamil Tucker for an easy fastbreak layup.

“I’m really at a loss for words,” said N.C. State big man Ben McCauley, “because we were really excited about this game. We had a great week of practice and the team was ready, but we didn’t really execute.”

Virginia (13-12, 3-9) closed the half by outscoring State 12-3 to claim a 38-18 lead heading into the break.

One of the prettiest plays of the stanza came when Calvin Baker (15 points) left a pass behind his back for a trailing Adrian Joseph who scored in transition.

Hickson, meanwhile, didn’t score his first basket until just a little over six minutes were left in the contest. He finished with only five rebounds and turned the ball over four times.

“I think, along with Tyler Hansbrough, he presents as big of a challenge on the block as anybody that this league has,” Leitao said. “To be able to keep him off balance - especially in that first half - was a credit to not just the post players that were playing, but the team defense.”

The Wolfpack, who lost their fifth straight, never got any closer than 13 points in the second half.

With the victory, Virginia - which doesn’t play again until a visit to Miami on Saturday - won back-to-back ACC games for the first time this season.

“We’ve been right there in every game,” Singletary said. “[We] just have to continue to have confidence. We played real well today and that gives us confidence going into the next game.”

Dunks

Singletary’s seven steals tied a school record with four other players and were the most since Curtis Staples had seven in 1995…The 6-foot-2 Baker had a game-high six rebounds…Tunji Soroye (back injury) suited up but did not play…N.C. State’s 18 first-half points were the fewest by a team in JPJ history.