Cavaliers move into post-Singletary era

At last month’s ACC men’s basketball media day, Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez had a funny look on his face when he was asked about how he expected Virginia to fare this season without three-time All-ACC guard Sean Singletary.

He looked like a mischievous kid who had just snuck a quick peek at his Christmas presents.

“Can I tell you a secret?” asked Vasquez, breaking into a sheepish grin. “I’m very happy he’s gone. That man was unbelievable. He was just so good.

“To me, he was the best point guard in the league last year, without a doubt. He was real little, but had the biggest heart. If you put him on UNC, they probably would have won the national championship. He was unguardable.”

Yes, for the last three years — ever since coach Dave Leitao came aboard — Virginia has been blessed with one of the best players in the conference.

Singletary, now a rookie with the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, did it all for UVa.

Last season, he led the Cavaliers in points, assists, steals and free-throw percentage.

“He was their motor,” said Duke guard Gerald Henderson. “He made everything go.”

Actually, Singletary was the motor, the carburetor, the gear shifter, the power windows and all six discs in the CD changer.

When people talk about how Virginia will fare this season without Singletary, there are usually two schools of thought.

The first (and more popular) theory — as the media poll predicting UVa to finish last in the ACC would attest — is that the Cavaliers will struggle mightily to fill their former captain’s shoes.

The second is that Virginia will actually be better off without Singletary because it won’t be as reliant on just one player and might be more of a cohesive unit.

The correct theory may lie somewhere in the middle.

Leitao is the first to admit that many of his players deferred to Singletary over the past three years.

“That happens naturally on almost any team when you have a player as good as Sean or who is an experienced leading scorer or whatever,” said Leitao, whose team opens its season against VMI on Sunday. “Those are role definitions. It just so happened that his role over four years was as a primary scorer and an integral part of what was going on every possession.

“Everybody else’s role happened to be defined around that, and now one of the jobs that we have that is most important is to redefine some of those roles — how a guy can fit into a new increased or decreased role on this team and how it relates to a different locker room and a different group of guys.”

The hardest part about losing Singletary is the fact he was the point guard and had the ball in his hands for the majority of games.

The only natural point guard currently on Virginia’s roster is Sammy Zeglinski, who played in just eight games last season as a freshman before taking a medical redshirt.

How quickly Zeglinski — a former high school teammate of Singletary’s at William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia — can adjust to the college game will be huge.

“I think he has the physical ability to pull it off,” Leitao said, “and from a leadership standpoint that’s the thing you have to have — the ability to put people in the right positions constantly. You’ve got to be able to continue to do that in order to grow into that position positively.”

The nice thing about Zeglinski — the first player whom Leitao took a commitment from at the start of his tenure three years ago — is his unselfish style of play. Whereas Singletary looked for his own shot first and foremost, Zeglinski is a pass-first point guard in the truest sense of the phrase.

“I think Sammy thinks more about being more aggressive with his passes,” said Virginia senior Mamadi Diane. “When he penetrates, he’s looking to kick or dump down and distribute the ball more than anything.”

Zeglinski, Diane said, is the kind of guy you love to have on your team in a pickup game.

“[He] makes wings sprint harder and makes you curl into cuts faster, just knowing that he’s always looking for you at every opportunity,” Diane said.

Leitao’s other option at the point is junior Calvin Baker, who started in the team’s exhibition win over Shepherd last Sunday. At this point, Baker, recently named a tri-captain, is clearly the more accomplished and confident player of the two.

However, Baker — the team’s fourth-leading scorer last season after transferring from William & Mary — seems more suited to playing off the ball, and it remains to be seen whether he has the ingredients to run a team. The Newport News native is also attempting to play through a stress fracture in his foot.

Clearly, the largest void left by Singletary’s departure — in addition to intangibles — is offensive production. Last season, Singletary accounted for over 25 percent of the team’s points.

That means players such as Baker, Diane and sophomores Mike Scott, Jeff Jones and Mustapha Farrakhan will need to pick things up.

“It’s definitely a little weird not seeing him,” said Scott recently. “I mean, Sean Singletary was one of the best point guards in the league and the nation. We’re getting used to it, though”

Diane provided the most blunt assessment of how things might be without Singletary — at least initially.

“It’s going to be devastation,” he said, “but at the same time people don’t realize that he did have the ball a lot with him, so other players didn’t have that opportunity and now they really will.

“It’s an opportunity for a lot of other guys to step up and have bigger roles.”

Diane sounds as though he might even be a subscriber to Theory No. 2 — that Virginia has the potential to be better without their former star.

“There have been teams in the past, who have lost a great player and are then a much better team the year after,” Diane said. “I don’t know what that is — maybe just everybody feels that after that player leaves they have to step up more and become a better team.”

Vasquez wasn’t buying into that, though.

“They’re going to miss him. The fans will miss him, [but] I’m not going to miss him,” he said, laughing.