Cavs come up short in Raleigh

RALEIGH, N.C. — One of the reasons why Virginia coach Dave Leitao has gone with a starting lineup featuring the offensively challenged Solomon Tat, the inexperienced Assane Sene and the occasionally

erratic Calvin Baker is the “energy” that they usually bring.

Until Saturday’s game at N.C. State, Leitao liked the tone that the three players had helped set in consecutive wins over Clemson and Virginia Tech.

Well, save for freshman Sylven Landesberg, Leitao may want to his reassess the unit that started the Cavaliers’ 72-67 loss in front of a crowd of 16,353 at the RBC Center.

Virginia started Saturday’s matinee by scoring just one basket in the first six minutes and getting behind by 18 points. When the second half began, the Wahoos, featuring the same lineup, fell victim to a 17-4 N.C. State spurt.

Between the pair of Wolfpack runs, Virginia played decent ball, cutting a 17-point second-half deficit all the way down to one.

But decent isn’t good enough to win on the road in the ACC.

A couple of clutch free throws by senior Courtney Fells with six seconds left helped N.C. State snap Virginia’s modest two-game winning streak.

“I don’t think that the group, as a unit, came out with the same kind of energy that we’ve had recently,” Leitao admitted, “but then guys came off the bench and didn’t give us energy boosts, either.

“So it wasn’t specifically just the starting lineup, but obviously I’ll have to examine that because we didn’t do what we needed to. But at the same point in time there were a lot of others guys who weren’t locked in.”

Landesberg led the team in scoring for the seventh time in the last eight games. After getting off to a slow start, he finished with 16 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

Senior Mamadi Diane, who hadn’t played in the team’s last four games, had 11 points, including a jumper with 48 seconds left that cut N.C. State’s lead to three.

A pair of Landesberg free throws cut the deficit to one point with 8.7 seconds, but Virginia was forced to foul Fells, who answered with two free throws.

Leading by three, N.C. State — not wanting to surrender a game-tying 3-pointer — intentionally fouled Landesberg on UVa’s next possession. The freshman missed the first free throw, effectively ending the game.

“We’re obviously disappointed,” Leitao said. “Guys in the locker room are disappointed. We had opportunities to win today and did not.”

In the first half, Virginia committed five turnovers and missed five of its first six shots within the first six minutes.

“We got back to digging ourselves in holes,” Leitao said, “specifically in the first half [and] for some of the same reasons we thought we had got rid of — in terms of energy and attention to detail.”

The Cavaliers (9-14, 3-9 ACC) did an atrocious job of defending the 3-point line. N.C. State, behind Dennis Horner and C.J. Williams (two treys each), stormed out to a 24-8 lead.

However, Virginia, using a full-court press, slowly chipped away at the deficit.

A Jamil Tucker layup off an inbounds pass from Calvin Baker pulled UVa to within a deuce before State guard Farnold Degand hit a driving layup at the buzzer for a 33-29 lead at the break.

It seemed as if Virginia went into the locker room with most of the momentum. However, that wasn’t necessarily the case, according to Leitao.

“What worried me was all the time that we had spent in the first half getting down — or specifically coming back — I didn’t see a mindset change by either team,” Leitao said. “So, although we came back, there were still come changes that we needed to make in order to forge ahead. I thought it cost us again in the second half — coming out with the same mindset, which really wasn’t assertive and paying attention to detail as we needed to.”

A sweet baseline drive and dish from Fells to McCauley underneath quickly pushed the deficit to 11. Later, as Virginia struggled to score, McCauley scored on a putback of his own shot to increase the bulge to 17.

UVa, behind Diane, mounted another comeback. The senior co-captain scored seven of his points in just over a minute to bite into the margin — but it wasn’t enough.

“We’ve done that a lot this year — where we get down and then we fight back,” Baker said. “Today, I just felt like we gave the game away. We didn’t come out with the same enthusiasm that we had been playing with over the last couple of weeks.

“We have to grow up from that. We have to learn that success is hard work and you have to be ready every day. Playing in this league, you can’t take any days off — and I feel like that’s what we did.”

Dunks

Virginia hosts Miami Thursday night. … Mike Scott had just one rebound in 23 minutes. … sophomore Mustapha Farrakhan played for the first time in three games. He didn’t score in two minutes of action. … Landesberg and Fells were exchanging a lot of trash talk in the game’s final seconds as they shot free throws. “The competitors in us came out,” Landesberg said. “I just tried to make him miss some free throws. It was back and forth.”