Diane ends college career on a high note

ATLANTA — Ever since Mamadi Diane arrived at Virginia, the big question revolved around his consistency. When was he going to be able to string two good performances together?
Well, how about the final two games of his college career.
Fresh off a scintillating 23-point performance on Senior Day last Saturday, Diane poured in a season-high 24 in the loss to Boston College on Thursday.
If there were any professional scouts watching Diane, they had to be thinking to themselves, “Hey, where has this guy been?”
Diane did a little bit of everything. He drilled 4 of 6 3-pointers — a couple from a few feet behind the line. He swooped to the hoop with floaters and
graceful drives to the basket. He showed off his athleticism with an alley-oop.
Diane said he definitely plans on pursuing a pro career.
“I love playing basketball,” he said. “I love everything about it. I’m just going to try and play. I’m still young. That’s what my dad tells me — to just enjoy it and see where it takes me.”
In his postgame remarks, Virginia coach Leitao thanked Diane and
fellow senior Tunji Soroye for their contributions to the program.
“They’ve given the university some marvelous moments and great memories that they can take with them,” Leitao said.
“They can take the highs and lows and hopefully use that in the next stage of their life and be better people for it. If that has happened to both of them, then they can look back at this experience as a real positive one.”
TO’s
Turnovers, as they have been all season, were once again a major issue in Thursday’s loss. Virginia committed 20 to BC’s 14.
Leitao said cutting down on the miscues will be an emphasis going into next season.
“It’s a number of reasons,” he said. “It’s not just passing to a guy and it gets intercepted. It’s a travel. It’s a bobble. It’s a dropped ball, a strip — a lot of different things that we have to look at and attack.
“Some of it we’re pretty confident will be diminished, some of it we’ll have to work real hard to diminish.”
The future
Leitao spoke optimistically about the growth of some of his youngsters. Six of the players who saw action against BC were freshmen or sophomores.
“I knew coming into the season that we were going have to try and make up for a lack of experience,” Leitao said. “We had some areas where we got better and guys developed pretty decently and then some areas where we need to get a whole lot improvement. I don’t think we’re any different from a lot of teams.”
The Lars factor
Somewhere in Greece, Lars Mikalauskas is said to be earning a living as a professional player. Diane, who was quite close with Mikalauskas — they roomed as freshmen — said the team missed “The Pride of Lithuania” this year.
“Lars was a good player,” Diane said. “It was tough not having him around.”
Mike
One player who says he will definitely be around next year is
sophomore forward Mike Scott. Despite a topsy-turvy season in which he was removed from the starting lineup, Scott says he has no plans to transfer. “I’m definitely coming back,” he said.
Jumper wanted
Virginia freshman Sylven Landesberg isn’t going to rest on his laurels. The ACC Rookie of the Year said he will be hitting the gym harder than ever.
“I want to work on hitting my 3’s much more consistently and taking it stronger to the rack,” he said. “It will make it that much harder for people to guard me.”
Landesberg said there is hope for the Virginia program.
“This year was tough,” he said. “I know I was surprised. We were a lot better than our record showed. We were a young team this year. We took our bumps and bruises. Next year we’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”