A truly offensive showing

Halftime in the Virginia locker room was no place for the faint of heart.

Coach Dave Leitao, who can bite like a rattlesnake when he’s angered, was in the faces of his Cavaliers basketball team. They trailed visiting Florida State 30-16 and were lucky that it wasn’t 50-16.

No UVa squad had scored fewer points in the first half of a game since 1993, when Connecticut led the Cavaliers by a 44-15 count at the half after starting point guard Cory Alexander suffered a broken ankle in the opening minutes. Leitao was at that game, too, but on the winning side in a 77-36 UConn victory.

Off-target from the start

However, on Saturday the Cavs couldn’t have tossed a beach ball into the ocean had they been standing on the shore. They connected on only 3 of 22 shots in the first half and were fortunate that the Seminoles hadn’t blown them out of John Paul Jones Arena.

You have to go all the way back to Feb. 19, 1997, to find the last Cavalier team that made only three field goals in a half. That’s when then-coach Jeff Jones’ team connected on a mere three shots in the second half at N.C. State, but still won, 55-46.

From the opening moments Saturday, you knew something was wrong, and it didn’t get any better. Down 24-5 and with a smattering of boos from the 10,981 in attendance, Virginia was only 1 of 19 from the field with less than three minutes left until halftime.

Feel free to insert your favorite Three Stooges sound effects here.

First-half flaws

Leitao must get tired of coming up with a new halftime speech game after game as the Cavaliers continue to dig themselves into an inescapable hole in the first 20 minutes of games.

“Coach told us it was a gut check,” said freshman guard Sylven Landesberg. “We were going to man up now or never. [The Seminoles] were embarrassing us in our gym, so we were either going to turn the game around or it was going to get worse.”

Things couldn’t get much worse, nor could the Cavaliers’ performance. They actually fought back just as they had at Maryland on Tuesday night when they nearly erased a 17-point deficit at College Park, but couldn’t finish the comeback.

Unlike against the Terps — where UVa clawed back to within two points in the second half — the closest the Cavs could come against FSU was 13 a couple of times, only to have the Seminoles connect from Bonusphere to stretch the lead.

That’s what happens when the ACC’s worst defense lives up to its reputation.

The Cavs haven’t exactly been losing to offensive juggernauts the past few days. Maryland is the worst shooting team in the conference and Florida State is ranked 10th, just a mere percentage point higher than — you guessed it — UVa.

Yet, the Terps converted 53.7 percent of their shots against Virginia (more than 11 percentage points higher than their average), and Florida State shot 50 percent (51.6 percent in the second half), which is only the third time in 20 games the Noles have pulled that off this season.

Even the Cavaliers were startled at their ineptness when they looked back on the numbers following the game.

“That was the first time I’ve ever seen that,” said junior point guard Calvin Baker of the 1 for 19 start. “We were getting open shots and open layups, but nothing was going for us. That was crazy to me.”

Even more puzzling was that the players confessed that Leitao had preached to them every day since the Maryland loss that they needed to get off to faster starts.

No one can really put their finger on the problem. Landesberg, who ended up scoring 24 points (14 for 14 at the free throw line), theorized that the team comes out focused on defense and not offense, then finding itself trailing considerably at the half, reemerges with offense on the brain.

“We have to use both of those mindsets and put it together,” he said, looking frustrated with Virginia’s 7-9 record, 1-4 in the ACC.

Leitao, who starts mostly freshmen and sophomores, readily blames his team’s youth, its inexperience for the shortcomings.

Landesberg agreed that the team is young, but doesn’t want to use that as a crutch any longer.

“I don’t think we should use that excuse any more,” Landesberg said. “We’re far into the season now. We know what we have to do. Florida State has a lot of freshmen (six) on their roster. We’ve got to start learning quicker than we have.”

The Seminoles actually have more freshman starts (40) than the Cavaliers (35).

Leitao said he warned his team about FSU’s defensive prowess, particularly its effectiveness in the early stages of games this season. The Seminoles, especially senior point guard Toney Douglas, did a superb job of clogging the passing lanes — but as Landesberg aptly pointed out, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

“We should have been back-dooring them,” he said.

Didn’t happen.

Instead the Cavaliers’ tailspin continued. It was the fourth straight loss and the fifth over the last six games, the only triumph coming over a hapless Brown team. Too bad there aren’t any more Rent-A-Victims appearing on the remaining schedule.

After taking an inexplicable week off before they play another game, the Cavaliers’ next two weeks worth of opponents is a bit of a murderer’s row: at Duke, home against Boston College, at North Carolina, at Florida State, home against Clemson, home against Virginia Tech.

Yes, you counted right. There’s three top 10’ers in that group.

Should the Cavs, loaded with guys making their first trip to Durham, continue to display this type of

ineptitude, they may just melt into a puddle of goo under the pressure of Cameron Indoor Stadium.

In a season filled with embarrassments such as a home loss to Liberty, escaping by the skin of their teeth against VMI and Radford, and now a blaring losing streak in the ACC, what will the month of February hold for the Cavaliers?

Lest we forget, they were picked last in the ACC for a reason.

Still, they haven’t given up the fight.

“This week without a game is a good thing,” Baker said. “It will give us a chance to clear our minds. No one has given up hope. I know these eight days are going to be critical to our success.”

Or failure.