Effort isn’t there for Cavaliers

There’s a board in the Virginia locker room that lists several points of emphasis for Coach Dave Leitao’s basketball team.

One of them is to play with passion — a tenet that Leitao has believed in ever since he has been associated with the game of basketball.

For whatever reason, the Cavaliers didn’t get that message on Saturday when they lost for the fourth time in their last five outings. A passionless bunch, the Wahoos dropped a 58-56 home game to a mediocre-at-best Auburn team that improved to 5-5.

Meanwhile, UVa slumped to 4-4, its worst start since Leitao’s first season (2005-06).

The coach, often spotted displaying his displeasure on the court, was soft-spoken off it after getting little out of his team in front of a home crowd listed at slightly more than 11,000, an obviously inflated figure.

Talk about the passion

“Two things we emphasized were to execute a game plan and do it with a high level of passion,” Leitao said. “We didn’t sustain either and it obviously cost us in the beginning, it cost us in the middle, and it cost us late.”

The Cavs trailed 32-21 at the half and were down

42-30 with 15 minutes left in the game even though Leitao clearly lit up his team during the halftime talk.

Still, it seemed only a few got the message. The others must have had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads.

One thing became abundantly clear. If this team — which at this point doesn’t seem to have a bright future come ACC time — is going to do anything, then the freshmen are going to have to lead the way.

Freshman Sylven Landesberg got the message, although it didn’t pop up in his inbox until halftime. Better late than never.

Held to seven points in the first half (one field goal), Landesberg was so fired up when he came out for the second half that he wanted the ball in his hands every time down the floor.

A note to the rest of the Cavaliers — that’s called passion.

Sylven against the world

He finished with a team-high 22 points, the only UVa player to score in double figures. That hasn’t happened in almost exactly two years when the Cavs squeaked past Puerto Rico-Mayaguez in the San Juan Shootout.

We don’t want to go there. Believe me, if you had seen it firsthand like me and about 43 other people in the arena, you wouldn’t want to revisit that putrid display of basketball that set the game back all the way to peach baskets.

Even though Jeff Lebo’s Auburn team did everything in its power to keep Landesberg away from the basket, including fouling him what seemed like a thousand times, he still got the job done, including a 10 of 14 showing from the foul line.

Another freshman, point guard Sammy Zeglinski, turned it on for most of the second half after playing in a zombie-like state for the first 20 minutes.

Together, the firm of Landesberg, Zeglinski & Scott fought back and took the lead at 52-50 with 5:24 to play and held the lead until two Tigers treys from Bonusphere nearly sealed UVa’s doom with 82 seconds to go.

From there, the Cavs found ways to botch any hopes of cheating the Reaper.

After an 0 for 6 first half, Zeglinski finished with nine points and five assists, including a couple of nifty passes inside to a chomping-at-the-bit Mike Scott. Yes, Virginia, it is legal to toss the ball inside the painted area.

Meanwhile, veterans like Mamadi Diane and Jamil Tucker created a new statistic: dribbling around a lot without any dividends. Diane, who was expected to take up much of the scoring slack created by Sean Singletary’s departure, played 20 minutes, didn’t take a shot and had no rebounds and no assists. Tucker was 0 for 2 and played nine minutes of uninspiring basketball.

In other words, as you sit there drinking your morning coffee and juice, you can feel great that you scored just as many points yesterday as Diane and Tucker — nada.

Though he had nine points and four assists, Calvin Baker made us all wonder just what he was doing sometimes, dribbling into traffic heavier than Route 29 at rush hour, failing to pass and instead putting up a shot that had a snowball’s chance.

Give Lebo’s Tigers some credit. They double-teamed Scott the few times the ball was worked inside. They confused UVa’s motion by switching defenses a few times and Auburn played, well, with passion.

What a concept.

“They weren’t beating us with talent but they were more aggressive, punking us on the boards, and everything,” Landesberg pointed out. “We were passive on offense and defense.”

Note to Virginia: these meetings you’re having a couple of times a week at the arena, they’re not a gathering of the Red Hat Society. It’s basketball. It’s dog eat dog.

Yes, Auburn punked you guys because you let ’em. And if you think the Tigers punked you, just wait until you visit Chapel Hill, Durham, College Park, Winston-Salem, and a few other choice destinations in the ACC.

Auburn isn’t very good, but you have to give them one thing. The Tigers play hard and they listen to their coach. Sometimes that will get you by when talent, or a lack thereof, won’t.

If this bunch of Cavaliers doesn’t get its act together soon, it’s going to be a very long winter. In a world of punk or be punked, Virginia’s players should listen to Landesberg talk about how he survived basketball in the playgrounds of New York City.

Right now, the Wahoos are being viewed by the outside world as a bunch of softies.

In the jungle that is the ACC, softies last about as long as Paris Hilton’s singing career.

With a road trip to Georgia Tech only a week away, and only one more warm-up game scheduled in between, the Cavaliers better start toughening up.