Virginia returns from a miserable trip to the Bahamas to meet Manhattan on Tuesday night in Charlottesville, Va.
The Cavaliers (3-2) were crushed by top-25 opponents Tennessee and St. John’s at the Baha Mar Championship, losing consecutive games by 22-plus points for the first time since January 2008.
Those setbacks nearly 17 years ago happened under then-coach Dave Leitao, whose successor, Tony Bennett, never endured what happened to interim coach Ron Sanchez’s squad in Nassau.
After winning their first three games under Sanchez, who took over after Bennett’s sudden retirement last month, Virginia fell 64-42 to then-No. 11 Tennessee on Thursday and 80-55 to then-No. 22 St. John’s on Friday.
“This is a great test,” Sanchez said after the loss to the Red Storm, in which the Cavaliers committed 16 turnovers and allowed St. John’s to shoot 52.5 percent from the field.
“You know, you go up against two of the top teams in the country, some of the warts are going to show,” Sanchez said.
Leading scorer Isaac McKneely (12.4 points per game) scored a combined 14 points on 4-of-15 shooting in the two lopsided losses.
“How they’re going to handle it is TBD, you know,” Sanchez said. “This is part of the journey. One thing I told them is that it’s a long season, and you know, the one thing that we did here is, we learned a lot about ourselves. The question is, how are we going to use that knowledge? Are we going to grow, you know, or are we going to wallow in it?”
Virginia looks to bounce back against a Manhattan squad that is 0-2 on the road but coming off an exciting 80-79 win Friday against Army. Shaquil Bender stole an inbounds pass and Wesley Robinson hit a runner as time expired to lift the Jaspers (3-2).
“There’s things that really good basketball programs do,” said Jaspers coach John Gallagher. “One of them is you never give up. You play it to the end. … They stayed even-keeled, so that’s the first feeling. It’s like, âOh my God, we have something here.'”
Will Sydnor leads four Manhattan players in double figures with 15.4 points per game, followed by Bender (14.8), Devin Dinkins (11.2) and Jaden Winston (10.0).
