Chase away the context — force things into a vacuum — and Virginia, judging only by a three-game stretch from Feb. 3-15, looked like a solid basketball team.
There was the 73-57 road drubbing of Pittsburgh and the 75-61 home shellacking of Georgia Tech, breezy wins against mid-conference teams. There was also the 73-70 road win over Virginia Tech, the Cavaliers the aggressors from the outset, holding on against the plucky home rivals. Ignore the mounds of contrary evidence, and things might have looked downright cheery.
The grim record, however, is hard to ignore (13-14, 6-10 ACC), especially since it further deteriorated again in the losses that followed the winning streak — an expected blowout against No. 3 Duke and a large defeat at North Carolina. Yet the fleeting, three-game run summoned murmurs — about Interim Coach Ron Sanchez’s future, about what had changed and, behind it all, about where the program goes from here. Four reporters discuss.
How heavily should Sanchez be considered for the full-time job?
Michael Liebermann, Sports Editor: Listen, this has been a horrible season. There’s no way around that. The last time this program had a season this bad, the current players were mostly too young to grasp the rules of basketball. Sanchez — no matter how raw a deal he received, no matter how well he’s kept the team together — is tethered to that reality. But he does have the team peaking, relatively speaking, at the right time. And many of his guys are playing the best basketball of their lives. He should get at least an honest look.
Emory Huffman, Senior Associate: As it stands, Sanchez should not be considered for the permanent job. But isn’t it a bit premature to render full judgment? I would say so. As it stands — with no wins over any of the top seven ACC teams, no NCAA Tournament hopes and little optimism with the ACC Tournament on the horizon — Virginia should go in another direction. But should the Cavaliers inexplicably end the season with wins over top ACC opponents and a run in the ACC Tournament, the decision about Sanchez would suddenly become much more difficult.
Ben Istvan, Senior Writer: Don’t listen to Georgia Tech Coach Damon Stoudamire — Virginia’s exit from the ACC Tournament next month, whenever it comes, should be Sanchez’s last game as the leader of this program. I’m glad he saved the season from complete disaster, but a 6-10 mark in the ACC and 11 double-digit losses is still pretty close to that. Virginia won a national championship six years ago and played in the ACC Tournament final in 2023. It can, and should, attract better coaching talent.
Thomas Baxter, Staff Writer: A full search is still in order, but Virginia is not the only program saying that. With a handful of other ACC schools also searching for a new coach, as well as teams in other power conferences, the market for those top mid-major coaches is going to be intense. What Virginia has that many of those other struggling programs do not is an interim coach who has proven that he is capable of coaching winning basketball. Should no candidate jump off the page, giving Sanchez a real chance to show who he is as a coach is far from the worst decision the school can make.
Who is a viable coaching candidate you’d like to see in consideration?
ML: There’s a chance, of course, at snagging a big name off the coaching carousel. But most likely, this is about finding the mid-major guy who’s waiting for a shot on the big stage. Princeton’s Mitch Henderson is one of those guys. He’s not-so-quietly doing a pretty darn good job up there in the Ivy League, with seven 20-win seasons since taking the job in 2011. That includes three straight seasons with 23 or more wins and a 2023 run to the Sweet 16. Henderson is 49 years old and in his 13th season at Princeton. This could be his moment to level up.
EH: Virginia needs two things in a head coach — youth and experience. Those things need not be mutually exclusive, and Samford’s Bucky McMillan has both. At just 41 years of age, McMillan already has five seasons under his belt as Samford’s head coach, with a 98-49 overall record. Last season, his Bulldogs went 29-6 and earned an NCAA Tournament bid, nearly defeating then-No. 4 seed Kansas. The 2024-25 season marks his fourth straight 20-win season at Samford. Why wait for another top program to nab McMillan when he could usher in the next great era of Virginia basketball?
BI: Ryan Odom is clearly a frontrunner. Seventy miles south of Charlottesville, he has VCU at 22-5 and on top of the Atlantic 10. The Rams are 2-0 against ACC teams, too. And this isn’t anything new — Odom is 213-125 in his head coaching career, which includes three NCAA Tournament appearances at three different schools. The second of those appearances, in 2018, saw Odom’s UMBC team make history as the first No. 16 seed to win a first-round game with their herculean victory against — ahem. Anyways, Odom’s number should be the first one Athletic Director Carla Williams dials this offseason.
TB: When Tony Bennett came to Virginia, he did so as a young coach only a couple years removed from winning National Coach of the Year. None of the recent winners of that award are likely to be on the market, but the job 43-year old Drake Coach Ben McCollum has done in his first year coaching Division I basketball, which recently earned him a spot on the award’s watch list, merits some attention. Coming to the MVC after 15 years coaching Division II’s Northwest Missouri State, McCollum has the Bulldogs at 24-3, with marquee wins over Miami, Vanderbilt and Kansas State. We could be witnessing the rapid rise of a truly special coach, and Virginia would be foolish to not even consider inquiring.
What clicked for this team during that three-game win streak?
ML: Andrew Rohde is playing the best basketball of his life since the calendar turned. So are Dai Dai Ames, Isaac McKneely, Anthony Robinson and Blake Buchanan. This is about individual players making strides. Many of these guys have, it’s true, faltered in the last two games — there’s a point to be made about the schedule — but these are all players who struggled earlier in the season against weak opposition.
EH: Physicality in the paint means everything at the Division 1 level. Sure, three-point shooting is critical, especially for this team. More important, though, are second-chance opportunities and points. Rebounds create those opportunities. The emergence of Robinson as a dominant presence on the inside and the continued improvement of Buchanan have both contributed in major ways to Virginia’s recent success.
BI: I hate to rain on the parade, but … the schedule? Look, Virginia has certainly played better in recent weeks, much thanks to significant improvement in its guard play. But the Cavaliers have yet to beat a team with a winning conference record, and their recent jolt came against a slew of similarly porous opponents. Virginia is in the middle of a four-game stretch against several of the ACC’s best outfits, and you’ve seen the results thus far.
TB: Every year we talk about a team that begins to gel at the right time, that finds its stride late in the season and rises to the occasion. We usually talk about those teams as ones that were good and found a way to be great. But here, that same thing has happened to make a bad team serviceable. Maybe that is Sanchez’s coaching, maybe not, but what we are seeing is not just individuals stepping up or the opposition making the team look good, but rather the team beginning to look and play like one unit.
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