UVa Blogger

News came down today that Jamil Tucker has been dismissed from the team. This is disappointing news indeed- not just for the team’s play but for Jamil personally. No news (or even rumor worth mentioning) on the reason, but it seems to be academics related.

Here’s hoping Jamil can get a degree (maybe at Tech or Maryland!) and carve out a lil career playing overseas and learning to speak European.

A great story about K.T. Harrell in today’s Daily Progress talking about the season he’s having, his commitment to UVa and Tony Bennett, and the chances of him being named a McDonald’s All-American:

“We’ve had some folks call from the McDonald’s All-American committee.

Exciting stuff for K.T. and UVa. Even better, he loves coach Bennett and UVa:

It’s all about Virginia.

Welcome Keylon Tobias!!!

Zach Berman has my dream job over at the Washington Post, he’s the Cavaliers Journal blogger which is awesome. As you might expect, a lot of Zach’s time has been consumed lately with the UVa football coaching search and hiring of Mike London (Yay!), but Zach was nice enough to take my basketball question (mine is the third question down, I’m the gentleman from Leesburg).

It’s probably not kosher for me to post that segment of the chat, so instead, I’ll link to it and post a picture of Ralph Sampson from back in the day. Enjoy!

Cavalier Journal Chat 12/8/09

$ean $ingletary is doin his thing in Spain. Sabre user Guy Caballero comes up with some good stuff on our favorite PG’s adventure overseas.
Sean plays for Caja Laboral which is currently third place in the Spanish League and vying for a place in the Euroleague championships.
He’s steadily building his statline (right now after 8 games, he’s averaging 4 pts, 3 boards, and 2 assists) but he’s sure to increase his numbers as he becomes a bigger part of the team.

Euroleague.tv has some nice highlights from Caja Laboral’s recent game against Roma. Sean looks great!
Thanks for the hook up Guy!
Caja Laboral vs. Roma 12/2/09

This was a well played game by the Hoos. We got good points from three players (Sylven, Sammy, and Jeff Jones), Jontel Evans played some quality minutes, notched some points, and played good D, and Sene had some nice moments on D. The game was great until the last 7 seconds when we decided to let Auburn go coast to coast and score the winning basket .
Here are my notes.

-Sammy Zeglinski has really found his shot this season (so far). I hope he can continue this when we get into ACC play.

-Good for Will Sherrill getting the start. BUT how does a walk on start over a recruited 7 footer? Why is Sene not starting and not seeing much time? Is his ankle hurt still?

-Jontel Evans makes some great plays. Though he’s still a freshman and prone to freshman mistakes, you can tell he’s going to develop into a tough PG. He had some nice drives to the basket tonight and played some good defense.

Read the rest of this entry »

7 games into the young season, there are still many unanswered questions- one of them is how does Tristan Spurlock fit into Tony Bennett’s system. We haven’t seen much of TS- he’s played in just 4 games for a total of 21 minutes and 6 points. A heralded player coming out of high school, many Hoo fans (including your’s truly) thought Tristan would get more time.

For a lot of coaches, including Tony Bennett, performance in practice gets you game time. Perhaps Tristan is still learning how to practice as a D1 player. In this world of instant gratification, we expect a heralded 18 year old player to be able to make the jump immediately. Maybe Tristan is still getting accustomed to the speed and strength of legit college competition. Either way, I wouldn’t be too discouraged by Tristan’s lack of time and production 7 games into the game.

Our man Zach Berman has a good blog post up on this-
Spurlock still without spot in rotation

Norm Nolan is one of my favorite Hoos and played during our most recent successful era. Matthew Allinson from The Real Athlete Blog has a nice interview with Norm (apparently he’s been dropping 20 and 10’s all over the world). That’s awesome- eventhough Norm’s NBA dream didn’t work out, he’s managed to carve out a nice career playing hoops and living abroad.

Not much new in this piece, just a couple blurbs from Mike Scott and Tony Bennett on the game vs. PSU. Some words about defense (good in the first half, not as good in the second) and Mike’s performance (great in the first half, not as much in the second). We wondered in the previous post about why they weren’t getting Mike the ball after halftime- perhaps PSU made some adjustments to cover him better in the paint (what a novel idea!).

Anyway, enjoy this story from Whitey Reid.
Scott hopes to produce for 40 minutes

The ACC never ever ever loses to the Big 10 in this challenge, though this might be the year. The Hoos didn’t help the conference out last night versus an underrated Penn State team. Going into last night, most UVa fans probably didn’t know much about PSU or their big dog Talor Battle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zach Berman of the Cavaliers Journal reports that Jamil Tucker practiced with the team on Friday and will be present for our game vs. Penn State on Monday (in the Big 10-ACC Challenge) but will not play.
As has been discussed here, Jamil’s addition to Tony Bennett’s offense is both much needed and will add a nice dimension with his size and outside shooting ability.

Alright Jamil!

Thanks Zach!