Nowhere to go but up for crumbling Cavaliers

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - Dave Leitao stood near the Virginia bench watching his team self-destruct, his arms folded in front of him, a look of disbelief on his face.
    There was none of the glaring that Leitao often uses to show his displeasure with his players, and very little foot-stomping to get their attention after a mistake.
    It was as if he had decided, finally, to see how low they could go, and the only thing that ultimately halted their plunge on Thursday night was the sound of the horn.
    Final score: Clemson 82, Virginia 51.
    These Cavaliers, just one season removed from sharing the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season title with North Carolina and picked to finish in the upper half of the league this year, have rarely been more inept than they were against the Tigers.
    While Clemson whipped the ball around and usually found someone toeing the 3-point line without a defender in site, the Cavaliers had trouble simply completing passes.
    In the first half, they had 14 turnovers and only eight field goals and were well on their way to their fifth straight loss and eighth in the last nine games.
    The Tigers, meantime, had eight 3-pointers and a 40-24 lead, and then spent halftime gassing up again, intent on not repeating their own recent implosion history.
    Last year, a much different Cavaliers team finished with a 15-0 run at Clemson, claiming a stunning 64-63 victory that the Tigers were not permitted to forget.
    “We invoked it before the game, we invoked it at halftime and again at the three-quarter mark,“ Tigers coach Oliver Purnell said of the loss, part of a Tigers free fall that saw them go from a dazzling 17-0 start to the season to a berth in the NIT.
    “If you let off the throttle at all in this league, anything can happen. So we invoked it, not so much from a revenge standpoint, but in terms of lessons learned.“
    And Virginia, by its own admission, offered little resistance.
    “We weren’t communicating on offense or defense, we weren’t really executing at all and everything was just spiraling downward and we didn’t fight it,“ All-ACC guard Sean Singletary said. “We didn’t have enough intestinal fortitude to fight it tonight.“
    They also don’t have much time to find it. The game was the first in a difficult stretch that finds them at Wake Forest on Saturday and home to No. 3 North Carolina on Tuesday. The Tar Heels will be highly motivated, too, having just lost to No. 2 Duke.
    As the final seconds ticked off the clock and Virginia’s end of the bench gang was given a chance to play, Singletary went down the Cavaliers bench with a message.
    “Just telling them that it’s not over,“ he said. “We’re definitely in a slump, but we’ve got eight games to play and anything can happen, so I was telling them to stick in there and just stick together and that we’re not as good as good as individuals.
    “We’re always going to be better as a team when we stick together.“
    Leitao said the game was the first time he saw his team display a lack of confidence, and that restoring it would be a priority as the team got back to work.
    They did that early Friday, before packing up and heading for Winston-Salem.
    “I think you get your confidence from doing the basics. The reason why teams practice 100 some-odd times a year is because repetition brings about confidence,“ Leitao said. “Confidence brings about results; results bring about victory.“
    Clemson guard K.C. Rivers, who hit eight of the Tigers’ school record-tying 16 3-pointers and scored a career-high 32 points, said Virginia looked beaten by halftime.
    Of late, the Tigers haven’t been the only ones to notice.
    “It’s like a virus right now,“ said Virginia co-captain Adrian Joseph, who scored 15 of the Cavaliers’ first 22 points. “We’re on the court and it seems like nobody wants to be out there. Other teams realize that and they take advantage of it.“
    And only the Cavaliers themselves can stop their downward spiral.
    “We’ve just got to play better,“ Singletary said. “It’s that simple.“