Duke overwhelms Virginia

For all 40 minutes of Sunday night’s game against Duke, Virginia sophomore Sylven Landesberg — suffering from a badly bruised right thigh, sat next to Brad Soucie — the school’s director of basketball operations.

Landesberg’s warm-up top never came off. Neither did the frustrated look on his face.

This spelled bad news for Virginia.

Without Landesberg in the game, UVa didn’t have a prayer against fifth-ranked Duke, losing its seventh straight, 67-49, in front of a crowd of 13,663 at the John Paul Jones Arena.

“We lost Sylven and were without Mike [Scott], too, because Mike didn’t play well tonight,” said Virginia freshman Assane Sene. “Without both of them, it was really hard for us to win.”

Landesberg sustained the injury in the loss at Miami on Tuesday night and couldn’t practice all week. Before Sunday’s game, Bennett asked Landesberg to show him a hard layup, and he couldn’t do it. That’s when Bennett made the decision to keep his leading scorer on the bench.

“He was dying to play,” Bennett said. “He knows we need him and that’s obvious when you watch us.

“But he couldn’t really go. If we had thrown him out there, it would have been bad for him, and he couldn’t have kept up.”

Duke (25-4, 12-2), which won its eighth straight, received 21 points from Kyle Singler and 20 from Jon Scheyer.

With Landesberg out, Virginia badly needed Scott to step up. However, Scott, who was coming off a dreadful 0-7 showing against Miami, laid another egg, going 0-6 with just one rebound in a season-low 12 minutes of action.

“I don’t what to tell you,” said Bennett, when asked about Scott’s funk. “I didn’t see it from Mike in this game.

“In a game like this, for us to even make it competitive, we needed a number of guys [to perform].”

Said Scott: “I just can’t buy a basket. It’s like there’s a lid up there. I don’t know what it is.”

Virginia (14-13, 5-9) didn’t notch its first basket of the game until almost five minutes in when Jerome Meyinsse scored on a jump hook.

Meyinsse, who scored a career-high 21 points, was one of the few bright spots.

Despite missing 12 of their first 14 shots, UVa trailed by just a 14-point margin at the break.

However, the Wahoos started the second half the same way they did the first. They went 5 minutes and 7 seconds without a field goal. By the time, Mustapha Farrakhan scored on a put-back basket off a Jontel Evans miss, the game was out of hand.

Evans, one of the few players who didn’t seem to back down against Duke, had three steals on the night. The freshman said that the team was optimistic about its chances, even after they learned they would be without Landesberg.

“The mindset was that we still could win,” Evans said. “It was still positive. One player was down — one of our best players on the team — but we still had to fight.”

Bennett had no regrets about not playing Landesberg.

“I’m trying to think long-term,” he said. “I don’t want him to irritate and aggravate that. Hopefully, Wednesday [at Boston College] he’ll be better and be able to play.”

Evans said the team is trying to stay united.

“Like coach Bennett said, if we lose the rest of these games or win them, we’re still a family and we have to stick together and finish the season out,” he said. “There will be better days. Just look forward to the future. That’s all I can say.”

Dunks

During a timeout, the Virginia men’s tennis team was honored for its recent ITA Indoor Championship. The title was the squad’s third straight. The team, however, will be without star Sanam Singh for its upcoming match against Texas. Singh, according to coach Brian Boland, is playing in the Davis Cup for his native India.