UVa To Play Friday In NCAA Tournament

Virginia Athletics Media Relations Official Release

The Virginia men's basketball team is returning to the NCAA Tournament.

It was announced Sunday (March 11) that UVa (22-9) is the No. 10 seed in the West Region. The Cavaliers will face No. 7 seed Florida (23-10) in a second-round game played in Omaha, Neb., at CenturyLink Center Omaha on Friday, March 16. Game time will be 2:10 p.m. ET and the game will be televised on TNT.

The winner of the game will meet either No. 2 seed Missouri or No. 15 seed Norfolk State in the third round.

The other pod of teams competing in Omaha include teams from the Midwest Region. Those games are No. 2 seed Kansas vs. No. 15 seed Detroit and No. 7 seed St. Mary's vs. No. 10 seed Purdue.

Virginia is making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2007 when the Cavaliers advanced to the second round in Columbus, Ohio. UVa was a No. 4 seed that season and defeated Albany 84-57 in the first round before losing 77-74 to Tennessee in the second round.

This is Virginia's 17th NCAA Tournament appearance and the Cavaliers have compiled an all-time record of 22-16 in the tournament. UVa advanced to the NCAA Tournament's Final Four in 1981 and 1984. It's the first time Virginia has been a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Virginia and Florida have met just once in men's basketball. The Cavaliers defeated the Gators 62-56 in the semifinals of the 1992 National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

"First and foremost, the opportunity to get in and have a chance to play on was important," Virginia head coach Tony Bennett said. "When you see a team like Florida, you know they have been there and done that. They have great guard play and the experience of Coach Donovan. You know if you are going to be a 10 seed, you are going to play a very good team. I know they just played Kentucky close in the [SEC] tournament. You hope the ACC prepares us for this. We are very thankful and realize we are going to have to play some good basketball to have a chance to advance."

For the full news release, click here. For all the latest news on the Cavaliers and the tournament, check out Sabre NewsLink, updated 365 days a year with links to articles on your Hoos!

This Week In Recruiting

Barring a last minute change, Good Counsel (Olney, MD) quarterback Brendan "Whitey" Marshall will make an unofficial visit to Virginia on Wednesday. It's likely that the 6'5", 210-pound junior will verbally commit to the Cavaliers before heading home. Whatever the result, we'll have coverage of Marshall's visit on Wednesday.

This week, be sure to check out an EDGE profile of 6'6", 280-pound junior Sadiq Olanrewaju, an offensive tackle prospect out of Salisbury School in Connecticut. Connecticut, Rutgers, Temple and UVa have offered Olanrewaju, who is also drawing interest from Maryland and Penn State.

On the basketball recruiting front I hope to have more from Brandan and B.J. Stith, who last Saturday helped the Brunswick Bulldogs (Lawrenceville, VA) to a second consecutive Virginia Group AA Division 3 State Championship. B.J., a sophomore, has committed to Virginia, while Brandan, a junior, is considering an offer from the Hoos.

Highlights of the Stith brothers from the state title game can be seen on SabreTV. Just click here!

Also this week, I hope to catch up with the University of Virginia's 2012 class. 6'8" forward Evan Nolte capped off an outstanding career in style last Friday night, scoring 16 points in helping Milton (Alpharetta, GA) capture the Georgia Class AAAAA State Championship over Savannah. Nolte started all four years for David Boyd's squad, which has reached the state final each of the past four years.

Chris Horne, our resident recruiting expert, provides updates throughout the week for EDGE subscribers about UVa's commitments and recruiting targets in football and men's basketball. To sign up for an EDGE subscription, please check out the Sabre EDGE Sign Up and Information Page. If you're already on board as an EDGE subscriber, click the links below to catch up on recruiting.

Sabre EDGE recruiting updates since the last SabreMail ...

Recruiting Notes: Commitment Coming Soon?
UVa will host at least two class of 2013 targets in the coming week, including Good Counsel (Olney, MD) junior quarterback Brendan Marshall. Read the latest on Marshall, who is a heavy UVa lean, as well as an offensive line prospect expected to be in Charlottesville next weekend.

Ocean Lakes Notes: Good News For Harold
Ocean Lakes (Virginia Beach, VA) has produced some serious college talent over the past several years, highlighted last year by UVa-bound U.S. Army All-American Eli Harold. Dolphins head coach Chris Scott took some time to update the latest with the 4-star senior defensive end and provide a look into the Dolphins' class of 2013.

More recent recruiting updates on The Sabre ...

• 2013 Profile: All-State Lineman Donta Wilkins
• Rhodes Gears Up For Summer Camps
• Brunswick Captures Second Straight State Title (blog)
• Milton Wins Title (blog)

Manage your healthcare the Way you want at Carilion Clinic. When you need specialized care, the doctors and nurses at Carilion Clinic are committed to one goal: getting you back to living your life.

Imagine undergoing surgery with barely a scar to show for it. Or bouncing back from hip replacement surgery in weeks instead of months. Or having cancer treatments that don't interfere with your plans for the day. All are possible today at Carilion Clinic. From our nationally accredited heart, lung and vascular services to minimally invasive procedures in cancer, orthopaedics, and general surgery, our physicians are advancing healthcare at locations throughout western Virginia.

Learn more today about this Sabre sponsor!

Virginia's Football Schedule

The Virginia football schedule has been released. Make sure to check out The Sabre's schedule page at this link for the 2012 season's opponents. The Sabre updates that page with game time, television information, and gameday pages as information is released on specific contests.

Cavaliers Rally To Win Series Vs. VT

Virginia Athletics Media Relations Official Release

Nate Irving hit a walk-off infield single with two outs in the ninth inning to cap a rally from three runs down as the Virginia baseball team topped Virginia Tech, 6-5, Sunday at Davenport Field. UVa trailed 5-2 in the eighth inning before scoring two runs in each of the final two innings to rally for the victory and win the series, 2-1. Virginia (9-5-1, 2-1 ACC) now has won 14 consecutive ACC home series, dating to a series loss to Miami in March 2009.

Irving (3 for 5) had three run-scoring hits to highlight an 11-hit day for Virginia. Fellow freshman Derek Fisher went 3 for 4 and scored three times, including the game winner. Mike Papi went 2 for 5 and scored twice, while Stephen Bruno added a pair of hits and an RBI.

Justin Thompson worked the final two-thirds of an inning for the Cavaliers to earn the win and improve the 2-0.

Virginia returns to Davenport Field Tuesday and Wednesday for non-conference games against Marist. Both contests will start at 5 p.m.

Give The EDGE As a Gift!

Give the Perfect Gift to your favorite Wahoo fan this year, an annual subscription to Sabre EDGE! TheSabre.com is your one-stop shop for all UVa sports information, commentary and discussion. Read articles from our excellent staff of sportswriters, including TheSabre.com's editor-in-chief, Kris Wright. Our resident recruiting expert, Chris Horne, will keep you up to date with recruiting from around the state and beyond. No one covers Virginia's premier sports better than TheSabre.com. Take your fanship to the next level with a Sabre Edge subscription! Scroll to the bottom of the page to see what Sabre EDGE has to offer.

Gift Subscriptions are for a full year and cost $59.99. A gift message can be included and you can request a specific date range for the email notification to the gift recipient. All credit card orders are safe and secured through GoDaddy.com Digital Security. Give the Sabre EDGE as a Gift Today!

Advertise With The Sabre!

Our advertising approach is different in that we make it abundantly clear in a direct and honest way that your company's commitment of sponsorship dollars is what enables the site to continue existing and improving into the future.

To learn more, please contact [email protected].

To view a list of our sponsors, please visit our Sponsors Page.

Around the World of Wahoo Sports ...

• Briggs Lifts Cardiac Cavaliers Past Cornell in an Overtime Thriller: Steele Stanwick found Colin Briggs in front of the crease to lift the No. 1 Virginia Cavaliers (7-0) to a 9-8 overtime win over the No. 3 Cornell Big Red (3-1) in front of 17,138 fans inside M&T Bank Stadium at Saturday's Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic. Virginia is now 4-0 all-time in Inside Lacrosse's Face-Off Classic and 6-0 all-time in Inside Lacrosse events.
• No. 8 Virginia Falls To No. 2 North Carolina, 14-9: The eighth-ranked Virginia women's lacrosse team dropped a 14-9 contest to second-ranked North Carolina on Saturday at Klockner Stadium. Seniors Charlie Finnigan and Ainsley Baker each had two goals.
• Virginia Softball Sweeps Yellow Jackets: The Virginia softball team (16-5, 3-0 ACC) swept 2011 ACC regular season champion Georgia Tech (15-12, 0-3 ACC) Sunday in Atlanta, Ga., after hanging on for a 3-1 victory in the third and final game of the series. It was the first time the Yellow Jackets had been swept in conference play since April 2008 and the first sweep for UVa over Georgia Tech since 2001. Senior Kennedy Byxbee came on to pinch hit in the top of the sixth inning and hit her first career home run, a two-run shot over the right field fence, to lift Virginia to a 3-1 victory.
• Six Cavaliers Qualify for NCAA Championships: Six Virginia wrestlers will compete at the 2012 NCAA Wrestling Championships, scheduled for March 15-17 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. Five Cavaliers earned automatic berths into the field based on their finishes at the 2012 ACC Championships, while Gus Sako was awarded an at-large berth into the 149-pound field. Three Cavaliers earned top-12 national seeds. Matt Snyder is the No. 11 seed at 125 pounds, Nick Nelson earned the No. 7 seed at 141 and Jon Fausey is seeded No. 12 at 184 pounds. Virginia is aiming for its third-consecutive top-25 team finish at the NCAA championships. UVa took 15th in 2010 and tied for 23rd last season.
• Huge Comeback Lifts Cavaliers to 4-3 Win at Ole Miss: The third-ranked Virginia men's tennis team posted one of the biggest comebacks in program history, rallying from down 3-0 for a 4-3 win at No. 16 Ole Miss on Wednesday at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center. The Cavaliers lost the doubles point and dropped five first sets before rallying to improve to 10-1 on the season. UVa also logged a 4-3 victory over No. 12 Mississippi State on Tuesday.
• Robinson and Gay Pick Up Fifth-Place Finishes at NCAA Championships: Senior Marcus Robinson finished fifth in the men's triple jump and junior Morgane Gay crossed the line fifth in the women's mile as the Virginia track and field team completed action at the 2012 NCAA Indoor Championships at the Jacksons Track Center on Saturday.
• Kohles' Victory Ranks Him First in UVa Golf History: Virginia senior golfer Ben Kohles distinguished himself as the winningest player in the Cavalier program's history Tuesday when he took medalist honors at the Cleveland Golf Palmetto Intercollegiate in Aiken, S.C. It was the sixth career victory for the native of Cary, N.C., and allowed him to move past former UVa All-American Simon Cooke (1993-96) on the school's all-time wins list.
• UVa Women's Golfers Finish Sixth at LSU Classic: The 29th-ranked Virginia women's golf team suffered through its worst round of the weekend on Sunday and dropped back to a sixth-place finish at the LSU Golf Classic. Briana Mao and Elizabeth Brightwell both shot 79 during the final round to lead UVa with 36th-place finishes.
• Singh, Inglot Win Titles on Futures Tour: Former Virginia men's tennis players Sanam Singh and Dom Inglot won titles on the ITF Futures Tour last week. Singh won the singles title at the tournament in Bhimavaram, India, while Inglot won the doubles title at the tournament in Birmingham, England.
• Imbriglia Wins Platform at Zones; Punches Ticket to NCAA Championships: Senior diver Briggy Imbriglia won the platform event Sunday at the NCAA Zone A Championships to automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships, slated for March 22-24 in Federal Way, Wash. He is the first Virginia diver to win an event championship at a zone meet. Imbriglia will compete in all three events at the NCAA Championships, becoming the first diver in school history to do so. He is only the second diver in the history of the men's program to earn a berth at the national meet, joining Jim-Tom Moore, who qualified in the early 1980s.

To read the full stories or gather more information on Virginia athletics, check out Virginiasports.com.

UVa Lacrosse "We Rock The Klock" T

$12.00-$14.00

The Virginia lacrosse team, one of them most dominant programs in the nation, calls Klockner Stadium home. We celebrate the team and its home field advantage with our "We Rock the Klock" T-Shirt. An arched Virginia is screened above Lacrosse with the head of a lacrosse stick and V-Sabre lacrosse ball in between. The back of the T-Shirt features the V-Sabre logo above "We Rock the Klock" and Virginia lacrosse with a navy swoosh graphic. Be a part of the homefield advantage and start "Rocking the Klock"!

Issue No. 255 - Aug. 21, 2006

Post of the Week

Sean Singletary is locked in at the point guard position. Will the lack of a proven back-up PG hurt the Cavs?

Subject: Breaking the press is as dependent on other players as on the PG
Posted by: TheGrinch on Mon Aug 21 2006 9:08:03 AM
Message: Thinking that press-breaking is all on the point guard is a common misconception, but truly effective press-breaking is probably more dependent on ability of the other four players.

If it's a straight up man press, then the pg is important, but having some ball handling options at the other guard spots will help. Having only two competent ball handlers on the floor at any one time last season hurt us more against this type of press than the individual abilities of any of our point guards. From Harris, Tat, and hopefully an improved Diane, we should have three players on the floor who can handle the ball at any point ... even if SS or JR is on the bench. Good passers are also effective in breaking this type of press, and we should have more effective passers on the floor this year.

Against a trapping-style press (which is usually what people mean when they say "press"), passing is more important than dribbling. Dribbling through this type of press is the least effective method of breaking it. You punish the trap-press with the pass, so you need a few other good passing players for the doubled player to pass to and send it on. Last year, we tended to dribble through the press, which lets the pressing team recover defensively. Throwing over it prevents the trapping players from getting back to the ball and should yield an easy basket on the other end.

Losing TJ hurts against the press because we lose a player who could handle and pass, and we didn't have many of those last year. This year, we should have more, so we won't miss him as much as last year's team would have missed him. Breaking the press is the least of my worries for this season ... effective and consistent play is a much bigger concern.

Read SabreMail No. 255 here.

Coming Soon

The Sabre has you covered when it comes to Hoo news. Here are a few of the articles to expect on the site soon:

• Spring Football: The Cavaliers are making final preparations for spring practice and The Sabre will be rolling out football coverage beginning this week.
• Basketball in action: The Hoos have started ACC play. The Sabre keeps you in the loop on the hoops team!
• Pro Hoos: TheSabre.com debuted a new series. Beyond The Lawn" is a 12-month series found exclusively on TheSabre.com that follows three Virginia Cavaliers through a year as a professional athlete. Baseball's Tyler Wilson (Baltimore Orioles), track and field's Stephanie Marie Garcia (U.S. Olympic hopeful), and football's Clint Sintim (New York Giants) share their experiences throughout the year.

In Case You Missed It ...

Sabre articles since the last SabreMail

UVa Earns NCAA Tournament Bid
The Virginia men's basketball program earned its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since the 2007 event on Sunday. The Cavaliers received one of the 37 at-large bids to the Big Dance as a No. 10 seed in the West Region where it will meet No. 7 seed Florida from the Southeastern Conference. The contest is scheduled for Friday in Omaha, Nebraska.

Hoos Bow Out Of ACC Tournament
Virginia's grind-it-out, possession-by-possession style could pay dividends in future postseason play but when it comes to the ACC Tournament and games with NC State, nothing seems to work for the Cavaliers. In Thursday's tourney quarterfinals in Atlanta, the Wolfpack once again sent the Hoos packing with a 67-64 defeat. UVa fell to 2-13 all-time against NCSU in the ACC Tournament.

Diamond Scouting Report: VT
For the first half of Tuesday's game against JMU, the pattern looked all too familiar to the Virginia baseball team this year. Get an early lead and then give it up in the middle innings due to a combination of self-inflicted woes and timely hitting by the other team. But, then the Cavalier offense exploded for 11 unanswered runs over four innings to rout James Madison 14-6.

Spring Training In Charlottesville
Yes, Wahoo fans: "The University of Virginia" and "Major League spring training" can be used in the same sentence for '12 and '13. In a story that received shockingly little media coverage, The Washington Post announced to the surprise of Washington DC baseball fans and Charlottesville residents that "the home selected for the Nationals is just outside of the university grounds and within a stone's throw of the campus."

Diamond Scouting Report: JMU
The one constant to date for the 2012 Virginia baseball team has been its inconsistency. Now the Cavaliers head to Harrisonburg for a return matchup with James Madison on Tuesday at 4 p.m. No one was satisfied in the first game between these two in-state rivals in Conway, SC, because it ended in a rare 4-4 tie after being called in the eighth inning due to heavy rain and poor playing conditions.

Get your Wahoo fix. Subscribe to Sabre Edge!

Every week, Sabre Edge provides you with exclusive articles, columns, special features, interviews and recruiting news, including daily recruiting updates. There's even a special message board just for subscribers. And to top it off, you get 10 percent off all of your UVa Bookstores purchases during your subscription.

All of the great Sabre Edge content can be yours for the price of $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year. Try it for a month and cancel if you like. But we think you'll get hooked on the Edge and find out for yourself why the most knowledgeable Cavalier fans are Edge subscribers.

If you're a true Wahoo, then the Sabre Edge is right for you. Check it out!

• Sabre Edge Info and Sign Up