Among the players not dressed for the Virginia basketball season opener against Campbell on Wednesday night was redshirt freshman point guard Christian Bliss, who has apparently suffered another injury.
He missed a big chunk of his redshirt year last season with an ankle injury that required surgery and now, Bliss is sidelined to start this season with a foot injury.
“Bliss is just nursing a foot… hopefully we’ll get him back soon enough,” Sanchez said in his postgame press conference on Wednesday night.
“Soon enough” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that Virginia will get Bliss back on the floor in the immediate future. That means that, of the four guards who were originally in contention to help fill the void left by Reece Beekman at the point guard position, only two are available to begin the season. Florida State transfer Jalen Warley entered the transfer portal a little over a week before the season began and now Bliss is sidelined for an indefinite period of time.
Expectations were that Kansas State transfer Dai Dai Ames, who started 16 games as a freshman last season for the Wildcats, would be UVA’s starting point guard to open the season. Instead, the Cavaliers went with a more familiar face in junior Andrew Rohde.
Not exactly a fan favorite last season, Rohde missed both shots that he took, scored one point, and turned the ball over four times against Campbell, but also recorded five assists, made more than a few very good passes, and did a decent job of facilitating the offense. That was pretty much the Andrew Rohde experience throughout the 2023-2024 season as well. But now, the spotlight on him is even greater and more consequential as he begins his second year with the Cavaliers as the team’s lead point guard.
“Rohde’s responsibility is to be an extension, almost like a bridge between the other four guys on the floor and myself,” Sanchez said of Rohde. “He has to settle us down. He can’t speed us up… His responsibility is to make sure that the guys that are supposed to shoot get those shots. And I think that he’s really growing into that role. I think he’s done a really good job of it. But also defensively is where I think he’s improved the most. I think that his ability to guard the ball has gotten a lot better. He has a great voice. He communicates well. And I know that people only look at the stat line. There are a lot of other factors that go into guys impacting the game and I think he did a really good job of that.”
The decision to start Rohde over Ames was one that Sanchez made the night before the game. Explaining that choice in the postgame press conference, Sanchez said Rohde’s experience with Virginia’s defensive system was a big reason that he earned the start over Ames.
“There’s been a battle at that position in the summer, in the fall, and we just decided to go with a little more experience,” said Sanchez. “We’re not an experienced team to begin with, you know, we don’t have a lot of returners. And this moment can be big for some of the young guys. We decided to go with guys that have a deeper understanding of our defensive system.”
It’s possible, but unlikely, that the decision to start Rohde was mostly matchup based. Sanchez talked about how the offense Campbell runs really tests a defense’s discipline, which is why the coaching staff wanted to start a lineup with as much experience in Virginia’s defensive system as possible. That resulted in a starting five of three players who have been at UVA for more than a year – Rohde, Blake Buchanan, and Isaac McKneely – and two transfers in TJ Power and Elijah Saunders. As Sanchez admitted, even that lineup lacked a significant amount of experience in UVA’s Pack Line Defense or in college basketball in general.
But Sanchez talking about the matchup with Campbell and general experience levels entering the season seems to indicate that maybe things will change as the season goes along and other players, like Dai Dai Ames, get more experience in Virginia’s system. Ames played just 10 minutes in his Cavalier debut (second-fewest among players who saw the court behind Ishan Sharma) and scored two points that came on free throws in the final minute of the game.
With a sample size of one game, we’re going to exercise some restraint in making any grand conclusions about the state of Virginia’s point guard position. The first game was a little iffy at best, with Rohde having a few head scratching moments and not showing a ton of year-over-year improvement as a ball-handler or as a shooter and Ames being unable to push Rohde for more minutes is concerning as well. But for now, we’ll take the optimist view that Ames can and should get more minutes moving forward and Rohde could still improve as he takes a larger role in the offense than last season. And then we’ll see how Christian Bliss changes Virginia’s equation at point guard when he gets back from injury.
