The Virginia Cavaliers (9-10, 2-6 ACC) snapped a five-game losing streak by defeating Boston College (9-10, 1-7 ACC) at John Paul Jones Arena 74-56 on Tuesday night. Here are our five takeaways from UVA’s second ACC victory of the season:

Coming into Tuesday’s matchup riding a five-game losing streak, Virginia desperately needed a win over Boston College, who sits right next to the ‘Hoos at the bottom of the ACC. For Virginia, they did more than just grind out a victory at JPJ. The Cavaliers looked far better than the Eagles for nearly all forty minutes Tuesday night as they cruised to a near twenty-point win behind an excellent shooting performance. Coming into the game as the worst shooting team in the ACC (42.9 %), Virginia turned in an efficient offensive attack – they finished 52% from the field, and even more impressively, 11/20 from three. Though Virginia’s tournament hopes remain distant, this victory will at minimum serve as a morale boost as the thick of ACC play continues.

The Virginia Cavaliers produced an elite twenty minutes of basketball on their home court in the first half Tuesday night. Ron Sanchez described the fast start as an “injection” of energy that translated to the defensive end as well.

Behind the injection was Isaac McKneely, who scored 12 first-half points and connected on all of his first four three-point attempts. Andrew Rohde and Elijah Saunders both turned in excellent first halves themselves with ten points apiece, with Rohde going into the halftime locker room 4/4 from the field. In tandem, Rohde, Saunders, and McKneely scored 32 of the 41 first-half Virginia points on a ridiculously efficient 12/16 from the field en route to a season-high 19-point halftime lead.

It’s little secret that McKneely is one of the better shooters in the ACC, and certainly the best shooter on this Virginia team – although Andrew Rohde’s improvement from deep deserves credit. McKneely is a career 41% three-point shooter for the ‘Hoos, but connected on just one of his 11 three-point attempts in the last two Virginia losses. The Cavaliers needed McKneely to find himself from beyond the arc to instill any sort of confidence in this ACC-worst offense, and Isaac did just that. He came out and started red hot, connecting on his first four three-point attempts en route to twelve first half points. McKneely finished with 21 points on 7/10 shooting and 6/9 from three-point range.

Virginia has struggled all season in the turnover department, but Tuesday’s game was a step in the right direction with the ‘Hoos finishing with 11 turnovers. Virginia came into JPJ tonight 16th out of the 18 ACC teams with a -1.72 turnover margin, BC is right there at #15 and looked particularly sloppy on offense in the face of a balanced Virginia defensive presence. Boston College finished with 15 turnovers on the night, ensuring the double-digit halftime lead was never threatened during the second half of the Cavalier victory.

The third-year guard from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is certainly not the flashiest, but in a difficult year for the Virginia basketball program, Andrew Rohde has stepped up and taken advantage of the opportunity to receive extended minutes and offensive touches. While McKneely’s stellar night from deep will be the story from this victory, Rohde’s performance was arguably the best in Tuesday’s win; he finished with an efficient 16 points on 5/6 shooting and 2/2 from beyond the arc to go along with a game-high six assists.

Up next, Virginia takes on Notre Dame (8-10, 2-5 ACC) at John Paul Jones Arena this Saturday, January 25th at 6:30pm ET on the ACC Network.

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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – An out-of-state visitor’s $130.81 tab turned into a more than $5,000 bond after Miami Beach police said he went on a racist tirade during a drunken attack on staff at a bar, leading to his arrest on a hate crime charge.

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Police said the incident happened just before 11:15 p.m. Sunday at Norman’s Tavern, located at 6770 Collins Ave. on North Beach.

Authorities said it all began when a bartender asked Michael John Nixon, 42, of Arlington, Virginia, to pay his bill. Police said he replied by saying, “I won’t pay s—.”

An arrest report states he then knocked over and broke a glass cup, said he “won’t pay” and threatened to break more items.

As the bartender stood in front of Nixon, police said he began to make a series of “Hispanophobic” remarks.

“Hola. English, motherf—er,” Nixon is accused of saying. “I live in America. You speak English.”

Authorities said Nixon then repeated “English, b—-,” four times before saying, a little more than 12 hours before the presidential inauguration, “F—ing Trump is going to deport your a–.”

They said he then reached around the bartender and punched an employee on the side of his face.

After seeing Nixon’s “increasing(ly) aggressive behavior,” the bartender “began to back up” to allow him to leave to “prevent further physical assaults,” the report states.

However, police said as Nixon moved to leave, he “intentionally struck” the bartender by “forcefully moving his body forward, specifically his left shoulder, towards (him).”

The bartender defended himself by punching Nixon in the face, police said. Authorities said Nixon left, but later came back to the bar as officers were at the scene.

Officers arrested Nixon on a felony charge of battery with prejudice, along with misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief, defrauding an innkeeper and disorderly conduct.

After a Miami Beach police officer testified in a court hearing Tuesday that the victims were Latino and the attack was racially-motivated, Miami-Dade Judge Mindy Glazer found probable cause for all four charges and ordered Nixon held on a $5,450 bond.

He remained in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center as of early Tuesday afternoon, jail records show.

Morgantown, WV – No. 23 West Virginia hosts the Arizona State Sun Devils (10-7, 1-5) Tuesday night for the first ever meeting between the two programs.  

The Mountaineers (13-4, 4-2) picked up their biggest win of the season Saturday night after knocking off then second-ranked Iowa State. Javon Small recorded a game-high 27 points and carried West Virginia to the finish line in the last two minutes, scoring 12 of the final 13 points for the Mountaineers to secure the upset.

He made some big-time plays,” WVU head coach Darian DeVries said.

“Like a lot of great players, you can tell when they’re in that zone and you could see it in his eyes he wanted to take that game over,” DeVries added. “I’ve seen Javon in practice and in games, when he gets in a zone, he’s really, really good.”

West Virginia forward Amani Hansberry has hit double figures in back-to-back games for the first time since Thanksgiving weekend as part of a four-game stretch of 10 or more points. The sophomore has provided a spark off, shooting 7-13 from behind the arc for the last two games for a combined 28 points.

Arizona State comes into the matchup riding a four-game losing streak, while freshman guard Joson Sanon, a potential first round NBA Draft pick, has been dealing with an ankle injury and missed four of the last five games. Additionally, the team’s leading scorer, senior guard BJ Freeman (13.2 ppg), was landed on during the loss at Cincinnati on Saturday but gutted it out and finished the game with 12 points.

“I just look at it like, you just play the next game in front of you and that’s all you can do – that’s all you can control,” Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley said. “We can’t go back in time and change anything that happened in overtime against Baylor or UCF or this game. All you can do is try to learn from it. Hopefully, the guys continue to refuse to want to lose and have the season go sideways and then they come out and step up and then we find ourselves and that’s just how we’ll look at it going into Tuesday.”

Freshman forward Jayden Quaintance recorded 10 blocks the last two games. He is currently the only player in the nation averaging at least 10.0 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 3.0 blocks. Quaintance is averaging exactly 10.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, and a conference-high 3.2 blocks per game.

West Virginia and Arizona State will tip-off at 9:00 p.m. EST and the action will broadcast on CBSSN.

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