Poll has Cavs, Tech chasing big fish

Oct. 27--Be the handicapping elementary or advanced, the places of Virginia and Virginia Tech in this season's ACC basketball food chain seem clear.

The Cavaliers are plankton, defenseless and short-lived. The Hokies are piscivores, vulnerable to big-fish predators but more than capable of handling themselves against most.

Media -- the lowest form of life? -- attending the conference's annual preseason gabfest Sunday concurred. They picked Virginia last, by a wide margin, and Virginia Tech solidly in the middle at sixth.

The good news for the Hokies is they've bettered preseason forecasts in four of coach Seth Greenberg's five years. The good news for the Cavaliers is that last year's 12th-place pick, Miami, tied for fifth and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

So much for our handicapping skills.

But even before the ballots were tallied, Virginia senior guard Mamadi Diane was resigned to the results.

"It's not like it's surprising," he said. "We just know in the back of our heads that's what's expected of us."

Indeed, the Cavaliers face myriad hurdles, including an ACC in which nine teams return at least one all-conference player. Then consider that from last season's 10th-place squad, Virginia loses the graduated Sean Singletary, merely the fifth-leading scorer in program history.

Moreover, the Cavaliers' most energetic inside presence, Laurynas Mikalauskas, was dismissed from the team during the offseason, while projected point guard Calvin Baker of Newport News is shelved indefinitely with a stress fracture in his left foot.

"My whole focus is on him emotionally," Virginia coach Dave Leitao said of Baker. "If it's going to cost him a whole year, how to manage that."

Leitao is unsure whether Baker will need surgery. There's a chance Baker could return sooner rather than later, but Leitao sounded pessimistic.

"Unfortunately ... the hot spot is a place where you don't get much blood supply," he said, "and that makes the healing process slow."