Editor's Note: Every October, CavsCorner does a Q&A series with UVa's assistant coaches ahead of the start of the basketball season. In our conversation with Brad Soderberg below, he talks about the UMBC loss and the offseason that followed, how the Wahoos have been received on the recruiting trail since last season's ascent to the No. 1 ranking, how he expects Braxton Key might fit in, and much more.

Of note, this Q&A was conducted before the NCAA approved Braxton Key's waiver request which will allow him to play immediately.

Lastly, you can check out our conversation with associate head coach Jason Williford here:

Part I

Part II

I think, first of all, it's no longer an elephant in the room because we've addressed it as a staff and as a team. We haven't ignored it, that's the best way to put it. We've kind of embraced it, actually, and called it our own. None of us would ever want to do that again. It was agonizing, painful, and still is. I think I would be dishonest if I told you I know how each of the guys feels now. My perception is that there's a little edge with all of us and that edge may turn out to be productive or it may turn out to be destructive. I don't know right and to say that I do know would be lying. We're going to find out. I know that the offseason work has been awesome. Is it because of the loss? I don't know. Has all that extra work put more pressure on us? I don't know. It will go down for any Cavalier fan and for our staff as the most incredible dichotomy ever. I mean we had confetti falling on our heads in Brooklyn and then a week later we were teary-eyed in Charlotte. So, I don't really know. We're just going to have to dive back into a new season and get ready to take the cat calls from everybody we play against and go play basketball again.

It's interesting, the night after the game we stayed overnight in Charlotte as you know and there were some kind of crazy death threats and all this kind of stuff. And so that was surreal. But I woke up really early in the morning. I went down the lobby to get a coffee at like 4 a.m. And Coach Sanchez was down there. We talked for a long time about him taking the Charlotte job and it kind of dawned on me, you know, we're both in agony but life goes on, right? He's making this career decision. We're talking real life. And so I don't know, maybe the fact that I've been in this over 30 years and I've been a head coach and all that, maybe that helped. The pain was real and it's a combination of pain and embarrassment and concern for the players and just kind of a dread of all that we're going to have to answer, right? All of that. But again, life goes on What can we do? We can't go replay the game. You can't resign from your job. You can't run or go move to Canada. You can't hide from it. So, let's get up and get ready for the next day.

From what they're telling me and what their parents are telling me and what they're AAU and high school coaches are telling me, no effect. Is that honest? Always hard to know for sure. I'll tell you two things. First, we still have a couple things to sell because of the loss. 'You can help us go where we've never been before,' right? We've checked all the other boxes. We won the ACC by four games. We didn't lose a game on the road. We were No. 1, we've been to a Sweet 16, and all this. 'Come on. Help us. Help get us there.' And second, the other thing I'll tell you is: Maybe the week or two later, I called the mother of a recruit that we were after and I said that I hope that loss doesn't put us in the dumpster with your son. And she said, 'Coach let me tell you something.' This is nearly verbatim. 'When I watched Coach Bennett deliver his postgame remarks, your status in our eyes went up and not down.' She said 'I'm more interested in my son attending Virginia now than I would have been had you advanced deep in the tournament because I saw a man who had to step up with very little prep time and say what he said.' She said 'I can just tell you that says more about the man than trying to be falsely humble about a big win.' So, it doesn't appear that it's hurt our recruiting. As much as it was just so personal to us, I think to a recruit who's got this school, that school, everybody coming after him, he's got his own season and all, I don't think it hurt us. I think it ultimately helped us.

Well, Jay's offseason was miserable because, as you know, at what ended up being the last practice he dislocated his shoulder when we were practicing at Queen's College in Charlotte. And so anybody that watched Jay play last year ago and thought "Kid's gotta get in the weight room,' well he couldn't get in the weight room the same way. So that's not good. However, the Blue-White Scrimmage, he stepped to the plate. So that was very encouraging. Marco, meanwhile, is the definition of a grinder. He's a workaholic, literally. He's obsessed with working out and maybe I shouldn't say this but I don't know if he'll ever be an All-ACC player but I wouldn't put it past him because of how hard he works. The first time I saw Devon Hall, my first practice, I didn't think he'd ever been All-ACC player and he's a second-round pick in the NBA Draft. So go figure. And Marco's work ethic is very similar to Devon's. Very similar. I think you phrased that question extremely well because you can kind of look at us and think 'These five guys. Oh, we know all about them and they've logged a lot of minutes in the ACC and they're battle-tested'. What about the rest? You're hitting the crux of our issue if we have an issue. So, I thought Jay did the best he could for an offseason when he was injured. Marco did everything he possibly could and then Kihei and Kody, I don't really know because they came in for summer school. I think Kihei is going to give us a dimension we've never had since I've been here, lightning quick P-G. Very undersized but great with the ball. Tough kid, chip on the shoulder kind of guy. We love that. And Kody, he shoots it as well as anybody we've seen as first-years.The question is going to be about if he can defend properly. And we'll see. The real roll of the dice here is will Braxton Key get that release? Because that will have a big bearing on our depth.

You hit it on the head again. The depth will immediately improve. Specific to Braxton, here's a guy that has logged minutes in a major college conference, right? So he's done Kentucky on the road. He's done Florida on the road. He's done LSU on the road. So, the Carolina trip's not going to be too much for him. And that stage fright can sometimes be a thing you have to worry about because until you see a kid handle it, you never really know. Braxton's already been there. Secondly, physically just from a size perspective he doesn't get driven off his line. He's a big, strong kid. He can bang and grind with everybody. Love that. But here's the thing that I really like: He's a multi-dimensional player, similar to De'Andre. There's nights when we need De'Andre to play on the perimeter, he can do it defensively and offensively. When there's nights we need De'Andre to play in the post, he can do both offensively and defensively. Same with Braxton, maybe not quite to the same level because he's not quite as tall as De'Andre and maybe not quite as athletic but very similar. As we've learned and as the game is changing to become more of a perimeter game, if you can have guys who can play both perimeter and interior defensively, that's huge. That, last year, was our greatest asset with De'Andre and the reason it hurts so much to not have them in the tournament, because when we played a smaller lineup and one of our guys that could handle playing big or small was not there. Braxton gives us that.

I would say since I've been here and then if I combine that with the six years that I was in the Big Ten, he physically looks the most like he belongs in the NBA. With him, if he can remember one thing this year it's that less is more. The term we use a lot is stay in your lane. When he stays in his lane and he's an aggressive shot blocker, an aggressive rebounder, an opportunistic around the bucket scorer, face-up jump shooter when it's there, when he gets to the line and makes his free throws? Wow. Continue to blow up ball screens, continue to be wide, continue to be in his lane. The scrimmage is a continuation of our whole summer and fall workouts. Defensively he's better and that is very good for us. This is his fourth year in our program so when we say we're going to X-out the post, that's common lingo. He knows what's going on, right? And that combined with what we just covered, 6-foot-9, long, quick, athletic, bouncy. He's exciting. So, now, 'Less is more Mamadi.' Just be who you are. We've got to make sure we can help him know who he is. Right? And that's an important thing sometimes. I think when we spoke last year I told you I thought he was one of the keys. We've got a good core and if he goes from being good to excellent, I wouldn't want to play us.

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