Zeglinski will remain a starter

When players are going through prolonged shooting slumps, coaches will usually try just about anything to break them out of it.

However, bringing beleaguered senior Sammy Zeglinski off the bench doesn’t seem to be an option that Virginia coach Tony Bennett is considering at the present time.

“I haven’t [thought about it],” said Bennett, during a teleconference on Monday. “Nothing’s out of the realm, certainly you would, but I don’t think that’s the answer.

“If you’re saying, ‘Well, the guy’s struggling with his shot, so we’re going to bring him off the bench to relax him' — I mean when you’ve played as many games as Sammy has or as many minutes as all of our perimeter guys are getting, it’s just a matter of continuing to try and find the right kind of looks and impact the game in as many ways as you can... I feel like that wouldn’t necessarily be the issue, but again we’ll just keep looking at how things go.”

In the loss to Florida State on Saturday, Zeglinski was 2 of 7 from the field (1 of 5 from 3-point range) in 37 minutes. Four of the Philadelphia native’s misses were air balls.

Bennett said he hasn’t noticed anything wrong from a technique standpoint with Zeglinski’s shot.

“His shot’s the same,” Bennett said. “A few of those — a couple of our guys got their balls tipped. They really close quick on the perimeter and they rush your delivery more than most teams. But you just try and have a consistent shot. At times, sometimes the shot can get flat, but I didn’t see [that]...

“For whatever the case, they got to a couple of his balls. Certainly, all of the shots that he missed were strong, so he wasn’t leaving it short.”

Zeglinski got off to a solid start from 3-point range this season — hitting 31 of his first 74 attempts (41.8 percent). However, things took a turn for the worse starting with the Duke game when he went 0 of 8 from the field, including 0 of 5 from 3.

In his last seven games, Zeglinski is 10 of 38 (26.3 percent) from behind the arc.

Seventy-four percent of Zeglinski’s shot attempts this season have been 3-pointers.

The obvious candidate to take Zeglinski’s spot in the starting lineup would be freshman Malcolm Brogdon, who had 10 points against FSU.

But with only eight scholarship players at his disposal, Bennett says it doesn’t make any difference who starts and who comes off the bench since everybody will receive minutes regardless.

Dunks

Bennett didn’t seem that optimistic when he gave an update on injured senior Assane Sene, who recently had the cast removed from his surgically repaired ankle. “I was hoping maybe you could see a little healing or filling in of the fracture, but that... didn’t seem to be the case,” he said. “I think it’s not for a while until you get a feel for where he’s at in terms of his recovery process.” Sene’s original prognosis was six weeks, which would put him back in the lineup for Virginia’s regular-season finale at Maryland on March 4... UVa moved down three spots to No. 19 in this week’s AP Top 25 poll and down two spots in the coaches poll to No. 20.