First up, apologies: I always try to post at least once each weekday and let you know when I won't be. Yesterday I spent some time going over the sabermetric stats I talked about earlier. Apologies again to those who were hoping to see it added, but it's not a worthwhile endeavour. Two reasons for that. One, sample size: this stuff is designed for a 162-game MLB season, and the typical college ballplayer won't rack up that many til his junior year. Maybe. Two, the weirdness of nonconference schedules throws this stuff out of whack. The teams in the majors aren't that different from each other in terms of talent, but when we play Coppin State and beat them 27-1 (a real actual score from last year), the statistics go bonkers. It might be worth revisiting after the season is over and using only stats from ACC games, but that's a lot of extra work, and again: sample size.
Anyway, the basketball season. It's over, thank heavens for that. The other day I rambled about things that went right and things that didn't go wrong, which was a thinly-veiled way of saying it's not Dave Leitao's fault entirely. Actually, I don't think it was veiled at all. But on with the show. Today, I tell you what I think the problems were this year and then, what we're looking at for next year. What went wrong?
1. Three freshmen in the starting lineup. Look, I don't care if one of them turns out to be ACC Rookie of the Year (oh wait he did), the ACC is not, has never been, and hopefully never will be a league where you can have the majority of your lineup be freshmen and that is a recipe for success. It just ain't happening. Sammy Zeglinski will be a fine point guard in time, but he could have had a big scarlet F for Freshman on his back and it wouldn't have been any more obvious. He'd play well in some games - in fact, quality play from Z was a common thread in our wins - and others he'd shoot 1-for-5 and dish out no assists to go along with his three turnovers.
Not only the freshmen, but I've touched on this before: guys might have a certain class listed on the roster, but they carried so much extra responsibility as compared to years past that they really are more like a year behind what it says. Calvin Baker, case in point. He's officially a junior but he spent a year sitting out as per transfer regulations and before that was at William & Mary, a far cry from the ACC. He's a sophomore, basically, but with only one more year of eligibility. Mustapha Farrakhan is technically a sophomore, but figure this: the Ken Pom player ratings call him a "significant contributor" to the team based on how much he was involved in the offense; last year he had such a non-role he wasn't even listed - not even enough to qualify as "nearly invisible". A sophomore playing a freshman's role.
2. Mamadi Diane and Tunji Soroye's injuries. This is two problems in one. Before the season I figured we could at least make a return trip to the CBI, because we'd have some senior leadership in key roles. Mo on offense, Tunji on defense. Not having them made the above problem that much worse. Diane ought to have been a starter - in place of Baker, if I'd had my say. Without him, Baker (effectively a sophomore) and Mike Scott (actually a sophomore) were the graybeards in the "typical" starting lineup - who were they turning to for leadership in the huddle?
Plus, for three years Diane was a rock-solid dependable player and it was the threat of his outside shooting that opened up more than a couple driving lanes for Sean Singletary. That disappeared completely this year and had a direct effect on the offense in particular. Teams respected the jump-shooting abilities of absolutely nobody on the roster. Nobody. And with good reason. Give us Diane's jump shot back and at the very, very least the Liberty debacle never happens - Diane played 27 minutes and shot 0-for-6. And who knows what the offense might have produced if anybody at all could have hit a shot from outside the paint somewhere? That was Diane's role, but his foot took away his shot.
3. So yeah....the shooting. It....was....awful. Coaches, especially ours, like to preach that defense begets offense. Play solid defense and the offense will come. That goes in reverse too, as we learned. Not only is missing shots counterproductive to the scoring effort, it leads to no respect for your shooters on that end and transition buckets on the other end. We were, FYI, the 278th best 3-point shooting team in the country, tied with the following States: Central Connecticut, South Carolina-Up-, and Kennesaw. Somewhere, in some gym or court, somebody is informing some no-game-havin' playground hack that he shoots like Kennesaw State. This is the #1 problem that has to be fixed for next year.
4. Extreme strength of schedule. No matter whose ranking system you use, ours was one of the nastiest schedules in the country. The RPI says the nastiest. That's right - according to the official rack-and-stack fancy number tool that the selection committee uses, of 343 teams in Division I basketball we had the hardest schedule in the land. A small part of that comes with the territory of being one of the worst teams in the ACC, since everyone gets to play you and you do not. Then again, of the other bottom five teams in the conference, we got only one crack at three of them, and as a bonus we got to be UNC's chew toy twice.
And then there's the schedule we gave ourselves. Games against Xavier and Syracuse and halfway decent mid-majors like Radford and VMI are great if you think you need a little extra oomph in the selection committee room. They are also great for racking up losses if you play a ton of freshmen, effectively lost your seniors to injury, and can't shoot.
So......ja. These are the four things, more or less in order, that I think doomed the season. Not that you can't put your finger on a myriad of other silly little problems, but I think most of those stemmed from these.
Ah, but next year.....next year, I truly and honestly see things getting better. Much better. The only question mark is the shooting, since most of the same people who couldn't shoot this year will return next year to also not shoot. But the ACC is poised to take a huge hit next year in the talent department. Check out who's all leaving:
Tyrese Rice (BC)
K.C. Rivers (Clemson)
Greg Paulus (Duke)
Toney Douglas (FSU)
Alade Aminu (GT)
Lewis Clinch (GT)
Jack McClinton (Miami)
Tyler Hansbrough (UNC)
Danny Green (UNC)
Courtney Fells (NCSt)
A.D. Vassallo (VT)
And you figure there will be early entries of course....Wake's Jeff Teague is almost certainly thinking about it, and perhaps his teammate Al-Farouq Aminu. Ty Lawson and Gerald Henderson project to the first round too, if they go. That's a lot of leading scorers. The Dukes and UNCs of the world will always know they can replace these guys, but what about Miami? FSU? VT? The difference is that they think they can replace them.
Meanwhile we won't have to. Landesberg appears likely to stay at least another year, though I think we'll be in for some heartburn every year around this time waiting for his decision. And I thin Tristan Spurlock will bring in a little bit of that shooting we need. While most of the rest of the ACC is going to worry about filling in the holes, we'll be adding on, and we've started the maturing process for next year early. You could see the growth and improvement the team showed as they got rid of some bad habits while the season progressed. This team was too young and inexperienced for the ACC and it was ugly to watch them get schooled night in and night out by much older players who've seen this movie before. Next year that excuse goes away, but hopefully so does the crazy decision-making and the intimidation.
Just, you know, spend some time in the gym with your jump shot, fellas?
Showing posts with label diane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diane. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
the basketball season: an autopsy
First thing on the docket is the congratulations that are in order for ACC Rookie of the Year Sylven Landesberg. Truly deserving - and the vote was much less close than I thought it would be. Landesberg is the fourth UVA player to win the award, and all the first two ever did was become UVA's only first overall NBA draft pick, and become UVA's all-time scoring leader. So, no pressure?
Unfortunately that's about three-fourths of the good news for this season. It was not, on the whole, good. 17 losses. In every conference but a select few of the worst (MEAC, for example), 17 regular season losses will land you squarely in the bottom half of the seedings. Whether it's the ACC or the Ivy League, 17 losses sucks. The season is about four months long - in the cutthroat world of the ACC, if you lose just three times a month, your ticket is punched for the bottom half of the conference and you tend to wonder if perhaps a change of head coaches is needed.
So it was a bad season, and you knew this. What you may find it interesting to be reminded of is that, as bad as things looked, we actually outperformed expectations. You'll note we were picked dead last in the preseason poll. A crude but fair way to use the poll to find the media's projection of conference wins is to divide the number of points in the poll by the total number possible (480) and multiply that by 16. That gives us a projected record of 2-14, which actually is what the last-place team got, only it wasn't us. We doubled that win total and did not finish last -take that, pundits.
I'll divide this up into four sections: the pluses, the "non-negatives" (of which there is only one), the minuses (AKA "What Went Wrong") and a premature look at what the future holds. The first two parts are today; the second two are Thursday or Friday otherwise this will turn into some kind of huge postmonster. Without further ado....
Pluses
- Sylven Landesberg, obviously. There's little need to expand much here. After two games it was evident the kid had major talent; after three, it seemed clear he was taking the reins as the go-to guy. If he stays four years, his #15 is the next number to be retired.
- Timely wins. Entries to the win column were few and far between. After beating Brown on January 7 to move to 7-5, there would be only three more victories in the following two months. But you couldn't have picked a better three to win. A home game romp over Virginia Tech and a season-finale, storybook victory over Maryland to give Mamadi Diane a night to remember. And a stirring home overtime win over Clemson to put an exclamation point on Sean Singletary's ceremony. Sometimes it's not how much you win but who you beat and when.
- Starting to crack the road jinx. Historically, we suck, and I mean suck, outside of Charlottesville. Especially in places like oh say Puerto Rico. Worse than a normal team. Now, we had some awful clunkers on the road, of course, but we had some awful clunkers at home, too. The point here is that going on the road, for once, didn't cause the clunkers, and we had some very good competitive games away from JPJA. Especially early in the season - right after the loss to Liberty would have been a great time for a Pete Gillen team to go to Syracuse and then Minnesota (two teams that are likely to end up in the Dance) and be a floormat. But we played those guys tough and could have beaten Syracuse with a little second-half defense. We went on the road for our first ACC win and played some very gutsy games in other teams' gyms as the season went on.
Non-negatives
There's really only one entry here, and his name is Dave Leitao. Most UVA fans have some kind of complaint about Leitao, and most of these fall into one of two categories. 1, he can't coach offense, and 2, he can't develop players. To be bluntly honest, I don't think there's much wrong with the offense that couldn't be fixed by having a couple players that could hit a gotdamn jump shot once in a while. Last in the conference in shooting both beyond and in front of the arc.
As for player development, one of the arguments that he can't develop players properly centers around John Brandenburg, a highly rated four-star recruit. The obvious counter is Assane Sene, a guy most thought would take tons of seasoning and experience before he really became useful. Turns out the guy can defend.
Anyway, the evidence just doesn't stack up. To say that Leitao can't develop players is to suggest that six-foot-nothing Sean Singletary should have been a first-round draft pick. Or maybe that Leitao turned Mamadi Diane from a real threat from outside into a benchwarmer. Or that a lightly-recruited transfer/walk-on from a local mid-major should somehow develop into a stud.
Another sometimes-cited example is Jeff Jones. True, Jones is one fine example of a guy who hasn't lived up to the recruiting ratings. But a guy who can't shoot, can't shoot. A coach can teach a lot of things. He can inspire a guy to play defense and he can teach how to run an offense and where to be, when. He can teach a guard the proper way to come off a screen and he can teach a post player correct footwork techniques. He can teach a point guard how to recognize a trap in a half-court press, and he can instill in his players a sense of when to shoot and when to pass. But if a guy can't shoot, he can't shoot, and two seasons of sub-.370 shooting is enough for me to know, Jeff Jones can't shoot. There's only so much a coach can do. Leitao's task here is not to wave a magic wand and turn Jeff Jones into J.J. Redick. He will have to find a role for Jones that minimizes his bad shots and sets him up for good ones.
I don't blame Dave Leitao for going 10-17. Leitao took what he was given, which was essentially a roll-of-the-dice recruiting pipeline and a superstud backcourt that covered up a lot of flaws, and molded it as best he could into as much success as could reasonably be expected. Pete Gillen didn't leave the cupboard bare, but if he'd had a really quality program to turn over to Leitao, he wouldn't have been let go in the first place. Having Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds around masked a ton of weaknesses and made a lot of players look better than they really were. With them both gone, Leitao is now rebuilding with his own pieces. And it's worth noting the cliff of irrelevance that DePaul has fallen off of in the four years since Leitao left.
In the next installment of this, I'll get down to the heart of the matter: Why We Sucked. And I'll try to guess at what next year might look like, and offer up my opinion on just how long 'Hoos should be patient with Dave Leitao
Unfortunately that's about three-fourths of the good news for this season. It was not, on the whole, good. 17 losses. In every conference but a select few of the worst (MEAC, for example), 17 regular season losses will land you squarely in the bottom half of the seedings. Whether it's the ACC or the Ivy League, 17 losses sucks. The season is about four months long - in the cutthroat world of the ACC, if you lose just three times a month, your ticket is punched for the bottom half of the conference and you tend to wonder if perhaps a change of head coaches is needed.
So it was a bad season, and you knew this. What you may find it interesting to be reminded of is that, as bad as things looked, we actually outperformed expectations. You'll note we were picked dead last in the preseason poll. A crude but fair way to use the poll to find the media's projection of conference wins is to divide the number of points in the poll by the total number possible (480) and multiply that by 16. That gives us a projected record of 2-14, which actually is what the last-place team got, only it wasn't us. We doubled that win total and did not finish last -take that, pundits.
I'll divide this up into four sections: the pluses, the "non-negatives" (of which there is only one), the minuses (AKA "What Went Wrong") and a premature look at what the future holds. The first two parts are today; the second two are Thursday or Friday otherwise this will turn into some kind of huge postmonster. Without further ado....
Pluses
- Sylven Landesberg, obviously. There's little need to expand much here. After two games it was evident the kid had major talent; after three, it seemed clear he was taking the reins as the go-to guy. If he stays four years, his #15 is the next number to be retired.
- Timely wins. Entries to the win column were few and far between. After beating Brown on January 7 to move to 7-5, there would be only three more victories in the following two months. But you couldn't have picked a better three to win. A home game romp over Virginia Tech and a season-finale, storybook victory over Maryland to give Mamadi Diane a night to remember. And a stirring home overtime win over Clemson to put an exclamation point on Sean Singletary's ceremony. Sometimes it's not how much you win but who you beat and when.
- Starting to crack the road jinx. Historically, we suck, and I mean suck, outside of Charlottesville. Especially in places like oh say Puerto Rico. Worse than a normal team. Now, we had some awful clunkers on the road, of course, but we had some awful clunkers at home, too. The point here is that going on the road, for once, didn't cause the clunkers, and we had some very good competitive games away from JPJA. Especially early in the season - right after the loss to Liberty would have been a great time for a Pete Gillen team to go to Syracuse and then Minnesota (two teams that are likely to end up in the Dance) and be a floormat. But we played those guys tough and could have beaten Syracuse with a little second-half defense. We went on the road for our first ACC win and played some very gutsy games in other teams' gyms as the season went on.
Non-negatives
There's really only one entry here, and his name is Dave Leitao. Most UVA fans have some kind of complaint about Leitao, and most of these fall into one of two categories. 1, he can't coach offense, and 2, he can't develop players. To be bluntly honest, I don't think there's much wrong with the offense that couldn't be fixed by having a couple players that could hit a gotdamn jump shot once in a while. Last in the conference in shooting both beyond and in front of the arc.
As for player development, one of the arguments that he can't develop players properly centers around John Brandenburg, a highly rated four-star recruit. The obvious counter is Assane Sene, a guy most thought would take tons of seasoning and experience before he really became useful. Turns out the guy can defend.
Anyway, the evidence just doesn't stack up. To say that Leitao can't develop players is to suggest that six-foot-nothing Sean Singletary should have been a first-round draft pick. Or maybe that Leitao turned Mamadi Diane from a real threat from outside into a benchwarmer. Or that a lightly-recruited transfer/walk-on from a local mid-major should somehow develop into a stud.
Another sometimes-cited example is Jeff Jones. True, Jones is one fine example of a guy who hasn't lived up to the recruiting ratings. But a guy who can't shoot, can't shoot. A coach can teach a lot of things. He can inspire a guy to play defense and he can teach how to run an offense and where to be, when. He can teach a guard the proper way to come off a screen and he can teach a post player correct footwork techniques. He can teach a point guard how to recognize a trap in a half-court press, and he can instill in his players a sense of when to shoot and when to pass. But if a guy can't shoot, he can't shoot, and two seasons of sub-.370 shooting is enough for me to know, Jeff Jones can't shoot. There's only so much a coach can do. Leitao's task here is not to wave a magic wand and turn Jeff Jones into J.J. Redick. He will have to find a role for Jones that minimizes his bad shots and sets him up for good ones.
I don't blame Dave Leitao for going 10-17. Leitao took what he was given, which was essentially a roll-of-the-dice recruiting pipeline and a superstud backcourt that covered up a lot of flaws, and molded it as best he could into as much success as could reasonably be expected. Pete Gillen didn't leave the cupboard bare, but if he'd had a really quality program to turn over to Leitao, he wouldn't have been let go in the first place. Having Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds around masked a ton of weaknesses and made a lot of players look better than they really were. With them both gone, Leitao is now rebuilding with his own pieces. And it's worth noting the cliff of irrelevance that DePaul has fallen off of in the four years since Leitao left.
In the next installment of this, I'll get down to the heart of the matter: Why We Sucked. And I'll try to guess at what next year might look like, and offer up my opinion on just how long 'Hoos should be patient with Dave Leitao
Monday, March 9, 2009
weekend review: the sunshine edition
Ah spring. We had a fine weekend indeed, did we not? The sun shone and the jackets and sweatshirts came off, and I finally understand why people do spring cleaning, because all that sunshine streaming in makes you realize how godawful dirty the house gets over the winter when it's dark and you don't see what a mess you've been leaving. So, energized by the successes of our mighty athletes, I busted out the Swiffer and did some serious cleaning around the house. Gone is the dust of despair; a new breeze of success is in the air, and so I promise you a post today that's 99% emo-free.
Basketball
Maryland vanquished, we turn our eyes to Boston College. I stick with my earlier sentiment that success of any amount in the tournament is simply a bonus. However, that doesn't mean hope is out the window. I may have been in the Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts on Saturday, but the host team went out of their way to make me feel at home. I watched a team whose superstar was double- and triple- teamed all day and made most of his points on free throws, who bricked 15 of 18 three-pointers, and who looked like a clown show inbounding the ball. Sound familiar? If nothing else, Thursday's game will be mighty entertaining every time a ref hands someone the ball underneath the basket - BC threw at least two inbound passes straight out of bounds again without them even touching another player.
BC is probably going to the tournament regardless of what happens in our game. But after dispatching Maryland to the NIT, it would at least be fun to make Eagles fans a bit nervous on Selection Sunday, no?
In the Good For You Department, ACC honors came out this week, and Sylven Landesberg is a unanimous selection for the all-freshman team. He's also honorable mention for the all-conference team, by the way Wake Forest's Al-Farouq Aminu is the other unanimous pick, setting up an interesting announcement tomorrow for ACC ROY. Let's see what the arguments are for both:
Landesberg:
- Freshman scoring leader
- Freshman minutes leader
- Carried team on shoulders as go-to guy
- More Rookie of the Week honors
Aminu:
- Better rebounder
- Rookie of the Week selections came mostly during actual league play
- Team doesn't suck
Personally I would vote for the guy without whom his team might not have won a single ACC game, and that's objectively speaking. Tyler Hansbrough is a stone-cold lock for POY, and people don't much care about DPOY, so the ROY selection tomorrow is the interesting one.
Baseball
If Landesberg loses the ROY selection to Aminu, we can always point out the godsmacking the baseball team put on Wake this weekend. My God. 47 runs in three games. Wake threw two freshman starting pitchers at us in the three-game series and we gave them such a welcome to the conference they must still be hearing PING in their nightmares.
The starting lineup is now hitting .415 on the season. With a couple of military academies rolling into town this week (Navy and VMI), I don't really see that getting smaller in the next two games. It might interest you to know that VMI's team ERA is 7.07. All this is exciting, but I will hold off judgment for a bit yet. The next two weekends feature three-game home series against FSU and Miami, both of which were in Omaha last year, and both of which swept us but good last year too.
By the way, I'm considering for a weekend project, a sabermetrics addition to the library over on the side there. You can get all the standard stats at the official site, of course, but sabermetrics in college baseball are tougher to come by. Let me know if this stirs any interest. I might do it anyway, whether or not I hear from anyone, but a response or two or ten would go a long way toward reassuring me I'm not wasting my time with that.
Lacrosse
The baseball team isn't the only ones lighting up the scoreboard. Their challenge this week will be to match the lacrosse score against VMI: 19-3.
That's not what's got me all sunshiney though. I'm allowing myself to get genuinely excited about the chances for a national championship, because this week saw two of the biggest concerns melt away with the last of the snow into virtual nothingness. One, faceoffs: Chad Gaudet is the ACC Player of the Week. A faceoff specialist. 11-of-13 in the second half against Cornell had everything to do with it, which segues beautifully into the second concern. The Hoos proved they can play after halftime by outscoring Cornell - that's "#4 Cornell" - 8-3 in the second half.
To wrap up the feel-good-itude of this post, here's a great little article from yesterday's CDP about Mo Diane. See how beating Maryland puts a little pep in your step no matter how bad the season?
Basketball
Maryland vanquished, we turn our eyes to Boston College. I stick with my earlier sentiment that success of any amount in the tournament is simply a bonus. However, that doesn't mean hope is out the window. I may have been in the Conte Forum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts on Saturday, but the host team went out of their way to make me feel at home. I watched a team whose superstar was double- and triple- teamed all day and made most of his points on free throws, who bricked 15 of 18 three-pointers, and who looked like a clown show inbounding the ball. Sound familiar? If nothing else, Thursday's game will be mighty entertaining every time a ref hands someone the ball underneath the basket - BC threw at least two inbound passes straight out of bounds again without them even touching another player.
BC is probably going to the tournament regardless of what happens in our game. But after dispatching Maryland to the NIT, it would at least be fun to make Eagles fans a bit nervous on Selection Sunday, no?
In the Good For You Department, ACC honors came out this week, and Sylven Landesberg is a unanimous selection for the all-freshman team. He's also honorable mention for the all-conference team, by the way Wake Forest's Al-Farouq Aminu is the other unanimous pick, setting up an interesting announcement tomorrow for ACC ROY. Let's see what the arguments are for both:
Landesberg:
- Freshman scoring leader
- Freshman minutes leader
- Carried team on shoulders as go-to guy
- More Rookie of the Week honors
Aminu:
- Better rebounder
- Rookie of the Week selections came mostly during actual league play
- Team doesn't suck
Personally I would vote for the guy without whom his team might not have won a single ACC game, and that's objectively speaking. Tyler Hansbrough is a stone-cold lock for POY, and people don't much care about DPOY, so the ROY selection tomorrow is the interesting one.
Baseball
If Landesberg loses the ROY selection to Aminu, we can always point out the godsmacking the baseball team put on Wake this weekend. My God. 47 runs in three games. Wake threw two freshman starting pitchers at us in the three-game series and we gave them such a welcome to the conference they must still be hearing PING in their nightmares.
The starting lineup is now hitting .415 on the season. With a couple of military academies rolling into town this week (Navy and VMI), I don't really see that getting smaller in the next two games. It might interest you to know that VMI's team ERA is 7.07. All this is exciting, but I will hold off judgment for a bit yet. The next two weekends feature three-game home series against FSU and Miami, both of which were in Omaha last year, and both of which swept us but good last year too.
By the way, I'm considering for a weekend project, a sabermetrics addition to the library over on the side there. You can get all the standard stats at the official site, of course, but sabermetrics in college baseball are tougher to come by. Let me know if this stirs any interest. I might do it anyway, whether or not I hear from anyone, but a response or two or ten would go a long way toward reassuring me I'm not wasting my time with that.
Lacrosse
The baseball team isn't the only ones lighting up the scoreboard. Their challenge this week will be to match the lacrosse score against VMI: 19-3.
That's not what's got me all sunshiney though. I'm allowing myself to get genuinely excited about the chances for a national championship, because this week saw two of the biggest concerns melt away with the last of the snow into virtual nothingness. One, faceoffs: Chad Gaudet is the ACC Player of the Week. A faceoff specialist. 11-of-13 in the second half against Cornell had everything to do with it, which segues beautifully into the second concern. The Hoos proved they can play after halftime by outscoring Cornell - that's "#4 Cornell" - 8-3 in the second half.
To wrap up the feel-good-itude of this post, here's a great little article from yesterday's CDP about Mo Diane. See how beating Maryland puts a little pep in your step no matter how bad the season?
Saturday, March 7, 2009
observations
The first observation is also the truest, for it has been immortalized in song....
Virginia was Virginia
when Maryland was just a pup
Virginia'll be Virginia
when Maryland grows up....
It's been a rotten season, but one great way to take a lot of the sting out of it is to get wins over both Maryland and VT. And you have to feel good for Mamadi Diane, who spent his Senior Day throwing daggers at Maryland's tournament bubble, including the biggest and timeliest with the game tied and the clock getting low. It's only natural to wonder what might have happened this year if Diane's trick knee hadn't cheated him out of his shot for the bulk of the season. Most of it would be pure speculation, but I think we can at least safely say the Liberty debacle wouldn't have happened, as Diane went 0-for-6 from the floor in 27 minutes during that game.
It's all water under the bridge anyway, and I don't want to give you the impression I'm blaming Diane for the season. There's one more game to go - a loss would be completely expected, and a win would be a nice little bonus but ultimately meaningless unless lightning can somehow strike four times in a row. Who will it be against? If FSU pops VT's bubble tomorrow, as is likely, then Boston College is the opponent. If VT wins, then the Clemson-Wake game is the decider. A Clemson win would allow them to dodge the juggernaut that is UVA basketball and give us FSU as the opponent - if Wake wins, then we draw Clemson.
To be honest, I'm not going to worry about it myself. I'll just continue working on the autopsy for this season, which I hope I can get posted this week before the tournament game, and then, well, you know I love UVA basketball win or lose, but damn if it won't be nice to be able to focus a little bit more on a couple sports that do actually have a better-than-average shot at making the NCAAs.
Virginia was Virginia
when Maryland was just a pup
Virginia'll be Virginia
when Maryland grows up....
It's been a rotten season, but one great way to take a lot of the sting out of it is to get wins over both Maryland and VT. And you have to feel good for Mamadi Diane, who spent his Senior Day throwing daggers at Maryland's tournament bubble, including the biggest and timeliest with the game tied and the clock getting low. It's only natural to wonder what might have happened this year if Diane's trick knee hadn't cheated him out of his shot for the bulk of the season. Most of it would be pure speculation, but I think we can at least safely say the Liberty debacle wouldn't have happened, as Diane went 0-for-6 from the floor in 27 minutes during that game.
It's all water under the bridge anyway, and I don't want to give you the impression I'm blaming Diane for the season. There's one more game to go - a loss would be completely expected, and a win would be a nice little bonus but ultimately meaningless unless lightning can somehow strike four times in a row. Who will it be against? If FSU pops VT's bubble tomorrow, as is likely, then Boston College is the opponent. If VT wins, then the Clemson-Wake game is the decider. A Clemson win would allow them to dodge the juggernaut that is UVA basketball and give us FSU as the opponent - if Wake wins, then we draw Clemson.
To be honest, I'm not going to worry about it myself. I'll just continue working on the autopsy for this season, which I hope I can get posted this week before the tournament game, and then, well, you know I love UVA basketball win or lose, but damn if it won't be nice to be able to focus a little bit more on a couple sports that do actually have a better-than-average shot at making the NCAAs.
Friday, March 6, 2009
game quasi-preview: Maryland
I'm really just using the Maryland game tomorrow as a launching board for other basketball topics as well.
To start off, I had a little extra time this afternoon, so I decided to nerd it up and see who we're going to face in our tournament game. The answer is: the overwhelming likelihood is that we'll draw Boston College. The chances of that are about 82%. Other options: chance of seeing Clemson is about 12%, and the chance of getting Florida State is about 6%. Told you I nerded it up. These are the only options.
Methodology:
- Lay out all 64 possible outcomes of the six games this weekend.
- Use the KenPom percentage chances of each team winning to find the probability of each outcome. For example, our chances of beating Maryland are 48%. The chance of all six favorites winning is about 12%, which comes from multiplying all six individual game probabilities together.
- Determine the 6th-place team in the standings in each outcome. We're locked into 11th, so no matter what, we get #6.
- Add up the probabilities that match each possible 6th-place team.
Numbers are kind of fun like that.
Further nerdy results: BC ends up in some kind of tie involving 6th place in every possible scenario. However, they've got tiebreakers over Maryland, VT, and the three-way tie with both, so we're not getting those teams no matter what. Our playing Clemson would be the result of Clemson losing a three-way tie for fourth with BC and FSU, and our playing FSU is the result of FSU losing a tie with BC for fifth.
Alright, 'nuff of that. So what's it mean for tomorrow? Well, one might say it doesn't matter whether we win or lose because our seeding for the tournament is locked in. But seriously now. We're the second-worst team in the conference and whoever we play is going to hand us our ass, and if by some miracle they don't then we win the right to have Wake Forest hand us our ass instead. The Maryland game is in fact the one that actually means something.
For one thing, you always want to send your seniors off on the right note, and it'll be the last game at home for Mamadi Diane and Tunji Soroye. It's been a tough season and these two have had it the toughest. Both battled through injuries and never were their usual selves all season. Diane's shooting touch cheated him, which is ten kinds of a shame because the .414 he shot from beyond the arc as a junior would have been a godsend this year. And Soroye petitioned for a sixth season and waited longer than usual for the answer from the NCAA, all the while not knowing or caring if there'd be a scholarship for him. And to have the season go the way it did, especially for these two.....sucks. Besides the fact that there isn't a Hoo alive who doesn't like watching Maryland walk the slow walk of the vanquished off our court, a win for the seniors would be only right.
Soroye won't be going out without at least some honors though. He and Jerome Meyinsse made the ACC All-Academic team - Meyinsse for the second time. So there's that, and congratulations.
The coverage map for tomorrow's game is right here. As you can see, Rhode Island is Big 12 territory, so the game's not on here, and I've been given tickets gratis for the BC-Georgia Tech game tomorrow. So I'll be off scouting the opposition for next Thursday's game.
To start off, I had a little extra time this afternoon, so I decided to nerd it up and see who we're going to face in our tournament game. The answer is: the overwhelming likelihood is that we'll draw Boston College. The chances of that are about 82%. Other options: chance of seeing Clemson is about 12%, and the chance of getting Florida State is about 6%. Told you I nerded it up. These are the only options.
Methodology:
- Lay out all 64 possible outcomes of the six games this weekend.
- Use the KenPom percentage chances of each team winning to find the probability of each outcome. For example, our chances of beating Maryland are 48%. The chance of all six favorites winning is about 12%, which comes from multiplying all six individual game probabilities together.
- Determine the 6th-place team in the standings in each outcome. We're locked into 11th, so no matter what, we get #6.
- Add up the probabilities that match each possible 6th-place team.
Numbers are kind of fun like that.
Further nerdy results: BC ends up in some kind of tie involving 6th place in every possible scenario. However, they've got tiebreakers over Maryland, VT, and the three-way tie with both, so we're not getting those teams no matter what. Our playing Clemson would be the result of Clemson losing a three-way tie for fourth with BC and FSU, and our playing FSU is the result of FSU losing a tie with BC for fifth.
Alright, 'nuff of that. So what's it mean for tomorrow? Well, one might say it doesn't matter whether we win or lose because our seeding for the tournament is locked in. But seriously now. We're the second-worst team in the conference and whoever we play is going to hand us our ass, and if by some miracle they don't then we win the right to have Wake Forest hand us our ass instead. The Maryland game is in fact the one that actually means something.
For one thing, you always want to send your seniors off on the right note, and it'll be the last game at home for Mamadi Diane and Tunji Soroye. It's been a tough season and these two have had it the toughest. Both battled through injuries and never were their usual selves all season. Diane's shooting touch cheated him, which is ten kinds of a shame because the .414 he shot from beyond the arc as a junior would have been a godsend this year. And Soroye petitioned for a sixth season and waited longer than usual for the answer from the NCAA, all the while not knowing or caring if there'd be a scholarship for him. And to have the season go the way it did, especially for these two.....sucks. Besides the fact that there isn't a Hoo alive who doesn't like watching Maryland walk the slow walk of the vanquished off our court, a win for the seniors would be only right.
Soroye won't be going out without at least some honors though. He and Jerome Meyinsse made the ACC All-Academic team - Meyinsse for the second time. So there's that, and congratulations.
The coverage map for tomorrow's game is right here. As you can see, Rhode Island is Big 12 territory, so the game's not on here, and I've been given tickets gratis for the BC-Georgia Tech game tomorrow. So I'll be off scouting the opposition for next Thursday's game.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
the recruit: Justin Renfrow
There's a little bit of interesting fluff in the CDP on Mamadi Diane and the slump he's been in so far this season. The good news is that as I write, the first half of the Brown game is winding to a close and Diane has 7 points on 3-of-5 shooting. If his knee is feeling better and he's breaking out of a slump this is the perfect time, what with the ACC part of the schedule starting in earnest on Saturday. And ohbytheway, speaking of Mo, Dave Leitao is clearly a reader of this blog, because guess who started the game tonight?
'Nuff bragging. Let's get to business.
Name: Justin Renfrow
Position: DE
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
School: William Penn Charter
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 260
ESPN: 78, #43 DE
Rivals: 5.5, three stars, #43 DE, #20 player in PA
Scout: three stars, #18....umm, TE
The first thing that pops at you (or at least, me) in the short list of essentials there is Renfrow's school. You might recognize it as the school that our point guard, Sammy Zeglinski, hails from, and oh yeah, some guy who was also kinda halfway decent at basketball by the name of Sean Singletary.
So Renfrow's recruitment was actually very short. Renfrow had piled up about six offers - his favorite being North Carolina - by late June, when we had prospect camp. Renfrow arrived in town with no Virginia offer and left a Cavalier. We can thank Singletary for helping make Renfrow a Hoo fan. (Rivals $)
The neat thing too is that at 260 pounds, Renfrow is already a college-sized DE. Actually he's a little undersized for the 3-4 yet, because the 3-4 demands that DEs act like DT's against the run, but for pass-rushing he's pretty much already there and we shouldn't act surprised next year if he ends up on the field in obvious passing situations. A good candidate to play some as a true freshman.
So there's a lot of good things that add up here. Decent ratings from the services. Plenty of attention from quality BCS schools (West Virginia and UNC offered, Penn State was thinking about it.) Good size. Even got the newspaper accolades (second-team all city.) Oh, and he's a basketball player and a damn good one - good enough to attract attention from some of the better mid-majors around, like Davidson and Lehigh. So, plenty of athleticism. The only unfortunate thing is that there's no film on him that I've found. OK, there is, but it's all taken at some camp he went to, and I'm not a scout, so watching him do footwork drills around a three-yard patch of grass doesn't do anything for me. ESPN and Rivals have film from the same camp, and the Rivals one shows him basically getting repeatedly torched in pass coverage, which doesn't matter because he'll be going toward the quarterback instead of away from him when game time rolls around. Bottom line is, I would not bet on a redshirt here, and I like Renfrow's chances of reminding us of Jeffrey Fitzgerald only with good grades.
'Nuff bragging. Let's get to business.
Name: Justin Renfrow
Position: DE
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
School: William Penn Charter
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 260
ESPN: 78, #43 DE
Rivals: 5.5, three stars, #43 DE, #20 player in PA
Scout: three stars, #18....umm, TE
The first thing that pops at you (or at least, me) in the short list of essentials there is Renfrow's school. You might recognize it as the school that our point guard, Sammy Zeglinski, hails from, and oh yeah, some guy who was also kinda halfway decent at basketball by the name of Sean Singletary.
So Renfrow's recruitment was actually very short. Renfrow had piled up about six offers - his favorite being North Carolina - by late June, when we had prospect camp. Renfrow arrived in town with no Virginia offer and left a Cavalier. We can thank Singletary for helping make Renfrow a Hoo fan. (Rivals $)
The neat thing too is that at 260 pounds, Renfrow is already a college-sized DE. Actually he's a little undersized for the 3-4 yet, because the 3-4 demands that DEs act like DT's against the run, but for pass-rushing he's pretty much already there and we shouldn't act surprised next year if he ends up on the field in obvious passing situations. A good candidate to play some as a true freshman.
So there's a lot of good things that add up here. Decent ratings from the services. Plenty of attention from quality BCS schools (West Virginia and UNC offered, Penn State was thinking about it.) Good size. Even got the newspaper accolades (second-team all city.) Oh, and he's a basketball player and a damn good one - good enough to attract attention from some of the better mid-majors around, like Davidson and Lehigh. So, plenty of athleticism. The only unfortunate thing is that there's no film on him that I've found. OK, there is, but it's all taken at some camp he went to, and I'm not a scout, so watching him do footwork drills around a three-yard patch of grass doesn't do anything for me. ESPN and Rivals have film from the same camp, and the Rivals one shows him basically getting repeatedly torched in pass coverage, which doesn't matter because he'll be going toward the quarterback instead of away from him when game time rolls around. Bottom line is, I would not bet on a redshirt here, and I like Renfrow's chances of reminding us of Jeffrey Fitzgerald only with good grades.
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