game preview: Iowa State

Date/Time: Friday, March 25; 7:10

TV: CBS

Record against the Cyclones: 1-2

Last meeting: ISU 60, UVA 47; 12/30/10, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 77, Butler 69 (3/19); ISU 78, UALR 61 (3/19)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.3 (#351)
ISU: 71.7 (#55)

Offense:
UVA: 119.2 (#6)
ISU: 120.7 (#2)

Defense:
UVA: 91.8 (#4)
ISU: 100.2 (#94)

Pythag:
UVA: .9529 (#1)
ISU: .8944 (#16)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (10.9 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 4.3 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (18.6 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 2.9 apg)
SG: Devon Hall (4.4 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.8 apg)
SF: Isaiah Wilkins (4.6 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.6 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 0.7 apg)

Iowa State:

PG: Monte Morris (13.9 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 6.9 apg)
SG: Matt Thomas (10.9 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.7 apg)
SF: Abdel Nader (13.2 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 1.6 apg)
SF: Georges Niang (20.2 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 3.3 apg)
PF: Jameel McKay (11.3 ppg, 9.0 rpg, 0.9 apg)

This year's Sweet 16 has a lot of compelling matchups.  You have UNC-IU, two of the most old-money programs in the nation.  Regional games in ND-Wiscy and A&M-OU, the latter of course being a former conference rivalry of sorts.  Virginia and Iowa State wouldn't seem to have much in common.  A few architectural similarities, maybe.

These two programs are both in a very similar place, though.  Fairly or not, these are two teams with a bit of a reputation for underperforming seed expectations.  ISU still can't escape the shadow of their loss to 15-seeded Hampton, and last year was a victim of 14-seeded UAB, both in the first round.  UVA lost to a lower-seeded MSU twice in a row.  Nothing less than the Final Four will match seed expectations for UVA, so there's more pressure on the guys in blue and orange from that perspective.

Both teams can do wonders for their reputations by winning.  ISU has been to the Final Four once - in 1944, with an eight-team field, so, effectively never.  UVA hasn't been in over 30 years.  Neither has been since the expansion to 64 teams.  Both schools are fighting to carve themselves a place in a very difficult conference populated by teams with much more pedigree.  As usual, more is at stake than simply the right to play again later.

-- UVA on offense

The biggest weakness the Cyclones have is lack of depth.  Their five starters are going to be on the court easily over 30 minutes, with only the possible exception of Jameel McKay - and then usually only if he gets into foul trouble.  Losing Naz Mitrou-Long early in the season was a huge blow to their backcout depth, and in the frontcourt they never had any to begin with.

This means they put an emphasis on staying out of foul trouble.  There is no backup point guard, for example.  There just isn't.  Monte Morris gets like two or three minutes' rest at the most.  Probably none at all against UVA.  He's one of the least fouley players in the country out of sheer necessity.  The Cyclones can't be highly aggressive in defending drives to the lane because they can't afford to have starters out for long stretches.

The result is predictable: not a lot of turnovers, and not great two-point defense.  ISU hardly ever sends opponents to the free throw line - only Hofstra's opponents get less of their scoring from free throws.  But the catch to that is if you aggressively drive the rim, they might well let you have it.  At 6'9, 225, McKay is the biggest guy they have, but he's also the first one off the court and there's no way they'll let Georges Niang (the second-biggest guy) pile up fouls by aggressively contesting every drive attempt.

Obviously, that means points in the paint can win us the game.  Put Malcolm Brogdon into Eff-It Mode and let him go to work.  Gill and Tobey, too.  I don't think Tobey will play much because ISU uses a small lineup quite a bit, but he might easily have a game like he did against Butler where it only takes him nine minutes to put ten points on the board.

-- UVA on defense

Of course we have the metaphorical 800-pound gorilla: Georges Niang.  Niang is 6'8" but in practice he's a very big shooting guard.  It's exceedingly rare in college hoops to find a guy that big and as comfortable as he is on the dribble.  Almost everyone chooses to guard him with someone smaller because big guys don't have a prayer of keeping up with him, which means he needs no space at all to get off a shot.  One-handed floaters are a specialty of his.  Tony almost has no choice but to use Malcolm Brogdon on him, just about all day long.  If Brogdon can hound Niang into a bad shooting day, his star will shoot to the top of the sky.

Just as ISU doesn't foul much, they get fouled even less.  Nobody gets a lower percentage of points from the stripe than the Cyclones.  They love the mid-range two - getting all the way to the rim isn't a top priority - and it's not just Niang who's good at hitting them.  ISU's two-point shooting percentage is 4th in the country, and even though the rotation is short, only Jameel McKay is not a threat from deep.  Everyone else on the floor must be paid some attention behind the arc.

Rotation-wise, beefy guard Deonte Burton is first off the bench, but he almost always replaces McKay to create what might as well be a five-guard lineup.  For this reason, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Mike Tobey get the start, while McKay is in, and then pull him when ISU goes small.  Monte Morris, as mentioned, probably never comes out, and is one of the best point guards in the tourney.  Matt Thomas is showing why Tony recruited him so hard (and almost succeeded) - he's a top-notch shooter.  Abdel Nader could take better care of the ball than he does, but he does a good job burning teams who pay too much attention to the stars.

Iowa State games are high-scoring affairs.  They combine efficiency with a high tempo and they're unaccustomed to scoring below 80.  UVA will have a tough time matching their usual defensive brilliance, but anything under 75 points would put them in terrific position.

-- Outlook

Last time the Hoos played Iowa State, it wasn't that long ago.  The First Book of Tony was just beginning and the team wasn't very good yet.  It was a Cyclone blowout.  UVA's leading scorer: K.T. Harrell, with nine.  That wasn't even a good ISU team.  They were 12-2 after that win, and finished 16-16, sinking like a rock in Big 12 play.

Everyone's calling it a clash of styles, and it is.  Iowa State is one of the quickest teams to shoot in the country.  But UVA is stubbornly impossible to speed up.  Even with the new shot clock, UVA hasn't played a 70-possession game since 2012, a 40-point blowout of Seattle.  This is the kind of team the pack-line was designed to keep from running away with the game.

And there's one basic deal here.  One team plays great on one end of the court; the other team plays great on both of them.  UVA can easily lose, if the shooting goes cold or if ISU proves too hard to stop on offense, either of which is very possible.  But the prediction has to stick with the more complete and deeper team.

Final score: UVA 83, ISU 73

game preview: Hampton

Date/Time: Thursday, March 17; 3:10

TV: truTV

Record against the Pirates: 7-0

Last meeting: UVA 69, HU 40; 11/26/13, Charlottesville

Last game: UNC 61, UVA 57 (3/12); HU 81, SC St. 69 (3/12)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.4 (#351)
HU: 72.2 (#44)

Offense:
UVA: 118.4 (#9)
HU: 100.0 (#244)

Defense:
UVA: 91.9 (#4)
HU: 104.8 (#192)

Pythag:
UVA: .9483 (#2)
HU: .3663 (#220)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (11.0 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 4.4 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (18.7 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 2.8 apg)
SG: Devon Hall (4.5 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 1.8 apg)
PF: Isaiah Wilkins (4.6 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.3 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 0.6 apg)

Hampton:

PG: Reginald Johnson (18.3 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 4.1 apg)
SG: Lawrence Cooks (8.0 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 1.5 apg)
SG: Brian Darden (13.2 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 1.9 apg)
SF: Quinton Chievous (17.0 ppg, 11.0 rpg, 2.1 apg)
PF: Dionte Adams (5.2 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 0.6 apg)

Last chance.  This is the best senior class for UVA hoops in quite a while.  Three different players in it have won ACC honors of some kind - Player of the Year, DPOY, 6th Man, you name it.  The cruel reality of the NCAA tournament is that hundreds of seniors will end their college careers with a loss, and only a tiny handful can say otherwise.  Whether Brogdon, Gill, Tobey, Nolte, and Kirven can avoid the usual fate of seniors remains to be seen, but they're writing the last piece of their legacy regardless.

It's not just the careers of five seniors, though, that are wrapping up.  This is also the last page of the First Book of Tony in the UVA basketball bible.  These guys - Brogdon in particular, way back in August of 2010 - made their commitment very early in the Tony Bennett era.  We're still carrying over from the initial rise to the top.  (And yes, with ACC banners in the ceiling and being ranked at times #1 in the AP poll and in KenPom, it's fair to say UVA has been at the very top of the basketball world.)  This is the final chapter.  When this tourney is over, whether after one, two, or three weeks, the next time the sun rises on UVA basketball it'll be the same author, but a new book.  Hopefully it's more "Harry saves the day and gets rid of Voldemort for now" and less "holy shit, they killed Ned."

-- UVA on offense

Hampton, on the surface, is a respectable defensive team - the stat that really drags down their defensive efficiency is "free throw defense."  I maintain that's not entirely out of one's control - fouling other team's guards will generally result in higher free throw percentages than fouling their bigs - but Hampton's guards aren't very foul-prone.  Their bigs are; maybe they foul lane drivers a lot.  Regardless, Hampton has played solid defense all year long, to just go by the efficiency stats.

Against MEAC competition, that is.  Against bigger fish, their tempo has worked against them and they've been flattened.  Colorado scored 95 in 75 possessions.  SMU rolled up 105 points in just 69 possessions, which is more than 1.5 points per.

Hampton's lineup being essentially a four-guard setup just about all the time, opposing big men tend to have a field day on them, even in losses.  The best comparison is probably Colorado's Josh Scott, one of the Pac-12's best centers and scorer of 21 points and 8 rebounds against Hampton.  UVA has made no secret of their intent to feed the post early and often, and Anthony Gill should be about that productive.

Surprisingly for an up-tempo team, Hampton doesn't pressure a lot on defense, so UVA will have room to work.  Malcolm Brogdon and Devon Hall will both tower over whoever guards them, and outweigh them by 20-30 pounds, too.  Hampton does good work on the boards at both ends, but with the height advantage UVA has at any position you like, there'll be second-chance points, too.  Execute as per usual and the scoreboard will light up.

-- UVA on defense

The Pirates want to push on offense, so one thing that will limit those second chances for UVA is a likely extra emphasis on getting back - more so than usual even for Tony Bennett.  Some teams - like, some we know real well - will pass on a good shot in order to look for a great one.  Hampton just takes what's there and then crashes the offensive glass, hard.  They have three players in the top 300 in offensive rebounding, per KenPom's figuring.

For the most part, Hampton's starting guards are volume scorers.  Brian Darden is a low-percentage, high-volume shooter whose efficiency numbers are saved mainly by his almost impeccable free-throw shooting.  Reginald Johnson can get to the rim fairly well and gets fouled all the time, but he's a senior whose career three-point shooting is under 30%.  Doesn't stop him from shooting - he's launched 173 of them this year.

Hampton's biggest offensive threat - besides their propensity to try and beat you down the court - is the interior games of their biggishes, Quinton Chievous and Dionte Adams.  Chievous gets some putbacks, shoots 63% from two, and mainly eschews the jumpers - though he will at times shoot a three and very, very occasionally make one.  He's much more of a threat down low - but you can save a lot of points by fouling him, because he misses more free throws than he makes.  Hampton's biggest guy is 6'8", 250 Jervon Pressley, who's a shot-blocker but a liability on offense.

Conventional wisdom says you beat UVA by shooting threes, as aptly demonstrated by UVA's 1-3 stretch in January where the winning opponents (VT, GT, FSU) combined to make more than they missed, and UVA's only win (Miami) couldn't buy one.  Hampton cannot shoot threes.

-- Outlook

After the last couple years, in which both Coastal Carolina and Belmont put a scare on the Hoos and threatened to list them among the all-time tournament upsets, I ought to be highly cautious.  It's hard, though, when the opposing offense is so badly geared to succeed against one of the nation's best defenses.  One day, somewhere, a 16 seed will beat a 1, but there's no point ever trying to predict it.

Final score: UVA 82, HU 63

game preview: North Carolina

Date/Time: Saturday, February 27; 6:30

TV: ESPN

Record against the Heels: 52-129

Last meeting: UNC 71, UVA 67; 3/13/15; Greensboro, NC (ACC tournament)

Last game: Miami 64, UVA 61 (2/22); UNC 80, NCSt. 68 (2/24)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.5 (#351)
UNC: 72.3 (#47)

Offense:
UVA: 117.7 (#11)
UNC: 119.8 (#5)

Defense:
UVA: 92.7 (#9)
UNC: 95.7 (#32)

Pythag:
UVA: .9397 (#3)
UNC: .9298 (#6)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (11.2 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 4.4 apg)
SG: Devon Hall (4.2 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 1.9 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (18.2 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 2.8 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.6 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 0.6 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (7.0 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 0.4 apg)

North Carolina:

PG: Joel Berry (11.9 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 3.9 apg)
SG: Marcus Paige (12.3 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 3.5 apg)
SF: Justin Jackson (12.4 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 3.3 apg)
PF: Brice Johnson (17.0 ppg, 10.6 rpg, 1.3 apg)
C: Kennedy Meeks (10.0 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 1.2 apg)

I brought it to my own attention that I haven't done a single preview of an ACC game all year.  So why not start with the biggest regular season game we've got?

There's a lot at stake here, in terms of ACC seeding.  A top four slot, of course, is the goal, in the hopes that a few of the teams 5-9 or so get taken out early.  The conference is so damn wrapped up on itself, though, that it's going to be all but impossible to avoid tiebreaker entanglements.  There's a fair chance that teams 3-6 are in a four-way tie at 11-5 after this weekend - in fact, that happenstance mainly hinges on UVA beating Carolina.  And if that happens, then 1-2 will also be tied at 12-4.  UVA has collected wins over every team in the top six except Duke and UNC; one of those can still be rectified.  If they get it, they'll be close to bulletproof in any tiebreaker scenario you can concoct.

If not, they'll have to scratch and claw and hope for a few things to shake out correctly.  Even at 12-6, the chances of the coveted double bye would be slim.  With GameDay in town and Bronco Mendenhall hosting a very big junior day, it'll be a big-time atmosphere in Charlottesville; that'll help, and a potentially shorthanded UVA team will need every bit of help it can get.

-- UVA on offense

Lately I've been trying to decide the answer to a chicken-egg question: Is Malcolm Brogdon dominating games because his teammates are suddenly not much help, or are they not much help because they're getting out of the way of a completely en fuego Brogdon?  One clue might be those elbow step-back jumpers he was beating Miami over the head with.  Darius Thompson had the opportunity to try the same thing on more than one occasion and passed on it.  Then Brogdon would go out and do it again.  It was almost as if he was trying to convince Thompson it was possible.

Anthony Gill's one-handers haven't been falling lately, which isn't helping.  I've always thought those are really tough shots - you have to be a smashmouth post presence and then immediately switch to a soft touch.  I'm hoping to see Kennedy Meeks guarding him Saturday, because Meeks isn't quick enough to regularly stop Gill.  I don't think Roy Williams has checked out that much, though.  The much more likely scenario is to see Brice Johnson on Gill and Meeks on Tobey; Meeks's bulk will give Tobey trouble, and Johnson has two inches on Gill.  Both would be forced further from the basket than they'd like to be.  They can hit the jumper (I'm not sure Tobey takes jumpers, though - he's more or less decided to resurrect the set shot) but obviously that's too low-percentage to rely on.

I'm also sure we'll see Justin Jackson on Brogdon, which is interesting.  Jackson has three inches on Brogdon, and step-back mid-range jumpers would be hard to pull off.  Brogdon's much beefier and stronger, though.  I'm always wishing Brogdon would go harder at his defenders and just knock them around a bit - probably no more so than in this game.

Thing is, though, UNC should be better on defense than it is.  They're not bad, but they're not really as good as they should be given their frontcourth depth and overall athleticism.  Johnson is a helluva rebounder on defense, but nobody else really is.  Jackson in particular is pretty much indifferent to the glass.  The Hoos should have plenty of second chances on offense, especially if they shoot enough threes.  Shooting threes is always a good way to increase your offensive rebounds anyway, but UNC's guards basically only take whatever comes to them.

Essentially, though, this will have to be more than the Malcolm Brogdon Show.  I'm very happy to see him take over like this, because I've been asking for it.  But UVA won't win too many games, and zero against Carolina, if he's the only one scoring in double digits.

-- UVA on defense

This Carolina team is no different than any Carolina team under Roy Williams.  Simple formula: Recruit a bunch of horses and let them run.  There isn't a lot of definition to a player's role.  Wing Justin Jackson handles the ball so much that KenPom's normally reliable algorithm pegs him as the point guard.

The offense is predicated on driving at the rim.  The Heels want to try and finish there, which they do well, or pull up for a jumper.  When they shoot threes, which isn't often because they don't have a sharpshooter, it's almost always a drive and kick.  Practically every single one of their made threes is assisted.  But they're one of the most skewed teams in the country toward two-pointers - only ODU and Navy are more so.  They're simply more athletic than just about everyone they play, so they use it.

This is where Isaiah Wilkins and Evan Nolte would come in handy.  Wilkins provides the athleticism needed to keep up on the interior.  Nolte is a plodder, but he makes up for it with almost picture-perfect positioning and excellent rotating.

Still, the pack-line is designed to stop precisely this kind of matchup.  ESPN put out a laughable preview of the game online, with keys to the game like "play good defense."  One of them was on the money, though: UNC needs to hit the threes they get from kicking the ball back out.  If the pack-line is on point, there'll be a lot of opportunities like that.  Guys like Joel Berry and Marcus Paige are OK, but far from automatic.

An all-in rebounding effort is crucial, too.  Yes, that's barely a step above "score more points," but Carolina has their bigs crash the offensive boards hard and depends on the athleticism of their backcourt (which doesn't crash) to stop transition chances.  When one of the guards drives the lane, the bigs follow and try to clean up putbacks.

This is the kind of matchup that makes college ball so much fun.  Given a nice oval track, the UNC race cars would love to do laps at 200 mph all day.  UVA prefers offroading it.  It's the race track vs. the mud pit.  Everything is based on whether the Hoos can bog down the Carolina offense, or if UNC can just run past the sand traps.

-- Outlook

The Hoos will need more than to make a mess of the UNC offense, though; they'll have to score some of their own, too.  Hard to do against the size and quickness advantages UNC will have, but the Heels are held back by a bit of an indifference on defense and a massive indifference to rebounding.  Boston College is in the bottom ten offenses in the whole country and still scored just shy of a point per possession.

It helps a bit too that Roy Williams is kinda checking out, as the Duke game so amply demonstrated.  His in-game coaching skills have always been, eh, a bit north of mediocre at best, but his give-a-shit levels are in rapid decline.  A close game gives a major advantage to Tony and Sons.

And close is what it's almost dead certain to be.  Against the ACC's six-team top tier, Carolina is 1-3.  That makes this a huge game for them as much as UVA - they'll still be tied for the ACC lead if they lose, but they would have zero margin for error because the tiebreakers would be hell on them.  And they're 5-4 on the road, having been incapable of putting close road games away against good teams - Northern Iowa and Texas both came up big too.

The tangibles, then, are close, with strengths and weaknesses for both teams, and a few more of the latter for the Hoos if they have to play without Wilkins or Nolte.  The intangibles all swing to the right side.  In the Dean Dome, even though that's not one of the ACC's tougher buildings, I'd have a very hard time giving UVA the edge.  At home, with a crowd that started the day fired up and will have all day to get nice and lubricated.... well, a loss isn't inconceivable, but too many of the intangible percentages are on our side to predict one.

Final score: UVA 68, UNC 64

game preview: Villanova

Date/Time: Saturday, December 19; 12:00

TV: ESPN2

Record against the Wildcats: 4-2

Last meeting: Nova 73, UVA 63; 3/20/04, Philadelphia

Last game: UVA 70, WVU 54 (12/8); Nova 76, La Salle 47 (12/13)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 63.5 (#348)
Nova: 67.4 (#299)

Offense:
UVA: 115.9 (#7)
Nova: 113.2 (#17)

Defense:
UVA: 90.4 (#5)
Nova: 90.0 (#4)

Pythag:
UVA: .9455 (#1)
Nova: .9333 (#4)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (10.4 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 5.1 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (16.9 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Darius Thompson (8.4 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 2.2 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.4 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 0.4 apg)
C: Jack Salt (3.1 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 0.0 apg)

Villanova:

PG: Ryan Arcidiacono (12.3 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 4.1 apg)
SG: Jalen Brunson (10.8 ppg, 1.8 rpg, 3.4 apg)
SF: Josh Hart (15.0 ppg, 7.1 rpg, 1.8 apg)
PF: Kris Jenkins (10.6 ppg, 3.3 rpg, 1.6 apg)
C: Daniel Ochefu (8.9 ppg, 8.2 rpg, 1.1 apg)

I've said this about a couple different schools, like Georgetown, but I don't know why UVA and Villanova don't play each other more.  The last time was over ten years ago and it was the NIT committee who arranged the matchup.  The time before that was also in the NIT.  The last time these two schools played each other on purpose was 1989, which seems silly.  They're a four-and-a-half hour bus ride apart and right next to each other alphabetically.  There's plenty of tradition on both sides.  It makes sense, dammit.

The Hoos jump straight from finals break to one of the most challenging games they'll have all year.  Villanova went 33-3 last season, lost three of their top players, and apparently didn't miss a beat.  Every single one of their games has been a blowout - although one of them wasn't exactly in their favor.  The flip side of that is that they haven't been tested, save for a trip to Hawaii to play a neutral-site game against Oklahoma, which got them killed.  They've played one road game - against St. Joseph's, which isn't so much a bus ride away as it is a carpool.  Nevertheless, they haven't allowed themselves to fall victim to any tripwires, as they've played a few teams that are at least capable.  They'll give UVA a handful in a game with an ACC-like feel to it.

-- UVA on offense

Villanova took Kris Jenkins out of the starting lineup after the Oklahoma disaster, and replaced him with the much smaller Phil Booth, but it's a good bet Jenkins will be back against UVA.  Nova would be laughably undermanned against Anthony Gill otherwise.  Jenkins is a little on the short side at 6'6", but he's beefy and against a lineup with Gill and a true center, he's Villanova's only hope.

Nova is, on the whole, an excellent defensive team.  Even the OU loss was more on the offense than the defense.  They stay in front of their man very well and have center Daniel Ochefu to wipe out a lot of mistakes.  He's a terrific shot-blocker, and lanky Mikal Bridges, playing forward off the bench, creates a lot of havoc on the defensive end too.  Villanova plays smart and fouls very little, and the result of all this is that teams typically have to shoot well from three to have a chance.

The hole, of course, is that they don't have much of a frontcourt outside of Ochefu.  Jenkins, really, plays a small forward's game.  Bridges and Darryl Reynolds play significant rotation minutes off the bench, but Reynolds leaves a hole on offense when he's in.  Nova has good backcourt size, but that doesn't help in scrambles underneath the basket, and second-chance points will be a concern for them all year - especially going up against a good offensive rebounding team on Saturday.  Ochefu does really excellent work on the boards, but he plays only half the time.

UVA probably won't get a lot of opportunities to drive at the rim, as the Wildcats do a good job at preventing it.  But they should be able to pound the ball inside, substituting to try and force mismatches with Gill and Isaiah Wilkins.  Mike Tobey probably won't light up the stat sheet, because Ochefu is a major handful - but simply by existing and occupying Ochefu, he'll force Nova to guard UVA's power forwards with someone who isn't well suited for it.

-- UVA on defense

This could be an exciting matchup for the pack-line.  Nova is a perplexing team on offense.  They finish really, really damn well at the rim.  Kris Jenkins and Josh Hart are both shooting 80% at the rim, and this is not on putbacks because this team, outside of Ochefu, simply doesn't do that.  When they get offensive rebounds - which isn't often - they reset, rather than going back up.  Not surprising for a team of mostly guards.  I digress.  This team does very well driving to the bucket.

Fortunately for their opponents - especially, say, an opponent whose defensive system is designed to slam the door on any attempts to drive the lane - Villanova is 1) in love with the three-ball and 2) not that good at it.  The reason they lost so badly to Oklahoma is they shot more threes than twos and hit on four of them - out of 32.

They were much better at it last year, and shooters gotta keep shooting, so eventually they might snap out of it.  Maybe on Saturday.  But so far this year, only Ryan Arcidiacono has been a threat as a distance shooter.  Jenkins, Bridges, and Jalen Brunson are all in the 20% range so far.  They've rolled their opponents anyway because they're so damn good inside the arc (against Georgia Tech, for example, 19-of-24 for two) and other than Ochefu, mostly automatic free-throw shooters, but they settle for threes a heck of a lot.  They could win a lot of games from the stripe, but they're near the bottom of D-I in free throw attempts.  They have this very peculiar statistical arrangement:

- #4 in the country in 2pt %
- #277 in the country in 3pt %
- #254 in the country in percentage of points coming from two
- #36 in the country in percentage of points coming from three

That is the fingerprint of a team that shoots way too damn many threes.  So pack-line 'em up.  This Villanova team is designed to be stopped by it.  When Nova throws it inside to Ochefu, they'll be dangerous, because dude's a hoss.  When they get past the gate sentries, they'll be dangerous, because they finish so well.  If they're content to settle for threes, and they have been all year, UVA will take it.  I suppose Nova could be an unstoppable force if they ever actually start hitting those threes, and we can't have nice things so they'll probably choose Saturday to start.  But UVA rebounds really well even against teams with actual power forwards, and it adds up to a very bad matchup for Nova's offense.

-- Outlook

This game stands a good chance of being a rock fight.  UVA's tempo is certainly up thanks to the shot clock - they're five possessions faster than they were last year and the highest they've been in the Tony Bennett era.  But still they're one of the slowest teams in the country.  Offensive average possession length is clearly faster.  Defensive possession length - hardly any change at all.  Villanova is not a run and gun team either; they're nearly as deliberate and force long possessions as well.  Add in that both teams play excellent defense and one team is a nightmarish matchup for the other's offense, and this game will likely struggle to hit the 70s, if not the 60s.

I said the other day that it looks to me like UVA's chemistry experiment is finally producing a reaction.  West Virginia was held to 54 points in 65 possessions, and just 18 in the second half.  If I'm right, UVA, playing at home and against an opponent that likes to do things that play into the hands of the pack-line, should win this one.  If I'm wrong, Villanova will find defensive breakdowns and derail the good vibes from the WVU win.  I might as well stop writing if I'm to call myself wrong a day after writing it.

Final score: UVA 63, Nova 54

basketball season preview, part 2

Moving on with the second third of the UVA roster, including its two biggest stars.

#13 - Anthony Gill - Sr. PF

Nothing in life is guaranteed, so you're allowed to be nervous about whether this coming season can be as brilliant as the last two.  But you're not allowed to be worried about whether a healthy UVA squad will still be a winning team.  Anthony Gill is half the reason.

Gill is a brute force of nature in the post, and unguardable by the average ACC big man.  It takes a hell of an athlete to keep him in check, because he's one of the most powerfully strong basketball players in the country.  It's fortunate that he's a respectable free-throw shooter, because he draws a ton of fouls.  He averaged almost five free throws a game last year, and that's even with opponents finally realizing that hacking him isn't much of a strategy.  Gill is also a tremendous force on the offensive boards, which, combined with Mike Tobey doing the same, is an incredibly potent weapon - it lets Tony Bennett have his cake and eat it too, with stifling transition defense and second-chance points.

Simply put, Gill is the focal point of the frontcourt and one of the ACC's top players.  He's not a flashy defender like his predecessors Akil Mitchell and Darion Atkins, but regardless he's going to draw the top assignments on both ends of the floor.  He'll have to fight double-teams on offense and take on everyone's best in the post on defense.  Even though he moved into the starting lineup last year, this is still an extra step of responsibility for him.  Worry all you like about that, but your dose of Xanax for that is that the rest of the ACC has to figure out what the hell to do with him.

#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - Sr. SG

Heart and soul of this team, sure - but every team has a heart and soul, or at least, most of the good ones.  (We could all name a few soulless teams.)  Malcolm Brogdon's a bit more than that.  With apologies to Joe Harris, whose journey from Chelan to ACC champion embodied Virginia's rise to the scene, Brogdon is the quintessential Tony Bennett recruit and player.  He doesn't just fit the mold, he is the mold.  Much of this was encapsulated in a Sports Illustrated article that went way, way in depth into what makes Brogdon tick.  His family collects advanced degrees like Halloween candy, and Brogdon himself is unselfish and almost fanatically dedicated to improvement - both on the court and off it.  Never has Tony Bennett betrayed more truth about his move from Wazzu to UVA than when he simply says, "I came to Virginia to be able to recruit players like Malcolm."

Brogdon has enough skills as a ballhandler, enough quicks, enough hops, but unlike most star guards in the sport, none of these are elite qualities.  Where he stands out is - like Gill - his strength.  Brogdon is big for a college guard and probably the most physically strong backcourt player in the nation.  This means he, too, draws a lot of fouls, and his near-elite free-throw shooting makes opponents pay for it.  He's more of an average three-point shooter than his free-throw shooting would suggest, but he's good enough you have to respect it, and he fearlessly shoots two-point jumpers as well - which is nominally a very inefficient shot that Brogdon turns into one of his best.  And on the other end, his on-ball defense is simply terrific - partly because of his strength and partly because he's taken all of Tony's coaching to heart.

Now that he's a senior, what he can do best to help his team is to demand the ball in crunch time and go full-speed angry bull at the rim.  Brogdon lacks much deception in his ballhandling, but he's better than he thinks he is at slashing and driving.  Because, quite simply, he can shoot through whatever you swing at him, and draw and-1s with ease.  Maddeningly, he didn't fully realize this even up through the last game of the year; if he had, the MSU game would've ended up a lot different.  When he figures out that it would take Bill Laimbeer to stop him from scoring in the lane, he'll routinely swing close games his way.

#21 - Isaiah Wilkins - So. PF

Marial Shayok is the player whose second-year improvement I'm most excited to see, but Isaiah Wilkins's improvement is the most critical to the success of the team.  Indisputable, that.  UVA has a tremendously experienced frontcourt just with Gill and Tobey alone, but it won't be a deep frontcourt without Wilkins.

In last year's season opener, Wilkins was all the rage - eight points, five boards, three assists, two blocks, and two steals.  Unfortunately, there was no repeat performance, though in large part because of the emergence of Darion Atkins.  Offensively, Wilkins struggled the rest of the way, and he was clearly a step slower than the veterans in the complicated defense.

Best-case, Wilkins can be the player he was against JMU.  He's got potential to be a terrific shot-blocker, and he's put on a few pounds which should help his defense as well as keep him from getting shoved out of the lane on offense.  He can shoot the occasional three - in fact he was two-for-three last year - so in an ideal world he's a matchup nightmare, able to stretch the floor and be comfortable on the outside and yet do all the dirty work required of a big man.  We've seen him do all of that, but only in flashes.

How consistently he's able to play like a true power forward will help to dictate usage elsewhere.  It's a problem if Wilkins isn't putting it together, because it means playing Mike Tobey in less-than-ideal matchups.  It's too much to expect for him (yet) to be the high-flying defender that Mitchell and Atkins were, because he's only a sophomore.  But take that JMU performance and turn it into 12-15 minutes a night of that, and UVA's frontcourt instantly becomes one of the most formidable in the conference.

#31 - Jarred Reuter - Fr. PF

Not much is expected of Reuter this year.  He'll be at the back of the bigs rotation.  It's not likely he'll redshirt - Tony is limited to eleven scholarship players because of the commitment to redshirt Mamadi Diakite and the requirement to redshirt Austin Nichols.  Reuter should get some minutes mainly to spell the starters, probably those ones in the first half about two-thirds of the way through where we usually see the back-of-the-rotation players.  Some games he might not play at all.

He won't be counted on to generate offense.  Reuter's game is to bang and crash down low.  Just rebound, occasionally put a hammer on someone trying to score, and set good screens.  As time goes on we'll see how his game develops, but for now, this team doesn't yet need him to play a featured role.  Some contributions here and there on defense and a few bruised opponents is all he'll need to make his mark.

hoops in review, part 2

The much-coveted hoops review continues with the second half of the roster.

#11 - Evan Nolte - Jr. SF

Preview quote: "Nolte's an interesting case. It's very fair to say that other than the freshmen who we haven't seen at all, he has the least predictable role on the team, and even then, it's not like we don't know what Devon Hall or Jack Salt are here for."

In the preview I labeled Nolte a power forward after some deliberation.  Here he's a small forward.  That about sums things up, really.  Nolte was an odd duck of a player this year, with no particular defined role and lots of minutes regardless.  He was the only player to cross over between the frontcourt and backcourt, playing about a quarter of his minutes as one of two bigs rather than one of three guards.

Those minutes were weirdly situated, too.  Nolte's playing time was circling the drain midseason, with a stretch of four games where he played six or fewer minutes.  He was down to three against UNC.  Then Justin Anderson broke his hand, and Nolte immediately jumped to 24 that very game.  He would play almost two-thirds of his season total minutes in the final one-third of the season, starting every game but the last and regularly topping 30 minutes on the court.

This was to the consternation of quite a few fans.  Nolte's most readily apparent role was to shoot threes, which was supposed to be the thing he did best.  Instead he had a completely horrible year in that area.  The whole deal was eerily reminiscent of Sammy Zeglinski, who caught way more heat than he deserved because he wasn't shooting as well as people thought he should.  (I should've anticipated this.  Nolte also took totally unwarranted heat for his sweet choice of shirt during summer run-from-the-cops shenanigans.)

Me, I get irritated at fans who act as if the only thing that matters is shooting.  Nolte was in the game for so many minutes all of a sudden because he was getting it on the defensive end.  I also wrote before the season that Nolte was due for a big jump in play, and though nothing he did on a stat sheet would've indicated such a leap, his defense was, somehow, outstanding.  They don't hand out defensive all-conference honors for stubbornly staying in front of people, but one thing you hardly ever saw was Nolte getting beat on the ball.  It involved the adoption of a really goofy-looking defensive stance where Nolte made himself much shorter than his 6'8" frame and stuck his hands out palms-forward, but that right there was your leap ahead: on-ball defense and the invisible game.

I don't think we'll see 30 minutes a game for Nolte next year, but then I also don't think he'll shoot under .300 from three again.  It didn't look like there was anything wrong with his shot; they just didn't fall.  But what he did do is establish himself in Tony's mind as a player well within the circle of trust; up til the last month of this season, you'd have wondered about that.  Last year the prediction was that Nolte was one player in danger of seeing his minutes dwindle if he didn't develop a dependable skill set.  Like it or not, he did that.  It showed a bit late, but he did that; next year, as a senior, the minutes will be there.

#13 - Anthony Gill - Jr. PF

Preview quote: "[H]e should find himself in the conversation for some all-ACC recognition if all goes well."

All did go well, and this is the simplest, most straightforward assessment we'll do on the whole team.  Gill moved into the starting lineup this season and had little trouble with the transition.  His efficiency probably exposed some vestiges of pacism among the all-ACC voters; he was KenPom's #7 player in the country (a rating admittedly heavily influenced by team quality - but then, so is all-America voting) but only third-team all-ACC.

Gill was actually UVA's most efficient offensive player, nosing out Justin Anderson.  Like a lot of the players on this team, he's terrifically strong, and he used that muscle to be a terror on the offensive boards; draw copious fouls; and make 58% of his shots.  He was at his best going straight at the rim.  He liked to try fallaway shots as well (especially, and very maddeningly, against MSU) and they weren't nearly as effective as a simple bull-rush at the rim.  Gill has enough quickness to start the move, and then use his strength to finish and/or draw the foul.

Not much to overanalyze here, really.  Gill was the offensive centerpiece of the frontcourt, a role he stepped into like a pair of slippers.  Darion Atkins had such a tremendous year that he was the clear focus on defense, but next year that'll probably be Gill too.  He'll be one of the conference's top returning players next year.

#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - Jr. SG

Preview quote: "[T]here's every reason to expect him to become not just UVA's marquee player, but one of the ACC's as well. ... [F]irst team all-ACC is the expectation."

Mission accomplished.  Brogdon was one of four players to be a unanimous or near-consensus pick for the media's first team (the others were Jahlil Okafor, Jerian Grant, and Rakeem Christmas.)  Brogdon was also on the all-defensive team, making him and Christmas the two best all-around players in the conference.  Scoring is what usually gets you a lot of attention, but Brogdon was rightfully recognized as an elite on-ball defender.  He's really big for a guard, so going around him was difficult, and he's quite probably the strongest guard in the conference.  Best example of his skills: Wake Forest tried to use Codi Miller-McIntyre to break him down one-on-one for the game-winning basket, and Miller-McIntyre never made it past the key.

Offensively, Brogdon is actually even better than he thinks he is.  To be specific, his ballhandling and driving.  He doesn't lack at all for confidence in his jump shot, and in fact has the really maddening habit of shooting them with his toes on the three-point line.  He'll come off a curl, or he'll take a step-back jumper, and it'll be from a distance that might as well be a three if you're gonna shoot from out there, but isn't.  Next year I hope he starts his move six inches further from the basket.

But I digress.  Brogdon doesn't have a lot of deception in his driving game, but he's so strong he doesn't need much.  The guy can finish through a ton of contact.  He has it in him to be that clutch scorer who's there when you absolutely, positively need a bucket, and he's flashed that ability.  If he figures that out, UVA might not lose a close game all year.

#21 - Isaiah Wilkins - Fr. PF

Preview quote: "In his commitment profile I called him a Swiss Army knife of a player; he doesn't blow you away with shooting range or power and strength, but he's athletic, long-armed, and energetic, and should do a nice job on defense as long as he's got the system down enough to be out there."

I think that sums up Wilkins's season awfully well, actually.  He started off against JMU with a game that drew a ton of praise for its all-around contributions: 8 points, 5 boards, 3 assists, 2 blocks, and 2 steals in 19 minutes.  Almost all those numbers were season highs, as it turned out, but Wilkins had far too much depth in front of him to be in for 20 minutes every night.

His usage was a little erratic - he played 14 minutes in a tight one against Notre Dame after sitting the last three completely out, for example.  And his offensive game wasn't well-developed at all.  But he sported - with small-sample-size warnings applying - an 8.7 block percentage, and had 2.7 blocks per 40 minutes.  The fewer the minutes, the worse the extrapolation, so that's a number to be taken with many grains of salt, but even so, he had 18 blocked shots - which was two more than Anthony Gill in less than 1/3 the playing time.

So I think he had a perfectly acceptable year, which I don't mean as damnation with faint praise.  Playing the one spot where a freshman would've had the hardest time standing out, he managed to at least carve a niche.  Tony and the staff are starting to work on a real nice track record developing big men - just look at Mitchell and Atkins - and Wilkins should be due for a big increase in responsibilities next year.

#32 - London Perrantes - So. PG

Preview quote: "The bottom line is, UVA has as veteran a point guard as you'll find in the league - and he's a sophomore."

The narrative was that after the electric scorer and deadly shooter broke his hand and had to sit, the normally pass-first point guard starting take a more assertive role in the scoring department, helping to shore up the business of getting points for the scoreboard.  It sure seemed that way.  It wasn't quite.

Perrantes did do that, a little bit.  He took about two shots more per game post-Justin-injury than he did before it.  But his three-point shooting percentage took a nosedive from last season - which surprised me, because, again, it didn't seem like it.  He made up for it by being a better shooter from two and upping his assists, but the overall numbers picture doesn't line up with the narrative.

Which is why we rely on numbers, but we're not a slave to them.  Point guardery isn't always about the numbers, not even the assists.  Perrantes did assert himself more than last year.  He made himself more visible, more available.  He was more active without the ball.  There wasn't, on the stat sheet, a huge difference in his play from last year, but he developed all the same.

#33 - Jack Salt - Fr. C

Preview quote: "The likely contribution is as a practice body."

Which was the case; Salt, as expected, redshirted.  Details on how that year went depend on who you ask.  I've seen reports ranging from "not progressing as hoped" to "Tony absolutely loves what he sees."  With Mike Tobey a senior next year, I think Salt's career will continue to be on a slow start.  But we'll at least get a few chances to see what we have in the big Kiwi.

*******************************************

So, a quick look at the rotation for next year.  The Hoos have to replace about 28 minutes in the frontcourt and 24 minutes in the backcourt.  It's tempting to say we already saw what replacing Justin Anderson will look like, but Tony, like most coaches, had settled into a rotation he liked by the late stages of the season, and simply extended a few players a few minutes each and gave Evan Nolte the rest.  Next year is a bit of a clean slate.  Devon Hall will have a chance to reassert himself, and Darius Thompson (who some reports say is easily the quickest ballhandler on the team and a great candidate to add a slashing dimension that wasn't really there last year) will have every opportunity as well.  And Marial Shayok could see a large boost from his 14.6 minutes as well.  It's a crowded situation.

The bigs don't have it any easier.  Gill is the only one with a guaranteed allotment.  Mike Tobey will play, of course, but he might stick around 17 minutes or he might get ten more.  Wilkins should become more of a regular, and Salt and Jarred Reuter, who even knows?  It's a surprising amount of unknowns for a team that returns most of its players.  The fact that there are so many possibilities is a showcase for the remarkable depth.

game preview: Belmont

Date/Time: Friday, March 20; 3:10

TV: truTV

Record against the Bruins: 1-0

Last meeting: UVA 94, Belmont 74; 12/28/99, Charlottesville

Last game: UNC 71, UVA 67 (3/13); Belmont 88, Murray St. 87 (3/7)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 58.2 (#349)
Belmont: 67.0 (#68)

Offense:
UVA: 112.2 (#25)
Belmont: 107.9 (#63)

Defense:
UVA: 85.5 (#1)
Belmont: 106.3 (#251)

Pythag:
UVA: .9580 (#4)
Belmont: .5407 (#146)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (6.4 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 4.8 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.9 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 2.5 apg)
SF: Evan Nolte (3.2 ppg, 1.5 rpg, 0.6 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.5 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.5 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Belmont:

PG: Reece Chamberlain (8.5 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 6.1 apg)
SG: Craig Bradshaw (18.1 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 3.2 apg)
SG: Taylor Barnette (10.7 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.3 apg)
PF: Amanze Egekeze (5.3 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Evan Bradds (14.3 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 1.3 apg)

Win or go home, you know the drill.  You no doubt also know a bit of the (very recent) history here: that it was former Hoo Taylor Barnette hitting the game-winning shot for Belmont that punched their dance ticket.  (This tourney is loaded with former Hoos.  Will Regan is still suiting up for Buffalo and Paul Jesperson is in with Northern Iowa.)

Memories of last year's first-round game are still fresh; UVA found itself down by as many as nine to 16-seed Coastal Carolina.  Belmont - a small school sitting in Vanderbilt's shadow in Nashville - is the kind of team that could make the Hoos nervous again ... but also the kind that could get completely rolled.

-- UVA on offense

Belmont's not the worst defensive team in the tournament - that honor belongs to Eastern Washington - but it's close.  Their efficiency of 106.3 places them outside the top 250 in the country.  Size has something to do with it, but the OVC isn't exactly loaded with seven-footers, either.  Belmont was even crummy within their own conference.

Belmont let most opponents shoot over 50% from inside the arc, especially if that opponent had a functioning big man.  UVA has three.  This is where the Hoos will have just an incredible, unfair advantage.  Belmont simply doesn't have big men.  Tyler Hadden is 6'10", 240 and Mack Mercer is 6'9", 220, and both play about six minutes a game.  Taking most of the big-man minutes are starters Amanze Egekeze and Evan Bradds; Bradds is 6'7", 205, and Egekeze is only an inch taller and ten pounds heavier.

Tobey, Gill, and Atkins are going to have a field day with this.  Belmont has the choice of using players who are barely OVC-caliber, or using guys who are small enough to get posted up by Evan Nolte.  The Hoos are going to want to feed the post all day long; if they find a hot hand, that guy might score 20.  This is to say nothing of the rebounding advantage UVA will have.

It's not only the bigs; our old friend Barnette, more power to him, but he's going to have to guard one of Brogdon, Nolte, or Anderson, and there's a reason he couldn't get on the court much while competing with them for playing time.  Not to single him out; it's more an illustration of the talent difference here.

Frankly, there's no reason UVA shouldn't be able to score a whole bunch.  The patient approach they have is going to break down this defense.  I'd expect a bunch of double-teams to make up for Belmont's lack of size, but with so many mismatches on the floor, it shouldn't matter.

-- UVA on defense

Here's what makes me nervous.  The huge size advantage UVA has is nullified in a way.  Belmont won't be able to drive much and they'll never be able to post up.  They might find some clever passing angles for an open bucket or two, but mainly, they'll be forced to shoot a lot of threes.  Which is exactly what they want to do.

That's how you beat the Hoos, of course.  Belmont attempted more threes than all but four teams in the country, and the thing about shooting is, an open three is an open three regardless of talent level or conference or whatever.  In other words, just because they're a 15 seed doesn't mean a 40% shooter is gonna be any worse against a 2 seed.

Craig Bradshaw leads the way, shooting 42%.  Barnette, of course, has a very green light, and Nick Smith, despite playing only 15 minutes a game, has the third-most attempts on the team.  But truthfully, just about anyone on the court is fair game to fire away.  Mack Mercer, who barely plays anyway, is the only player to be really complacent about.

I think we'll see the post double employed very little - partly because the ball just won't be in the post much, but partly because it doesn't make sense to leave three-point shooters temporarily open so you can double a guy that Anthony Gill could eat for lunch anyway.

With a ton of shooters all bombing away, it's too much to think they'll all go cold all at once.  Some of these are going to drop.  You just figure that the defenders need to be able to close out; fortunately, with no real post threat, there isn't much need to collapse too far in the first place.  Belmont is going to shoot like 20 threes regardless of what the defense does; if most of them are contested, UVA should be able to keep the Bruins at arms' length.

-- Outlook

Belmont has half the traditional formula for a big upset.  They shoot threes - lots of them, and well.  So often, though, the scrappy underdog also has a legit big man who seems like he's everywhere.  No doubt the Bruin bigs are going to scrap, but they're likely doomed to being dominated in all aspects of the game.  I think Belmont keeps it closer than we'd like, shooting well enough to not let the game get out of hand.  But they're not going to play enough defense, either.

Final score: UVA 79, Belmont 66

game preview: Florida State

Date/Time: Thursday, March 12; 12:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Noles: 22-22

Last meeting: UVA 51, FSU 41; 2/22

Last game: UL 59, UVA 57 (3/7); FSU 76, Clem. 73 (3/11)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 58.0 (#349)
FSU: 66.5 (#90)

Offense:
UVA: 112.9 (#22)
FSU: 102.8 (#154)

Defense:
UVA: 85.2 (#2)
FSU: 97.7 (#83)

Pythag:
UVA: .9622 (#3)
FSU: .6446 (#102)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (6.3 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 4.7 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.7 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 2.6 apg)
SF: Evan Nolte (2.9 ppg, 1.4 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.6 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.6 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 0.9 apg)

Florida State:

PG: Xavier Rathan-Mayes (14.4 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 4.4 apg)
SG: Devin Bookert (10.3 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SG: Montay Brandon (11.9 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 1.9 apg)
PF: Phil Cofer (6.8 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 0.2 apg)
C: Kiel Turpin (5.1 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 0.1 apg)

Everything matters now, therefore game previews.  And if I told you about:

-- a 16-2 UVA team
-- that won the ACC regular season against Syracuse
-- by running away with the game in the second half
-- then lost its finale on the road on a big senior night for the opponent
-- and faced Florida State in the opening round of the ACC tourney

you still wouldn't know whether I was talking about 2014 or 2015.  Yup, it's shaping up a lot like it did last year.  UVA opens with nine-seed Florida State, who survived a near-choke against Clemson in their opener after leading most of the game.  The lone contest against FSU this year was a close one, in which FSU's terrific freshman Xavier Rathan-Mayes made some tough shots, but also in which FSU scored four points in the final ten minutes.  The winner gets the Louisville-UNC winner - so a UVA win here would set up some interesting storylines.

-- UVA on offense

FSU has a pretty deep frontcourt, but it might be short a man after a strange play in the Clemson game: forward Phil Cofer, running the baseline to try and inbound the ball, slipped, lost the handle, and watched from his butt as a Clemson player picked it up and scored an easy layup.  Cofer hobbled off the court, having twisted his knee.  FSU has three seven-footers, and one is always on the court, but they're not known to ever play two of them at once, and Cofer is one of only two true power forwards on the roster.  The other, Jarquez Smith, is not the rebounder Cofer is, but is a better shot blocker.

On the good guys' sideline, it's the opposite story as Justin Anderson might finally be ready to return from a broken finger and surprise appendectomy.  I'm not sure he'd immediately jump right back into the starting lineup, but whether he does or whether he comes off the bench, the impact would be obvious.

FSU's calling card this year (as in many years) is size and length.  The smallest regular player (outside of the very lightly used Dayshawn Watkins) is 6'3" Devin Bookert.  They're athletic, tough shot-blockers, and frankly, Leonard Hamilton's teams usually make things difficult on opponents trying to score.  They don't gamble much because they don't need to.  The one puzzling thing is that despite their size and always having a seven-footer on the floor, they don't rebound well on defense.  Anthony Gill pulled down four offensive boards during the last game.

You'll recall, of course, that not only did the Hoos lack the presence of Justin Anderson, they also lost London Perrantes during this game.  For a short time there, Malcolm Brogdon was out, too.  Having all three for the duration of the game should help the offense, which produced one of its worst games of the season trying to solve the FSU defense.  The more ominous sign for FSU might be this, though: in three of four ACC rematches, the UVA offense improved over the previous showing - sometimes explosively, as Wake and VT would attest to.  The only exception was NC State, which was the first game UVA played without Anderson.  Expect Tony Bennett's scouting to pay off again.

-- UVA on defense

For all that athleticism and length, FSU has a few major weaknesses on offense.  They can't shoot and they turn the ball over a ton.  Nobody in particular is a huge turnover machine, they just all lose it with some consistency.  And despite Rathan-Mayes's 30-point outburst against Clemson, he's an under-.300 three-point shooter.

FSU doesn't shoot a lot of threes anyway, though, which is smart given the makeup of their team.  They'd rather go inside, and they shoot over 50% from two.  Montay Brandon is a very effective scorer inside the arc, and Rathan-Mayes's efficiency skyrockets when he goes inside as well.

Their big strength is their inside play - and not coincidentally, getting to the free-throw line (8th in the country in ratio of FT to FG) - so the fact that UVA is one of the elite teams in the country at interior defense (opponents shoot 39% inside the arc) is naturally encouraging.  (And goes a long way toward explaining why the last game was such a rugged affair.)

Much will be made, no doubt, of Rathan-Mayes's big game, and the analysts will probably say that stopping him is the key to winning.  UVA, though, will be happy to bet he can't shoot 5-for-9 from three again.  Keeping him out of the lane is more important, and of course, exactly what UVA's defense is geared to do.  Actually, for my money, it's the defensive rebounding that matters most.  FSU can hurt you with second-chance points.  The Hoos did a fantastic job on the defensive glass last time out, so, again, UVA is geared to stop the Noles.

-- Outlook

Last game was a rock fight and a half.  It wasn't pretty, but it was fun to watch regardless.  In an elimination game, there's no reason to expect any different.  I don't think it'll be an easy time scoring the ball for anyone.  UVA will get a much-needed shot of athleticism if Justin Anderson returns, which should help open up the offensive end.

It'll most likely be a pitchers' duel, though; bet on the team that sends Randy Johnson to the hill every damn night.

Final score: UVA 59, FSU 47

electricity shortage

Three games down without our Wooden candidate, three wins.  Not real pretty wins.  Kind of scrappy ones against teams probably not going to the tournament.  But, wins.

I'd say it's still unanswered, to what extent this team misses Justin Anderson.  There's no doubt they need him back.  But would those games still have been close and scruffy without him?  Anderson's absence isn't the reason the three-point shooters missed a whole bunch of open looks.  In the NC State and Wake games, they went 4-for-23, which is 17%.  It's not like they missed because Anderson wasn't on the floor, and it's small coincidence that the Pitt game had a more comfortable margin of victory and the Hoos shot 5-for-13, which is a very acceptable 38.5%.

On the other hand, would Anderson have had a better chance of hitting?  Or would the shot have been a more makeable one, a layup perhaps, if Anderson was in the game?  That'll never be answered.

The two Louisville games are exactly four weeks apart, so if Simba's a really fast healer, he'll be back for the second one.  Maybe it's the nagging paranoid in me, because that part of you never really goes away if you root for UVA, but the rest of the schedule seems booby-trapped.  FSU is actually the least of our concerns, I think.  Wake will get us at their place and no doubt they'll be awfully confident, seein's how they just almost beat us at ours.  VT is gonna be primed as well, though fortunately that's at home.  Syracuse is no easy place to win at.  And it was after Anderson went down that Louisville mounted a comeback; that one's a return road visit too.

At stake, besides tournament seeding and the chance to add a regular season title to the rafters, is avoiding bracketologist talk about whether UVA can be as legit as ever without Anderson.  The committee does take injuries into account, both positively and negatively.  If a guy misses time and then comes back, your losses during that time get a kinder eye.  If a guy won't be ready for the tournament, they penalize you.  Optimistically, I think Anderson will be back for the NCAAs, but you never know.  But if the winning streak continues, sans the team's most electric player, you can't ask for a better setup.

**************************************************

-- With about 47 seconds left, NC State fouled Brogdon; this was the very best of all possible outcomes.  Coaches aren't big on quick shots to try and get two-for-one on possessions at the end of a half (though this is a strategy mainly for the end of the first half; the second is too wild-cardy) so UVA was going to hold the ball as long as possible.  One likely outcome of that strategy is to not score and give NC State the chance to tie with a minimum of 12 seconds to work with.  Instead, UVA's best free-throw shooter got to head to the line with a chance to put UVA up two scores, and the Hoos were guaranteed another possession.

-- The announcers had this fixation on "free throw percentage in conference play."  I guess that's useful as a proxy for how you're shooting lately, but it's otherwise utterly nonsensical - it's not like you need to adjust free-throw shooting percentages for the quality of opponent.

-- How about Evan Nolte's drive and dish to Gill?  As with the Anderson miss against Duke, it felt like a game-turning play.  I think it's because Nolte is usually a bit less than assertive on offense, and is the player on the team who least resembles a smooth rim-driving point guard (and yes that includes Mike Tobey) so the sight of his bad-Hawaiian-shirt-wearing self making like Isiah Thomas was jarring enough to turn the game on its head.  And as it turned out, that was the last lead change of the game.

-- Center-court logos are trending in the obnoxiously huge direction, and never more so at NC State.  I know it's a classic old logo and all, but it is in fact the ugliest friggin' court in the whole country.  And since the whole midcourt line is almost completely obscured, it ought to be banned.

-- In case you've forgotten why everyone thinks Carolina media is the most shameless, shilling, and biased bunch of wretches in the whole country, enjoy this small passage from Stephen Schramm from the Fayetteville Observer:

The replays showed that Nolte had collided with N.C. State’s Caleb Martin. Much to Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried’s dismay, the crew decided to call a flagrant foul on Martin.

Yeah, totally out of nowhere, I'm sure.  Much to Stephen Schramm's dismay, the cops decide he's at fault when a tree collides with his car.  The definition of a flagrant foul is "excessive and/or unnecessary contact" and plowing Nolte clearly qualifies.

-- Shifting gears to the Wake game: Last week I wrote about rewarding the big guy making the hustle play, and this week it happened again: Darion Atkins brick-walled a Wake defender trying to keep up with London Perrantes, and was rewarded by Perrantes with an easy layup.  The announcers did a nice job of pointing out the communication between Atkins and Perrantes on that play.

-- It's interesting that Tony didn't make an adjustment - or didn't appear to, anyway, though you never know what you miss - as Schnozz Mitoglou kept pounding away from the three-point line off of a simple pick-and-pop.  I think it's a philosophy thing - a gamble that a freshman on the road is less likely to keep making those than the ballhandler is to punish you for getting away from your hard hedge.

-- Malcolm's dunk.  MALCOLM'S.  DUNK.

-- As badly as Pitt and Wake shot free throws, I can't help but wonder if the students haven't figured out a distraction routine that actually works.

-- Much like with the Notre Dame game last year, the Hoos did a nice job of finding a tendency in the Pitt zone and attacking the bejeezus out of it.  And on one play, a different attack, but a really, really nice job by Isaiah Wilkins to set up an open shot.  Whether on purpose or just playing through the flow of the game, I don't know, but Wilkins did a great job of holding the ball just long enough to suck in the defense and then kick it back to the point, where Perrantes wasted no time finding the open shooter.  Pity Nolte missed the shot, but it was picture-perfect passing.

-- Does anyone else besides me think that Infiniti commercial is incredibly stupid?  Do people routinely make a habit of just blithely backing out the driveway and missing the BIG FKIN' YELLOW SCHOOL BUS rumbling down the road?  Are school buses difficult to see?  Is it hard to see a car coming down the totally empty parking lot lane?  The look on school bus lady's face is priceless: "Oh wow, if it hadn't been for those genius engineers at Infiniti, I would've gotten my two children messily killed in a school bus accident!"  Don't worry, honey: with observation skills like those, Junior and Juniorette will have their own permanent 6 x 3 plot any day now.

Probably like 1/3 of commercials on TV say the same thing: "Our customers are idiots.  If you're an idiot, you can be one of our customers too."

-- With the win over Pitt, UVA mathematically clinches a single bye in the ACC tournament, more than three weeks before it starts.

-- Yes, I read Myron Medcalf's moronic scribblings, and there's enough to say about that that it's worth a post all its own.  Wednesday night.

game preview: Duke

Date/Time: Saturday, January 31; 7:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Blue Devils: 50-116

Last meeting: UVA 72, Duke 63; 3/16/14, Greensboro, NC; ACC championship

Last game: UVA 50, VT 47 (1/25); ND 77, Duke 73 (1/28)

KenPom:

Tempo:

UVA: 58.3 (#350)

Duke: 68.1 (#45)

Offense:

UVA: 117.8 (#5)

Duke: 117.4 (#6)

Defense:

UVA: 83.9 (#2)

Duke: 94.1 (#50)

Pythag:

UVA: .9801 (#2)

Duke: .9275 (#8)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (5.1 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 4.4 apg)

SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.3 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 2.7 apg)

SF: Justin Anderson (13.9 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 1.9 apg)

PF: Darion Atkins (7.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 0.6 apg)

PF: Anthony Gill (11.3 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Duke:

PG: Tyus Jones (10.9 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 5.0 apg)

SG: Quinn Cook (14.4 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 2.8 apg)

SF: Justise Winslow (10.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.8 apg)

PF: Amile Jefferson (8.8 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 1.1 apg)

C: Jahlil Okafor (18.7 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.5 apg)

I haven't done a single one of these yet this year in light of scaling back the regular posting schedule, but how can I resist College GameDay?  This is gonna be fun.  UVA gets showcased for everyone who tunes into some college hoops on Saturday as a Super Bowl warmup, and they couldn't have picked a better opponent because pretty much everyone (who's otherwise neutral) will be hoping to see Duke get humbled.  UVA gets a lot of temporary fans on Saturday night.

This is game one of a four-game stretch of doom.  Most pundits are calling it three, but NC State is no pushover and that one's on the road.  ESPN is already using the "u" word not in terms of the season past, but the season future, so you already know what kind of hype is at stake over the next week.

Duke is having a rough go of it in the ACC, having lost to every non-crappy opponent they've faced, except for Louisville after busting out a surprise zone defense on Rick Pitino.  Their case for being #4 in the country is built mainly on three legitimate things: beating Wisconsin and Louisville on the road, and Jahlil Okafor.  These aren't to be sneezed at, but the Fightin' Coach K's have proven vulnerable, too, and UVA is a decided favorite here.

-- UVA on offense

The Hoos had a little trouble with the VT zone last weekend, so despite the fact that Duke is usually known for aggressive man-to-man defense, you can expect to see them break it out on Saturday.  I mean, it's been working, it certainly worked against Louisville, and it seems to be their best shot at reversing the trend of mediocre defense they've been lamenting this season.

With three freshmen in the starting lineup, it's probably not all that surprising that Duke's defense isn't elite.  Duke's defense possesses the fingerprints of a team whose perimeter defense is beaten off the dribble with some regularity: relatively high 2-point shooting percentage allowed and rather high free-throw shooting percentage allowed, while at the same time relatively few opponents' baskets are assisted.  Why include free-throw percentage allowed?  Teams with higher numbers there are likely to be fouling guards more than bigs.  All this points to a vulnerability to slashing guards - hence the switch to a zone defense, which compensates for that weakness.

A slasher is something that the UVA offense lacks.  The UVA ballhandlers aren't exactly bad at this, but there isn't that one elite player who can do anything on the dribble.  With Rasheed Sulaimon's dismissal from the team, chances are excellent that either Justin Anderson or Malcolm Brogdon - probably Brogdon - will spend a lot of time matched up against a smaller player, which should encourage that mid-range jumper that Brogdon is pretty proficient at shooting.

UVA's offensive rebounding prowess could pose a problem for Duke - not just in second-chance points, but foul trouble.  Grabbing an offensive board and going straight back up is a great way to draw a foul, and Duke is thin in the frontcourt following the early-season transfer of Semi Ojeleye.  Jahlil Okafor and Marshall Plumlee rotate at center with Plumlee being used mostly only to give Okafor a breather.  Amile Jefferson is the only other true big; when he's out of the game, Duke usually pairs Justise Winslow with Matt Jones as small forwards.  Okafor is an obvious freak of nature, one of the quickest big men you'll ever see, but also the only Duke big who matches up well with UVA's frontcourt.  Mike Tobey can score on Plumlee, Jefferson is too skinny to easily handle either Anthony Gill or Darion Atkins, and the remaining forwards are 6'6" or smaller.  And Okafor isn't a big-time shot-blocker - he's about average for his size, really.

Putting him in foul trouble spells bad news for Duke's frontcourt.  Putting any of them in foul trouble, really.  Gill is a bad mismatch for anyone who might guard him save Okafor, in which case Atkins should be able to go to work.  It might be tempting to start Tobey in order to force Duke to guard him with Okafor and let Gill take advantage of the resulting mismatch.

-- UVA on defense

Okafor is scary.  It's not for no reason he gets a lot of hype.  It's rare to see such a big guy move so well.  Okafor is 6'11", 270, and moves like he's 230.  He scores on about 2/3 of his shots, and his season low is 10 points, with eight 20-point games and seven double-doubles.  He's a top-notch offensive rebounder, and by the way that foul trouble thing we talked about earlier is rare, letting him play over 30 minutes a game.

Expect, then, a healthy dose of post-doubling when Okafor gets the ball.  UVA won't front him per se, but the pack-line footwork is still designed to force him to catch the ball somewhere where he doesn't want it, and to let the double come quickly.  Expect also a lot less post-doubling on anyone else, lest they find Okafor with an awful mismatch on him.

It's not a one-man show, though; it wouldn't be Duke if they didn't have a bunch of guys who could score.  Quinn Cook moved off the ball to take a more active shooting role and let Tyus Jones run the point.  Cook made 65 threes last year; a bit more than halfway through the season, he's at 53.  Jones and Winslow aren't hacks at the long ball, but with Sulaimon gone, Cook is the one really big distance threat.  And he's automatic from the stripe, missing only two of 44 free throws this year.

Jones, Winslow, and Jefferson are all perfectly capable scorers, too.  Jefferson is shooting .639 from the field, all from two; Jones and Winslow are rangy players who like Cook can score from a lot of different places.  But that's about where the good news ends for Duke.  The loss of Sulaimon costs the Blue Devils their most versatile player and only reliable bench scorer.  Matt Jones isn't used to shouldering any scoring load, Marshall Plumlee is a body that Duke uses to give Okafor a rest, and Greyson Allen doesn't appear to yet have the full confidence of Coach K.  When Tyus Jones would go out of the game, it was Sulaimon, not the former point guard Cook, who would take over at the point; Duke's choice now is to either hand it back to Cook or make Jones play all 40 minutes.  The former detracts from Cook's scoring focus and the latter is a huge risk and not sustainable.

Sulaimon provided most of his minutes at the three, though, which leaves Duke with another choice: lean more heavily on Winslow or Matt Jones.  Leaning on Winslow takes away his availability at the four, and leaning on Jones risks letting Justin Anderson run wild.  Sulaimon's flexibility gave Coach K a lot of options; his loss is a bigger depth hit than one man normally is.

-- Outlook

Make no mistake, this is a tough game, one of the season's hardest.  My guess is that Duke will lean as hard as they can on their starters in the absence of Sulaimon to back them up, because the more they go to the bench the more they play into the hands of the deeper Hoos.  Their starters can, mostly, match up well with UVA's, and they probably have an advantage at most positions.

But that's why UVA perfects a system, and that system has beaten Duke two years running.  And Duke's margin for error is much smaller than UVA's.  Okafor has had nagging knee twinges in more than one ACC game, and Duke can't afford to have a bad game from any of their starters or have prolonged scoring droughts, because their defense hasn't been good enough to hold off opposing runs.  And playing in what's sure to be a fired-up environment won't help matters.  If UVA's offense is clicking, it's over.  Duke could zone UVA into oblivion, or shoot hot from three, or see one of their stars go off on a big-night bender, and put an end to UVA's win streak in a hurry.  Chances are, though, that to win they'll simply need to play a more complete and balanced game - with fewer players - than they have for most of the season.

Final score: UVA 71, Duke 65

let the games begin

PHEW.  I was planning on writing about four paragraphs on how this basketball team will lose at some point and we should enjoy this undefeated stuff to the fullest while it lasts but understand that it's coming to an end eventually and that's OK.  Miami drove home the point for me pretty well, though.

It's a lesson that now doesn't have to be learned the hard way, because UVA out-gutted and out-gunned the Hurricanes after Miami ran out of ammo.  I had forgotten, for a second there, that going on the road in the ACC is never to be taken for granted.  Shame.  Won't make that mistake again.  At least not this year.

For at least a little while longer, though, we still get to enjoy the goose egg in the one place you really want to see it.  It's not to be sneezed at; the Hoos survived on a night when half the remaining undefeated teams in the country took a loss.  That leaves just UVA, Duke, and Kentucky.  The SEC is a putz league, the weakest of the Power 5 and probably worse than the Big East as well, and very likely to leave UK unblemished for a good long time.  But I sort of hope Duke stays unbeaten til January 31 (and obviously, I hope we do too) to set up a matchup for the ages.

-- Marial Shayok deserves a ton of credit.  Forced into crunch-time minutes when Brogdon fouled out, his defense made a huge difference.  Not just in the two blocks that he had after that point; he also did a masterful job limiting Angel Rodriguez.  I suspect having much fresher legs had a lot to do with it; nevertheless, it was a huge game for him.  Perrantes and Anderson hit the shots and played 45 minutes apiece, and Atkins, very quietly, had a terrific game too.  But if defense comes first, Shayok gets the first nod.

-- Speaking of fresher legs, Mike Curtis certainly gets a nod for that game too.  "They look tired all of a sudden," I thought as Miami brought up the ball; the announcers were all over it at the same time.

-- One way to tell your team has arrived?  Besides all the other really obvious ones, I mean.  When the announcers assume you have a "senior-laden team" even when you don't.  Sorry, Shane Battier, only one senior here - but they sure do play like they were, don't they?

-- Yes, that was a foul on Justin Anderson at the end there.  But also, yes, he was fouled pretty blatantly in OT, too.  The announcers made a thing about him kicking his legs out, which was stupid because a flying defender landed on his arm.

-- Against Davidson, the defense gave up some easy layups, and on those plays it was perfectly highlighted why Tony's post defense philosophy is "ball-me-man."  The Wildcat post men managed to seal out their defender and prevent any help, which is poison to the pack-line defense; any time you see plays like that, the defender is out of position.  Most man defenses emphasize fighting for position in the post and having defenders try and prevent the opposing bigs from gaining position too close to the rim.  Tony doesn't much care where the opposing bigs post up - as long as the defenders are in the right position, they can deny entry passes, help on drives (and usually stop them before they start), switch to the other side to help a helper, and throw a quick double-team.

-- ESPN has been spreading the UVA love far and wide these past couple weeks.  Anthony Gill and Justin Anderson on the Wooden Watch.**  A #1 seed in bracketology.  Articles about how awesome the offense is and how the rest of the ACC will give UVA a run for its money.  Notice how that last one is not the other way around.  UVA is the hunted.

Why should we care what the WWL thinks?  Because perception is reality in the recruiting world.  The ultimate goal is not to be able to win the battle of the recruiting rankings (even though, for now, UVA sits atop the 24/7 rankings after winning the commitment of Sacha Killeya-Jones).  The ultimate goal is for Tony to be able to walk into any gym in the country, say, "I want that guy right there," and be at the top of that guy's list immediately.

That Medcalf article, by the way, the second one linked, I feel like it's part of a slightly disturbing trend, which is to forget that Louisville is a major contender just because they lost to Kentucky.  I would not like to see that team unleash its considerable athletic talent upon a perception of being disrespected.  It's not Duke and UVA and everyone else; it's Duke, UVA, Louisville, and maybe UNC if they get their shit together, and if they don't, Notre Dame.

**Unless someone else totally runs away with the award, Jahlil Okafor will win because he wears the tiebreaker on his chest.  But some All-American selections are not out of the question.

-- You know how I said we should drop Maryland from our schedules and add Georgetown just for spite, because Maryland won't play Georgetown?  Bwa-ha-ha the lacrosse schedulers listened.  Maryland is no more, and UVA will host the Hoyas as the final game of the season.

Actually, it's best looked at like this: Maryland is not replaced on the schedule.  There are only 13 games instead of last year's 14, but that's to be expected because the ACC was temporarily larger last year.  Georgetown - which hasn't been good at all lately - is Bellarmine's replacement, and UVA also dropped longtime OOC opponent Mount St. Mary's in favor of the recently-not-shitty St. Joseph's Hawks.  St. Joe's was once a laughingstock and is now very middle-of-the-road.  I'd still say, it's an easier schedule than last year, a bit.

That's OK, I still prefer to think we replaced Maryland with Georgetown, and if Georgetown had a football team of any consequence I'd start the Put-Them-In-The-ACC bandwagon in a hot minute.

-- One thing that will sting and make that road harder is the loss of Greg Danseglio to Maryland.  All the more reason to be glad they're gone, I suppose; Danseglio was half of a veteran long-pole duo that would've formed the core of the defense.  Now it's Tanner Scales and inexperience.  UVA also looks to be missing their one over-.500 face-off guy from last year, Mick Parks; knee surgery is the message-board chatter.  This is a very young team this year and the leading candidate to finish 5 of 5 in the ACC.

-- Speaking of which, sharp-eyed watchers noticed this earlier, I didn't but I think it's fair to be excused because I don't think the ACC even bothered to announce it - placing 5th of 5 in the conference this year earns you a trip to the tournament in Philly anyway, only you'll be playing Penn.  Creative.  And no doubt an easy sell to Penn - no travel expenses and an RPI-booster against an ACC team that you'll have a decent shot at beating.

-- I finally got off my ass and finished a game highlight, and there's another one on the way very shortly.  I randomly picked last year's Maryland game off the considerable backlog.  It's linked in the video library there.  I don't think that backlog will be fully addressed til the summer, but I'm settling into a routine of working on them and I can at least get you new stuff on a steady basis.