Tomorrow we kick off the season previews, so today we'll catch up on some loose ends I've left hanging. Mostly to do with former UVA players, some of the news good and some not as good.
- Sylven Landesberg: Set to play in Israel, which comes as little surprise, as 1) he really isn't quite ready for the league yet and 2) he's half Jewish. The mistake people are making is equating "not ready for the NBA" with "shouldn't have left school." As much as anyone, I like for guys to stay four years and get their degree, and it's the decision I tend to respect the most. But I can't disrespect Sylven's choice to leave. If basketball is what you want to make a career out of, it's hard to fault the idea of making half a million or more a year playing in an exotic location like Israel. (Or Spain, or Greece, or Italy, as some of them end up doing.) C'mon, you'd do it right now if you could. Leaving early and getting some time in overseas worked for Roger Mason, it can certainly work for Landesberg.
- Tristan Spurlock: I wonder if the article-writer's choice of the words "taking his talents to Central Florida" was coincidence. Should have said Disney World or something if he really wanted to LBJ it up. Anyway, yeah, UCF is where Spurlock is gonna be, so, best of luck with that.
- Phil Gosselin: Tearing it up in Rome - that's Rome, GA, home of his mid-level A-ball minor league team. Another not-surprise for leaving early.
- Vic Hall: released by the Bears. Hall's route to the NFL is going to be a really, really difficult one, full of sign-and-releases and time spent on the practice squad.
- Corey Lillard: wait, what? Dammit. Lillard, one of the few remaining scholarship defensive backs on the team, is no longer one of that ever-thinning crowd. We now have ten defensive backs on scholarship - barely enough to make a nickel package two-deep. Mark my words, unless London thinks one of the walkons is playable, one of these guys that got moved to linebacker (LoVante' Battle, say) is gonna find themselves moved back out to the secondary by the time the season is over. This is the thinnest secondary in history.
And so as to prevent any heart attacks, here's where I specifically mention I'm not talking about former Cavaliers any more, because Marc Verica is the next topic of (very short) discussion. Really, it's just to point out that if for whatever reason you still had any doubts about who would be the starting quarterback, or who thinks he's the starting quarterback, you should put them to rest. Verica it is. And the way the schedule shakes out, I figure that's for a bare minimum of five games, and hopefully by then things are not going so badly that it's time for a switch.
Lastly, for you swimming enthusiasts, here is the incoming men's recruiting class, ranked fifth in the country. The only other ACC teams in the top 25 are UNC (8th) and Maryland (22nd.) And the women? Third. None too shabby at all, especially in pulling the 5th-ranked swimmer in Florida out of the state. Getting past the Stanfords and Arizonas and Floridas of the world is going to be a tall order, but Mark Bernardino just might have a national championship brewing in the next decade or so, if he can keep that up.
Showing posts with label landesberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landesberg. Show all posts
Monday, July 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
what could have been
Yup, time to play "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda: Basketball Edition." Why now? Because today we learned officially what all the signs have been pointing to for weeks: Sylven Landesberg is done at UVA.
We're not going into whatever illustriousness would have happened in the next two years that would have put the #15 into the rafters blah blah blah. I have not much interest in trying to make sense of what the lineup will actually look like next year and how they'll perform - not when the 2010 recruits haven't even gone to senior prom yet let alone get themselves on Grounds. So it stands to reason I have even less interest in pontificating over spilled milk.
I don't know when the hell we've ever seen a five-star basketball recruit actually enroll at UVA. Recruiting five-stars always ends up with UVA as the bridesmaid. Ed Davis, Patrick Patterson, DeSagana "it's pronounced JOP" Diop. You know the story, cause it turns out the same every time. But we've been pretty successful bringing in four-star types, the sort that you still ought to be able to build your team around and maybe even expect them to stay awhile. The Rivals database goes back to 2002, so here's the list of four-star recruits (not counting the '10 class of James Johnson and K.T. Harrell) that have said yes, Virginia:
Derrick Byars ('02)
Devin Smith ('02)
Gary Forbes ('03)
Sean Singletary ('04)
Will Harris ('06)
Jamil Tucker ('06)
Jeff Jones ('07)
John Brandenburg ('08)
Sylven Landesberg ('08)
Tristan Spurlock ('09)
Of those 10 players, exactly three have finished or will finish their eligibility at UVA, and that number includes Jeff Jones who shows every intention of doing so as well as Devin Smith who only had three years to begin with.
- Byars stopped wanting to play for Pete Gillen and transferred to Vanderbilt, where he morphed from useful reserve to SEC Player of the Year.
- Forbes transferred to Manhattan after becoming ineligible at UVA, and ended up eventually at UMass where he morphed from useful reserve to A-10 Player of the Year. (Damn these patterns.)
- Harris kept getting hurt at UVA and led a terrible Albany team in scoring this year.
- Tucker didn't show any interest in the academic side of his obligations and was more or less kicked off the team, having never suited up for Tony Bennett. At least he made it three years.
- Brandenburg was very sparingly used, had some murky family stuff going on, and you'll see him in a Colgate uniform next year.
- Landesberg is singin' dolla dolla bill, y'all.
- Spurlock is off to parts unknown.
Wait! That's not all:
- Donte Minter transferred to Appalachian State.
- T.J. Bannister transferred to Liberty after his minutes went backwards in his junior year.
- Sam Warren left much as Spurlock did: spent a year in the new program after committing to the old coach, and gave up. At least Spurlock didn't wait til the beginning of fall practice.
- Lars Mikalauskas was booted from the team after pissing off Leitao one too many times.
It's hard to find a recruiting class that managed to make it all the way through school without losing some of its members. Only 2004 (Adrian Joseph, Sean Singletary, and Tunji Soroye) and 2007 (Mustapha Farrakhan, Jeff Jones, Mike Scott, Sammy Zeglinski) qualify, and we're not done with '07 yet. Anything could happen. Because the theme here is that if you're going to be a UVA basketball fan, then transfers, academic casualties, and behavior casualties have been par for the course this decade.
And I only started at 2002 arbitarily. We could go back farther: Jermaine Harper to Cal-State Fullerton. Maurice Young to St. Bonaventure. J.C. Mathis to Michigan. Nick VanderLaan in and out again. Majestic Mapp and his injury troubles. Keith Jenifer acted the part of a cementheaded thug, managed to kill our chances for an upset win at Maryland by taunting Gary Williams and motivating the Terps, was accused of assaulting people on the Corner, and ended up at Murray State. (Where by at least this account he screwed his head on straight a little bit, something he desperately needed. In that case, though, the parting of the ways was addition by subtraction for UVA.)
Normally when players leave early, they're off to the pros, which you can deal with because it means they were pretty good; Landesberg and Roger Mason are the only ones in this category.
Basically, though, it boils down to using a lot of guys that were loads of fun to root for and terrific, upstanding people on and off the court, but out of their league in an ACC starting lineup. Jason Cain. Tunji Soroye. Jerome Meyinsse. And a lot of borderline ACC talent that should be competing against the other bench guys but instead have to contend with the Tyler Hansbroughs and J.J. Redicks.
A lot of this we've brought on ourselves. You expect transfers when you change coaches, and we've seen that twice this decade. Even more so, the coaches have been cut from entirely different cloth. Way, way different personalities. Pete Gillen was a nice guy, laid-back, let people get away with a lot. Dave Leitao swore like a sailor and yelled a lot, but doled out playing time pretty liberally. Tony Bennett is soft-spoken and not screamy at all, but not the tiniest bit flexible on his off-the-court standards and uses playing time as both his carrot and stick.
Plus, UVA is always going to be UVA, where the NCAA might say you're eligible, but the registrar has the final word.
But this brings us to the main thing I was thinking about, which is, what this team was really supposed to look like this year:
PG - Sammy Zeglinski
Wing - Sylven Landesberg
Wing - Jamil Tucker
PF - Mike Scott
C - John Brandenburg
Bench - Will Harris, Jeff Jones, Tristan Spurlock, Assane Sene, Jontel Evans
Tucker and Harris would leave after this year and Spurlock would slide into a featured role alongside Landesberg, and Mychal Parker probably would have joined the rotation. That's how it was all supposed to play out.
I don't know how that team would be on defense. It might be better than you think, being that a lot of the lousy defensive reputation of some of these players comes from their ability or maybe lack thereof to grasp Bennett's system. Tucker was never too committed on the defensive end, and this year, neither was Spurlock, but he committed to play Leitao's defense, not Bennett's. So it's not fair to assume he'd have been a liability on defense.
But man would this team score. A lot. And it would start a 7-footer and bring another off the bench. That's the team we'd have had without rotten luck and coaching changes. With the state of the ACC this year, that team would have won 9 or 10 games in conference and gone to the tournament for sure. And barring the sort of luck that tore it apart in real life, it'd be looking at another trip next year, too.
This is why I once said - and still say - that Leitao would have brought this year's team to the NIT. You can't control the luck, and without Brandenburg this team was always going to be a donut team. We knew that. But there's no way Leitao would have kept Spurlock on the bench. Tucker'd still be around too, maddening us with his indifferent defense but bringing a steady, reliable jump shot to the game. And there wouldn't be any issues with struggling to learn a totally new defensive system that requires you to unlearn all your ingrained fundamentals.
This is where I put in the obligatory caveat that this doesn't mean I'm not totally on board with Tony Bennett, here. I'm won over by his recruiting chops and his standards. The fact that he improved the team by five games and one ACC game is impressive, given the above-mentioned attrition and the fact that he's in tear-down mode. But that doesn't change that I don't think Leitao ought to have been fired. I think he'd have had this program on the upswing as well and deserved the chance to see it through. This lack of continuity combined with our higher academic standards is just murder on a basketball program.
The upshot of it all is that for the Tony Bennett program to work, both the admin and Bennett need to be totally committed to it for the very long term. That means four more years at an absolute, rock-bottom, bare minimum. No getting cold feet four years in and firing Tony the same way they did Leitao. You knew what he was going to do and how he was going to do it, and he deserves the chance to see his project all the way through, the way Leitao did not, without having the rug pulled out from underneath. And for Tony, no running off for bigger bucks at a bigger program. Normally I understand that's the nature of the business, but you don't come in, change all the standards and expectations, and tear down a program this way and then leave it half-done. Finish your legacy, whatever that is. And the fans, alums, and donors need to let it play out and not get all impatient and pissy when we don't make the tournament next season, because we won't. Bennett, hopefully, is the guy to reverse this pattern of playing season-to-season and losing all our players all the time, instead of program-building. Turn on him before he's had his chance and we'll find it harder and harder to bring coaches in here and relegate ourselves to the second divison forever.
We're not going into whatever illustriousness would have happened in the next two years that would have put the #15 into the rafters blah blah blah. I have not much interest in trying to make sense of what the lineup will actually look like next year and how they'll perform - not when the 2010 recruits haven't even gone to senior prom yet let alone get themselves on Grounds. So it stands to reason I have even less interest in pontificating over spilled milk.
I don't know when the hell we've ever seen a five-star basketball recruit actually enroll at UVA. Recruiting five-stars always ends up with UVA as the bridesmaid. Ed Davis, Patrick Patterson, DeSagana "it's pronounced JOP" Diop. You know the story, cause it turns out the same every time. But we've been pretty successful bringing in four-star types, the sort that you still ought to be able to build your team around and maybe even expect them to stay awhile. The Rivals database goes back to 2002, so here's the list of four-star recruits (not counting the '10 class of James Johnson and K.T. Harrell) that have said yes, Virginia:
Derrick Byars ('02)
Devin Smith ('02)
Gary Forbes ('03)
Sean Singletary ('04)
Will Harris ('06)
Jamil Tucker ('06)
Jeff Jones ('07)
John Brandenburg ('08)
Sylven Landesberg ('08)
Tristan Spurlock ('09)
Of those 10 players, exactly three have finished or will finish their eligibility at UVA, and that number includes Jeff Jones who shows every intention of doing so as well as Devin Smith who only had three years to begin with.
- Byars stopped wanting to play for Pete Gillen and transferred to Vanderbilt, where he morphed from useful reserve to SEC Player of the Year.
- Forbes transferred to Manhattan after becoming ineligible at UVA, and ended up eventually at UMass where he morphed from useful reserve to A-10 Player of the Year. (Damn these patterns.)
- Harris kept getting hurt at UVA and led a terrible Albany team in scoring this year.
- Tucker didn't show any interest in the academic side of his obligations and was more or less kicked off the team, having never suited up for Tony Bennett. At least he made it three years.
- Brandenburg was very sparingly used, had some murky family stuff going on, and you'll see him in a Colgate uniform next year.
- Landesberg is singin' dolla dolla bill, y'all.
- Spurlock is off to parts unknown.
Wait! That's not all:
- Donte Minter transferred to Appalachian State.
- T.J. Bannister transferred to Liberty after his minutes went backwards in his junior year.
- Sam Warren left much as Spurlock did: spent a year in the new program after committing to the old coach, and gave up. At least Spurlock didn't wait til the beginning of fall practice.
- Lars Mikalauskas was booted from the team after pissing off Leitao one too many times.
It's hard to find a recruiting class that managed to make it all the way through school without losing some of its members. Only 2004 (Adrian Joseph, Sean Singletary, and Tunji Soroye) and 2007 (Mustapha Farrakhan, Jeff Jones, Mike Scott, Sammy Zeglinski) qualify, and we're not done with '07 yet. Anything could happen. Because the theme here is that if you're going to be a UVA basketball fan, then transfers, academic casualties, and behavior casualties have been par for the course this decade.
And I only started at 2002 arbitarily. We could go back farther: Jermaine Harper to Cal-State Fullerton. Maurice Young to St. Bonaventure. J.C. Mathis to Michigan. Nick VanderLaan in and out again. Majestic Mapp and his injury troubles. Keith Jenifer acted the part of a cementheaded thug, managed to kill our chances for an upset win at Maryland by taunting Gary Williams and motivating the Terps, was accused of assaulting people on the Corner, and ended up at Murray State. (Where by at least this account he screwed his head on straight a little bit, something he desperately needed. In that case, though, the parting of the ways was addition by subtraction for UVA.)
Normally when players leave early, they're off to the pros, which you can deal with because it means they were pretty good; Landesberg and Roger Mason are the only ones in this category.
Basically, though, it boils down to using a lot of guys that were loads of fun to root for and terrific, upstanding people on and off the court, but out of their league in an ACC starting lineup. Jason Cain. Tunji Soroye. Jerome Meyinsse. And a lot of borderline ACC talent that should be competing against the other bench guys but instead have to contend with the Tyler Hansbroughs and J.J. Redicks.
A lot of this we've brought on ourselves. You expect transfers when you change coaches, and we've seen that twice this decade. Even more so, the coaches have been cut from entirely different cloth. Way, way different personalities. Pete Gillen was a nice guy, laid-back, let people get away with a lot. Dave Leitao swore like a sailor and yelled a lot, but doled out playing time pretty liberally. Tony Bennett is soft-spoken and not screamy at all, but not the tiniest bit flexible on his off-the-court standards and uses playing time as both his carrot and stick.
Plus, UVA is always going to be UVA, where the NCAA might say you're eligible, but the registrar has the final word.
But this brings us to the main thing I was thinking about, which is, what this team was really supposed to look like this year:
PG - Sammy Zeglinski
Wing - Sylven Landesberg
Wing - Jamil Tucker
PF - Mike Scott
C - John Brandenburg
Bench - Will Harris, Jeff Jones, Tristan Spurlock, Assane Sene, Jontel Evans
Tucker and Harris would leave after this year and Spurlock would slide into a featured role alongside Landesberg, and Mychal Parker probably would have joined the rotation. That's how it was all supposed to play out.
I don't know how that team would be on defense. It might be better than you think, being that a lot of the lousy defensive reputation of some of these players comes from their ability or maybe lack thereof to grasp Bennett's system. Tucker was never too committed on the defensive end, and this year, neither was Spurlock, but he committed to play Leitao's defense, not Bennett's. So it's not fair to assume he'd have been a liability on defense.
But man would this team score. A lot. And it would start a 7-footer and bring another off the bench. That's the team we'd have had without rotten luck and coaching changes. With the state of the ACC this year, that team would have won 9 or 10 games in conference and gone to the tournament for sure. And barring the sort of luck that tore it apart in real life, it'd be looking at another trip next year, too.
This is why I once said - and still say - that Leitao would have brought this year's team to the NIT. You can't control the luck, and without Brandenburg this team was always going to be a donut team. We knew that. But there's no way Leitao would have kept Spurlock on the bench. Tucker'd still be around too, maddening us with his indifferent defense but bringing a steady, reliable jump shot to the game. And there wouldn't be any issues with struggling to learn a totally new defensive system that requires you to unlearn all your ingrained fundamentals.
This is where I put in the obligatory caveat that this doesn't mean I'm not totally on board with Tony Bennett, here. I'm won over by his recruiting chops and his standards. The fact that he improved the team by five games and one ACC game is impressive, given the above-mentioned attrition and the fact that he's in tear-down mode. But that doesn't change that I don't think Leitao ought to have been fired. I think he'd have had this program on the upswing as well and deserved the chance to see it through. This lack of continuity combined with our higher academic standards is just murder on a basketball program.
The upshot of it all is that for the Tony Bennett program to work, both the admin and Bennett need to be totally committed to it for the very long term. That means four more years at an absolute, rock-bottom, bare minimum. No getting cold feet four years in and firing Tony the same way they did Leitao. You knew what he was going to do and how he was going to do it, and he deserves the chance to see his project all the way through, the way Leitao did not, without having the rug pulled out from underneath. And for Tony, no running off for bigger bucks at a bigger program. Normally I understand that's the nature of the business, but you don't come in, change all the standards and expectations, and tear down a program this way and then leave it half-done. Finish your legacy, whatever that is. And the fans, alums, and donors need to let it play out and not get all impatient and pissy when we don't make the tournament next season, because we won't. Bennett, hopefully, is the guy to reverse this pattern of playing season-to-season and losing all our players all the time, instead of program-building. Turn on him before he's had his chance and we'll find it harder and harder to bring coaches in here and relegate ourselves to the second divison forever.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
why it wasn't so bad after all
Like I said, it's a good thing the Hoos got that win over Boston College on Thursday in the ACC tournament, and followed it up with a scrappy game against Duke. It keeps me from having to write this post in between a ten-game losing streak and the imminent departures of at least one and probably more of our players that were supposed to be top scoring options. I'd've felt like Gandalf in Return of the King: there's about ten thousand billion bad-nasties lined up at the gate with a big fucking battering ram and launching the flaming heads of our dead comrades over the walls just to piss us off, and here I am telling you to stand up and fight dammit. Funny how simply finishing with more points than another team in one simple game changes all of that.
This would only be a little less true had we lost that game, though. What I have now is the ability to say, "See, next year won't be so bad, we can do it without Sylven, we proved it in the tournament." And that's not an unimportant point, so do yourself a favor and file it away for when you inevitably hear that Sylven is going to play in Israel or Spain or the NBDL next year.
But the main thing here is a symphony in two parts. Part 1 is all about the Bad Luck. That comes in a couple flavors. First is the KenPom luck factor. KenPom actually quantifies luck, by calculating the difference between how much a team "should" have won based on his system, and how much they actually did. As with last year, UVA is one of the unluckiest teams in the nation. If you add our luck factor to our actual winning percentage, our record changes from 15-16 to 17-14. Likely good enough for a feel-good trip to the NIT. I believe I wrote something like this last year and suggested this should average out eventually, and obviously it didn't come true, but next year for sure!
But the real proof is in the win-loss column. Bottom line up front: Judiciously add ten points - five baskets - to the right places, and 15-16 (5-11) becomes 18-13 (6-10). Add a single free throw on top of that and it changes to 19-12 (7-9) and a likely NIT bid following an anxious and ultimately disappointing Selection Sunday. For the want of a nail the kingdom was lost; for the want of 11 points, the season was lost. In four games, the ball bounced the wrong way at the wrong time. That's it.
But, you say, everyone gets breaks and bounces. They come, they go, and maybe some of our wins were the same way. Not so. The wins all fall neatly into three categories:
- We dominated.
- We controlled.
- We rallied.
In all cases, even the rallies, we played well enough for a long stretch of time that the game was pretty clearly ours. The first category includes Longwood, Rider, Oral Roberts, Hampton, Miami, and UNC. The second includes NJIT, UTPA, UNC-W, and BC; the third encompasses Cleveland State, UAB, GT, and both NC State games. None of these games were even all that close at the end, and the closest thing to good luck in these games that you can claim is the shitty free-throw shooting on display from some of our opponents, like GT. (They were 3 for 11. Average FT shooting would have given them four or five more points, and we won by 7 after protecting a 12 points lead.)
The losses, on the other hand? Honestly, up until Sylven left, only one of these losses fell anywhere between "really close" and "horrific nasty blowout." That'd be the Miami loss. Otherwise, between (and including) the first Maryland game and the second Maryland game, this team was absurdly uncompetitive (more on that later) and that holds true also for the USF game and the first Wake loss.
But then there's the Auburn game, in which a last-second tip-in did us in. There's Penn State, where we controlled the first half and they controlled the second, and our rally (later in the season to be successful a couple times) fell just short. There's Episode 1 of the Tech series, where we got a little luck in forcing overtime but positively none at all in blowing the lead we'd held the entire game. And there's the Wake game, where Mike Scott's second half was 100% effort and 0% results. The man had six rebounds, three offensive, in the second half and the basket wouldn't open up for any of his putbacks, layups, or even dunks. In an overtime game like that one, just one bucket would have made all the difference.
And then there's Maryland, a team that doesn't do well if profanity isn't being showered onto the court by the student section and saw what we did in the Dean Dome after a blizzard; thus, they took the path of least resistance and postponed the game for snow, against ACC protocol that states if two teams and two refs are in the house, play ball. Suppose we had gotten half the bad bounces going our way instead, and instead of being 14-7 (5-3) at that point, we're 16-5 (6-2). Suppose instead of having to travel from Charlottesville to College Park to Charlottesville to Blacksburg to Charlottesville to College Park to Charlottesville in a week's time, we can eliminate one of those trips and not have to play three games in five nights. Maybe we win one of those games too? Maybe we don't get launched into the death spiral of terrible shooting and one-man-band offenses? I've long since gotten into forbidden what-if, coulda-shoulda-woulda, excuse-making territory, but do consider this: back then I pointed out that if we can't win three games in five nights, then we can forget about ever winning the ACC tournament - that still holds true, but with one important caveat. The ACC tournament only involves one bus ride, not six.
Now about that death spiral. This is Part 2. Remember the rather well-received post, about a month ago, that posited that the drastic improvement between seasons was due to better offense, not better defense? (And isn't hard to believe that all it took was one awful month to change the perception of the season from "best improvement story in the country" to "falling apart like OJ on the witness stand"?)
Well, the fact of the matter is, nothing changed. It was still all about the offense. As good as it was in the first two-thirds of the year, it was that bad and worse in the latter part. Consider the numbers from back then:
- Defense was allowing 93.7 points per 100 possessions.
- Offense was scoring 111 points per 100 possessions.
And now?
- Defense has allowed 94.4 points per 100 possessions.
- Offense has scored 106.7 points per 100 possessions.
That drop on offense moved us from 43rd to 92nd in the country. That's a precipitous fall, especially for just 10 games. The defense got a little worse, too, but by a small enough margin that you can probably explain that just by pointing to the terrible offense, or, more likely, the greatly improved competition. In fact, there were 7 games out of 10 against tournament teams in that stretch, compared with 4 out of 21 prior; the fact that the numbers only got worse by that tiny amount despite the huge boost in quality of competition probably means the defense actually got better.
A little simple algebra will tell you that during that 10-game stretch between that post and the end, the defense allowed 95.9 points per 100 possessions. That's not up to snuff but it's not terrible. New Mexico is a 3-seed (an outlier of one, but still) and they allowed 96.
But the ugly part is the offense. Again with the simple algebra, and we scored 97.7 points per 100. That's OK (again, not real great, but OK ... ish) for the defense. It's completely pathetic for the offense. Arkansas State scored 97.7 on the season and that is good enough for 222nd in the country. The worst ACC team is Florida State at 105.2, and they rank 119th. Remember how unbelievably unwatchable the '08-'09 season was? How jump shots clanged off the rim starting from Day 1 and there was no set rotation? The offense scored 101.5 per 100. That's how bad February 13 through March 12 was on offense: worse than a season that saw us go 10-18 and lose to, what the hell was it, Liberty? I try not to remember that happening. And the BC win is lumped in there too, so the losses had to be even worse than that 97.7 number.
Now, I know I already said this once. I said swapping Tristan Spurlock in for the ghost of Mamadi Diane could only result in an offensive boost. Well, maybe it would have, but we never made that swap, did we? But next year we have no choice - we'll be forced to put someone new in the rotation because Baker, Meyinsse, and Landesberg all drop out of it. With six newcomers plus maybe Spurlock if he stays, it's practically unthinkable that we can't find two out of that bunch that are more offensively gifted than Meyinsse (bless his heart, he has all of one move in the post) and Baker (who is decent defensively but has the nasty habit of trying to do something with the ball before figuring out what exactly he should do with it) and smart enough to pick up the defense well enough for Bennett's taste. Sylven's scoring will be tough to replace, and it'll just have to be done by committee. Nobody's going to give us 17 a game. But as you see, it can, and has, been done.
So cheer up, sports fans. Here you have this combination of horrible luck and inexplicably horrible offense, and it still got us five extra wins and a two-place boost in the ACC seeding. And you can't expect that double-dose of horrible to stick around forever, can you? Next year's still going to have its ugly moments, but they'll be slowly disappearing.
This would only be a little less true had we lost that game, though. What I have now is the ability to say, "See, next year won't be so bad, we can do it without Sylven, we proved it in the tournament." And that's not an unimportant point, so do yourself a favor and file it away for when you inevitably hear that Sylven is going to play in Israel or Spain or the NBDL next year.
But the main thing here is a symphony in two parts. Part 1 is all about the Bad Luck. That comes in a couple flavors. First is the KenPom luck factor. KenPom actually quantifies luck, by calculating the difference between how much a team "should" have won based on his system, and how much they actually did. As with last year, UVA is one of the unluckiest teams in the nation. If you add our luck factor to our actual winning percentage, our record changes from 15-16 to 17-14. Likely good enough for a feel-good trip to the NIT. I believe I wrote something like this last year and suggested this should average out eventually, and obviously it didn't come true, but next year for sure!
But the real proof is in the win-loss column. Bottom line up front: Judiciously add ten points - five baskets - to the right places, and 15-16 (5-11) becomes 18-13 (6-10). Add a single free throw on top of that and it changes to 19-12 (7-9) and a likely NIT bid following an anxious and ultimately disappointing Selection Sunday. For the want of a nail the kingdom was lost; for the want of 11 points, the season was lost. In four games, the ball bounced the wrong way at the wrong time. That's it.
But, you say, everyone gets breaks and bounces. They come, they go, and maybe some of our wins were the same way. Not so. The wins all fall neatly into three categories:
- We dominated.
- We controlled.
- We rallied.
In all cases, even the rallies, we played well enough for a long stretch of time that the game was pretty clearly ours. The first category includes Longwood, Rider, Oral Roberts, Hampton, Miami, and UNC. The second includes NJIT, UTPA, UNC-W, and BC; the third encompasses Cleveland State, UAB, GT, and both NC State games. None of these games were even all that close at the end, and the closest thing to good luck in these games that you can claim is the shitty free-throw shooting on display from some of our opponents, like GT. (They were 3 for 11. Average FT shooting would have given them four or five more points, and we won by 7 after protecting a 12 points lead.)
The losses, on the other hand? Honestly, up until Sylven left, only one of these losses fell anywhere between "really close" and "horrific nasty blowout." That'd be the Miami loss. Otherwise, between (and including) the first Maryland game and the second Maryland game, this team was absurdly uncompetitive (more on that later) and that holds true also for the USF game and the first Wake loss.
But then there's the Auburn game, in which a last-second tip-in did us in. There's Penn State, where we controlled the first half and they controlled the second, and our rally (later in the season to be successful a couple times) fell just short. There's Episode 1 of the Tech series, where we got a little luck in forcing overtime but positively none at all in blowing the lead we'd held the entire game. And there's the Wake game, where Mike Scott's second half was 100% effort and 0% results. The man had six rebounds, three offensive, in the second half and the basket wouldn't open up for any of his putbacks, layups, or even dunks. In an overtime game like that one, just one bucket would have made all the difference.
And then there's Maryland, a team that doesn't do well if profanity isn't being showered onto the court by the student section and saw what we did in the Dean Dome after a blizzard; thus, they took the path of least resistance and postponed the game for snow, against ACC protocol that states if two teams and two refs are in the house, play ball. Suppose we had gotten half the bad bounces going our way instead, and instead of being 14-7 (5-3) at that point, we're 16-5 (6-2). Suppose instead of having to travel from Charlottesville to College Park to Charlottesville to Blacksburg to Charlottesville to College Park to Charlottesville in a week's time, we can eliminate one of those trips and not have to play three games in five nights. Maybe we win one of those games too? Maybe we don't get launched into the death spiral of terrible shooting and one-man-band offenses? I've long since gotten into forbidden what-if, coulda-shoulda-woulda, excuse-making territory, but do consider this: back then I pointed out that if we can't win three games in five nights, then we can forget about ever winning the ACC tournament - that still holds true, but with one important caveat. The ACC tournament only involves one bus ride, not six.
Now about that death spiral. This is Part 2. Remember the rather well-received post, about a month ago, that posited that the drastic improvement between seasons was due to better offense, not better defense? (And isn't hard to believe that all it took was one awful month to change the perception of the season from "best improvement story in the country" to "falling apart like OJ on the witness stand"?)
Well, the fact of the matter is, nothing changed. It was still all about the offense. As good as it was in the first two-thirds of the year, it was that bad and worse in the latter part. Consider the numbers from back then:
- Defense was allowing 93.7 points per 100 possessions.
- Offense was scoring 111 points per 100 possessions.
And now?
- Defense has allowed 94.4 points per 100 possessions.
- Offense has scored 106.7 points per 100 possessions.
That drop on offense moved us from 43rd to 92nd in the country. That's a precipitous fall, especially for just 10 games. The defense got a little worse, too, but by a small enough margin that you can probably explain that just by pointing to the terrible offense, or, more likely, the greatly improved competition. In fact, there were 7 games out of 10 against tournament teams in that stretch, compared with 4 out of 21 prior; the fact that the numbers only got worse by that tiny amount despite the huge boost in quality of competition probably means the defense actually got better.
A little simple algebra will tell you that during that 10-game stretch between that post and the end, the defense allowed 95.9 points per 100 possessions. That's not up to snuff but it's not terrible. New Mexico is a 3-seed (an outlier of one, but still) and they allowed 96.
But the ugly part is the offense. Again with the simple algebra, and we scored 97.7 points per 100. That's OK (again, not real great, but OK ... ish) for the defense. It's completely pathetic for the offense. Arkansas State scored 97.7 on the season and that is good enough for 222nd in the country. The worst ACC team is Florida State at 105.2, and they rank 119th. Remember how unbelievably unwatchable the '08-'09 season was? How jump shots clanged off the rim starting from Day 1 and there was no set rotation? The offense scored 101.5 per 100. That's how bad February 13 through March 12 was on offense: worse than a season that saw us go 10-18 and lose to, what the hell was it, Liberty? I try not to remember that happening. And the BC win is lumped in there too, so the losses had to be even worse than that 97.7 number.
Now, I know I already said this once. I said swapping Tristan Spurlock in for the ghost of Mamadi Diane could only result in an offensive boost. Well, maybe it would have, but we never made that swap, did we? But next year we have no choice - we'll be forced to put someone new in the rotation because Baker, Meyinsse, and Landesberg all drop out of it. With six newcomers plus maybe Spurlock if he stays, it's practically unthinkable that we can't find two out of that bunch that are more offensively gifted than Meyinsse (bless his heart, he has all of one move in the post) and Baker (who is decent defensively but has the nasty habit of trying to do something with the ball before figuring out what exactly he should do with it) and smart enough to pick up the defense well enough for Bennett's taste. Sylven's scoring will be tough to replace, and it'll just have to be done by committee. Nobody's going to give us 17 a game. But as you see, it can, and has, been done.
So cheer up, sports fans. Here you have this combination of horrible luck and inexplicably horrible offense, and it still got us five extra wins and a two-place boost in the ACC seeding. And you can't expect that double-dose of horrible to stick around forever, can you? Next year's still going to have its ugly moments, but they'll be slowly disappearing.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
crystal ball into the future: BC and beyond
For this post, I consulted the magic 8-ball to find out what the offseason and beyond might look like for Tony Bennett and his squad. "O Magic 8-Ball, will we see any good news at all between now and the tip-off of '10-'11?" Damn thing must be broken, because the only response I ever got back was, "Reply Hazy, Try Again Later."
That ol' thing has been quite the Debbie Downer these days anyway. Will we win the BC game tomorrow? "Outlook Not So Good." Will Sylven Landesberg be sticking around for next year? "My Sources Say No." What about Tristan Spurlock? "Better Not Tell You Now."
The problem with tournaments, now, is that every team but one goes home unhappy. The season will end with a loss, so what's really at stake here is whether the season will end on a one-game losing streak or a ten-gamer. Gee, how uplifting. But I'll tell you right now, a win tomorrow would change the outlook for next season considerably. I doubt it would change much as far as roster makeup goes, and the players that return will be the same ones that played in the tournament game whether it was a win or a loss. But it's all a matter of perspective, see. If we lose, that specter of a ten-game losing streak to end the season will hang over the team all summer long. If we win, the party line will go something like this: "We won that game without Sylven Landesberg and that's how the team will look next season too, but just wait until we add all those talented freshmen to the roster." Which is a decidely rosier outlook.
So how to get that win? It'll be tough. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because we came close against Maryland without Sylven, we can do the same or better against Boston College, a worse team. There's no doubt in my mind Maryland had game-planned for a week to stop Sylven Landesberg, and that plan had to go right out the window at game time. Maryland had to wing it, which can be a recipe for disaster in the other guy's arena. If there's some real Ewing Theory action going on, I'll believe it when I see it.
Honestly, and harshly, the loss of Calvin Baker for the game likely won't have any effect on our prospects. Here's the weird thing about the BC game from last week: There was actually an effective inside game on offense. This is weird because BC is a bigger team from 1 to 5. I witnessed Sammy Zeglinski try to guard BC's 6'8" forward Joe Trapani, it was comical. Sammy looked like a midget. And yet Mike Scott had 13 points and Jerome Meyinsse had a perfect shooting night on his way to 12, and even Assane Sene's hands looked functional instead of like they were grafted on the wrong arms as usual. The first half was the standard-issue abortion on offense that we've gotten sadly used to, but the second half was actually a competitive basketball game.
And Baker? Didn't get into the game. If I had to guess I'd say that the size disparity had at least a role in that decision, but the point is, Bennett's already game-planned once for BC without Baker, so doing it again isn't going to be a big deal. And where game planning is concerned, we do have one edge. Even though it'll be no surprise to BC that Landesberg is out, it's still something different they have to plan for, whereas on the other hand, we've already seen what they got and it's not changing. Now it's time for the X's and O's wizard to prove his mettle. That's what Bennett was hailed for when he got here. If there was ever a time this season to pull some defensive adjustments out of a hat, it's now. Get that done, and with a little luck maybe the lid will come off the rim for the shooters too, and a win is reachable. It'd be a shame to waste Meyinsse's channeling of the spirit of Jason Rogers and not let it be worth just one simple win.
And it's a win that would be worth its weight in gold on the recruiting trail. How do you spin a ten-game losing streak to recruits? Answer: however you want, but they're still going to Maryland. Tony was able to use the promise of a bright new day last year, and did a marvelous job, but the shine will be gone. Get the win and it's a lot easier to brush the whole season off as a series of unfortunate events.
Whatever happens on the recruiting trail isn't going to do anything for anyone for a while, though. We don't even know who'll be left on this roster come August, let alone a year from August. Let's start with who won't be. Obviously, we lose the seniors - Baker, Meyinsse, and Tat. From a talent perspective, this is no loss, but from the hard work and hustle standpoint, it leaves a big, big leadership gap. Tat is the guy the coaches - both Bennett and Leitao - have put in when they want to make a point to the rest of the team that they're not hustling hard enough, and Meyinsse, besides being Tat's equal in the hard work department, is probably smarter than you and a big character guy to boot.
Then there's Landesberg, and you can go ahead and plan for next season without him. Bennett can talk all he likes about the door being open for his return, but to paraphrase another illustrious basketball coach, Sylven Landesberg is not walking through that door. When a phrase like this shows up on the school's own offical site....
But that wouldn't be the half of it if you go with everything you read. The list of players who at some point or another has been speculated (often baselessly) as being ready to transfer the moment the season is over is long and distinguished. Spurlock, obviously. Jontel Evans. Mike Scott? Jeff Jones? Assane Sene? All names that have been tossed around by people ranging from the media to message board schlocks. I'll be the first to say I don't have a friggin' clue, although this is at least encouraging on the Spurlock front.
Neither do I know which freshman is going to come in and have the biggest impact. But I do know somebody will. There's practically no choice in the matter. Even if everyone but Landesberg stays, that's only seven members of the rotation left, plus Spurlock. We'll probably have the ACC Freshman of the Year by default; who else has such a big class coming in and so much room for them? If I had to guess, I'd say the complete and utter lack of big-man offense outside of Scott opens up the biggest opportunity for James Johnson and Will Regan. Seems obvious, eh? Don't forget to pack your post game, boys.
So: predictions out of the crystal ball? Well, you just got one easy one: freshmen are going to be huge on this team next year. And that alone fogs up the whole picture. You never know with freshmen. You just never do. Here's another one: The keepers of the faith need to bar the door, because it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't see us winning tomorrow. And then comes the offseason and a lot of bad news with it. At some point, Landesberg will make the announcement he's gone. Somebody else might also. Recruiting targets will go elsewhere. And then the season will start, and it's pretty hard to see an improvement when your top player departs. There are reasons to think that this season was in fact much better than it looked, and I'll get to them separately. And maybe when I sit down and really hash out the competition and we get a better bead on things, it'll start looking better than it does at the tail end of a huge losing streak. And let's not forget either: Tony Bennett was hired to put a long-term, sustainable stamp on this program, not for instant gratification. That's the most important thing to remember. But for now, the bottom line up front is this: It's hard to see the prospects for next season being any better than they were when Dave Leitao was still the coach.
That ol' thing has been quite the Debbie Downer these days anyway. Will we win the BC game tomorrow? "Outlook Not So Good." Will Sylven Landesberg be sticking around for next year? "My Sources Say No." What about Tristan Spurlock? "Better Not Tell You Now."
The problem with tournaments, now, is that every team but one goes home unhappy. The season will end with a loss, so what's really at stake here is whether the season will end on a one-game losing streak or a ten-gamer. Gee, how uplifting. But I'll tell you right now, a win tomorrow would change the outlook for next season considerably. I doubt it would change much as far as roster makeup goes, and the players that return will be the same ones that played in the tournament game whether it was a win or a loss. But it's all a matter of perspective, see. If we lose, that specter of a ten-game losing streak to end the season will hang over the team all summer long. If we win, the party line will go something like this: "We won that game without Sylven Landesberg and that's how the team will look next season too, but just wait until we add all those talented freshmen to the roster." Which is a decidely rosier outlook.
So how to get that win? It'll be tough. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because we came close against Maryland without Sylven, we can do the same or better against Boston College, a worse team. There's no doubt in my mind Maryland had game-planned for a week to stop Sylven Landesberg, and that plan had to go right out the window at game time. Maryland had to wing it, which can be a recipe for disaster in the other guy's arena. If there's some real Ewing Theory action going on, I'll believe it when I see it.
Honestly, and harshly, the loss of Calvin Baker for the game likely won't have any effect on our prospects. Here's the weird thing about the BC game from last week: There was actually an effective inside game on offense. This is weird because BC is a bigger team from 1 to 5. I witnessed Sammy Zeglinski try to guard BC's 6'8" forward Joe Trapani, it was comical. Sammy looked like a midget. And yet Mike Scott had 13 points and Jerome Meyinsse had a perfect shooting night on his way to 12, and even Assane Sene's hands looked functional instead of like they were grafted on the wrong arms as usual. The first half was the standard-issue abortion on offense that we've gotten sadly used to, but the second half was actually a competitive basketball game.
And Baker? Didn't get into the game. If I had to guess I'd say that the size disparity had at least a role in that decision, but the point is, Bennett's already game-planned once for BC without Baker, so doing it again isn't going to be a big deal. And where game planning is concerned, we do have one edge. Even though it'll be no surprise to BC that Landesberg is out, it's still something different they have to plan for, whereas on the other hand, we've already seen what they got and it's not changing. Now it's time for the X's and O's wizard to prove his mettle. That's what Bennett was hailed for when he got here. If there was ever a time this season to pull some defensive adjustments out of a hat, it's now. Get that done, and with a little luck maybe the lid will come off the rim for the shooters too, and a win is reachable. It'd be a shame to waste Meyinsse's channeling of the spirit of Jason Rogers and not let it be worth just one simple win.
And it's a win that would be worth its weight in gold on the recruiting trail. How do you spin a ten-game losing streak to recruits? Answer: however you want, but they're still going to Maryland. Tony was able to use the promise of a bright new day last year, and did a marvelous job, but the shine will be gone. Get the win and it's a lot easier to brush the whole season off as a series of unfortunate events.
Whatever happens on the recruiting trail isn't going to do anything for anyone for a while, though. We don't even know who'll be left on this roster come August, let alone a year from August. Let's start with who won't be. Obviously, we lose the seniors - Baker, Meyinsse, and Tat. From a talent perspective, this is no loss, but from the hard work and hustle standpoint, it leaves a big, big leadership gap. Tat is the guy the coaches - both Bennett and Leitao - have put in when they want to make a point to the rest of the team that they're not hustling hard enough, and Meyinsse, besides being Tat's equal in the hard work department, is probably smarter than you and a big character guy to boot.
Then there's Landesberg, and you can go ahead and plan for next season without him. Bennett can talk all he likes about the door being open for his return, but to paraphrase another illustrious basketball coach, Sylven Landesberg is not walking through that door. When a phrase like this shows up on the school's own offical site....
Landesberg, who is unlikely to return to UVa, stopped by JPJ and talked with his teammates Tuesday morning.....then you know it's over. Period. Jeff White doesn't need sources inside the program, he is the source inside the program, and there's no way something like that gets up there without it being beyond true. So now you know where Billy Baron's scholarship is coming from.
But that wouldn't be the half of it if you go with everything you read. The list of players who at some point or another has been speculated (often baselessly) as being ready to transfer the moment the season is over is long and distinguished. Spurlock, obviously. Jontel Evans. Mike Scott? Jeff Jones? Assane Sene? All names that have been tossed around by people ranging from the media to message board schlocks. I'll be the first to say I don't have a friggin' clue, although this is at least encouraging on the Spurlock front.
Neither do I know which freshman is going to come in and have the biggest impact. But I do know somebody will. There's practically no choice in the matter. Even if everyone but Landesberg stays, that's only seven members of the rotation left, plus Spurlock. We'll probably have the ACC Freshman of the Year by default; who else has such a big class coming in and so much room for them? If I had to guess, I'd say the complete and utter lack of big-man offense outside of Scott opens up the biggest opportunity for James Johnson and Will Regan. Seems obvious, eh? Don't forget to pack your post game, boys.
So: predictions out of the crystal ball? Well, you just got one easy one: freshmen are going to be huge on this team next year. And that alone fogs up the whole picture. You never know with freshmen. You just never do. Here's another one: The keepers of the faith need to bar the door, because it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't see us winning tomorrow. And then comes the offseason and a lot of bad news with it. At some point, Landesberg will make the announcement he's gone. Somebody else might also. Recruiting targets will go elsewhere. And then the season will start, and it's pretty hard to see an improvement when your top player departs. There are reasons to think that this season was in fact much better than it looked, and I'll get to them separately. And maybe when I sit down and really hash out the competition and we get a better bead on things, it'll start looking better than it does at the tail end of a huge losing streak. And let's not forget either: Tony Bennett was hired to put a long-term, sustainable stamp on this program, not for instant gratification. That's the most important thing to remember. But for now, the bottom line up front is this: It's hard to see the prospects for next season being any better than they were when Dave Leitao was still the coach.
Monday, March 8, 2010
living the dream
The confluence of the end of the winter sports season and the beginning of the spring season means that the weekends start to get really, really interesting. Baseball with some big wins, lacrosse with a big, big win. (Coming soon to a Youtube near you.) Even the wrestling team made some big news by winning a surprise ACC championship. (Woo! ACC championship, woo! First-ever mention of wrestling on this blog too, which goes to show you what a front-runner I can be sometimes.) Then you top it off with a junior day held by the football coaches that resulted in one and a half commitments, and you'd think I'd be in a really good mood, and ready to celebrate with snazzy little recaps of the action in each sport.
Yeah, but that's not the way it works when the school's BMOC (or BMOG in our case) decides .... well, you know that dream you have where you have to go to class, maybe take the final, and suddenly you realize you haven't even been to this class all year and you aren't even sure you know where it is and if you go, you'll probably fail in front of everyone and if you don't you'll definitely fail, and the whole thing really sucks? Welcome to the world of dreams, Sylven Landesberg. Suspended because he can't be bothered to go to class - art class! - and if it was anyone else we'd shake our heads at the knuckleheads we have on our roster, maybe tsk-tsk a little bit about the academic standards left behind by Dave Leitao, and even then maybe it wouldn't be distracting us from celebrating our upset win over Maryland. Which failed to materialize largely because Landesberg wasn't in the arena.
Predictably, the internet went kaboom and promptly divided everyone into the usual two camps:
A) Hooray for Tony Bennett for sticking to his principled standards. He is building the foundation for the future. Bennett is a hero.
B) Once again the demands of playing at UVA bite us in the ass. We will never be good because no good players will want to play at a place like this. Bennett is a schmuck.
In order to be even the tiniest bit successful as a blogger, you have to stand apart from everyone else in some way. For lack of a better word, you need a schtick. 20 months in and I still have no idea what I do along those lines, but I know what I don't do: Joe Loudmouth the Internet Fan who wants it all and wants it all yesterday and thinks that was fine when it happened but what have you done for me lately? That is more or less from whom you'll hear Option B, so you'd think that would leave me, the supposedly level-headed one, in Camp A.
Y'know, it's not that easy. For one thing, yeah, we can all praise Tony Bennett for applying his standards consistently. But when you think about it, what is he supposed to do? Learn that his player completely blew off class and just ignore it? We're not Florida State. I have no respect for Bobby Bowden and I've ripped him in the past for actively not giving a shit whether his players go to school or not. And that's the attitude that leads to exactly the sort of problem FSU ran into in the end. If you're going to care even just a tiny bit about your players' academic obligations (and at Virginia you had better because a cheating scandal leads to expulsion, not just a suspension for the Western Carolina game) then you have no choice but to suspend a guy who's been blowing off his classes.
Besides, if you're surprised that Bennett would do this, you haven't been paying attention. Go ask Jamil Tucker if he's surprised.
So we know now, if you didn't figure it out when he suspended Assane Sene and suspended Calvin Baker and booted Tucker and kept Tristan Spurlock on the bench all year, that Tony Bennett has Standards and if you don't meet them you're not playing basketball. This is all part of building the foundation for long-term success. Bennett truly gets what it means to be at the University of Virginia and it will result in getting the type of recruits we need to finally build a long-lasting run of real success.
My brain tells me this is true, and one part of me is listening and believes it. Because it is true. You might have some success - or at least the illusion of it, which is basically the same thing from the viewpoint of the fan - but you're building a house of cards if you don't have standards or if you have two sets of them for different players on the team.
But that doesn't make it not hard, and it doesn't make it not risky. The hard part is having to grit your teeth and wait out the process, which is going to be excruciating. I know I'm already sick and goddam tired of listening to smug-ass Hokies trumpet their newfound basketball good times to go with their football good times, as if that shithole has ever accomplished even the slightest damn thing in basketball. It's no fucking fun losing 11 games in the ACC, especially nine in a row. And if you buy into the line about building a foundation, then you're just going to have to suck it up next year too. Because how's this for a worst-case scenario: Sylven Landesberg, Tristan Spurlock, and Mike Scott all leave next year (by the way, thanks for pissing Scott off, fair-weather fans - but that's a rant for another time) and what do we have left? A shortage of scholarship players, a bunch of guys who can't shoot (harsh but true), and a huge raft of freshmen ready to be thrown into the fire. That is not a recipe for success in 2011.
And then what? In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of basketball, can Tony Bennett still recruit to a UVA team that may well be looking at four years in a row of double-digit conference losses? Or perhaps - and this is the risky part - the foundation of success we're laying here turns out to be capable of supporting little more than middling NCAA seeds at best and NIT berths at worst? That'd certainly be better than what we have now, but if you're not trying to win ACC championships, you're not trying. And eventually this principled stand wouldn't even matter, because we'd all - including the AD - eventually get tired of that kind of success and Bennett would be out the door and we'd start this whole thing over again.
So yeah, when you're going through this whole change-the-culture process with your two favorite football teams and your two favorite basketball teams all at once, it starts to get real easy to begin to see the Option B side of things, the one that is really, really worried that we just drove our star player out the door. As I've said - when you get down to it, Bennett had no choice but to suspend Landesberg. The rational and patient side of me knows that, and knows it was the right way to go. But it's never that simple, and the rational and patient side of me - and yours too, probably - is going to spend a very nervous offseason followed by (if the worst comes to pass) fending off the inner impatient douchebag (not to mention the ones wearing maroon) for the duration of the following year as well.
Yeah, but that's not the way it works when the school's BMOC (or BMOG in our case) decides .... well, you know that dream you have where you have to go to class, maybe take the final, and suddenly you realize you haven't even been to this class all year and you aren't even sure you know where it is and if you go, you'll probably fail in front of everyone and if you don't you'll definitely fail, and the whole thing really sucks? Welcome to the world of dreams, Sylven Landesberg. Suspended because he can't be bothered to go to class - art class! - and if it was anyone else we'd shake our heads at the knuckleheads we have on our roster, maybe tsk-tsk a little bit about the academic standards left behind by Dave Leitao, and even then maybe it wouldn't be distracting us from celebrating our upset win over Maryland. Which failed to materialize largely because Landesberg wasn't in the arena.
Predictably, the internet went kaboom and promptly divided everyone into the usual two camps:
A) Hooray for Tony Bennett for sticking to his principled standards. He is building the foundation for the future. Bennett is a hero.
B) Once again the demands of playing at UVA bite us in the ass. We will never be good because no good players will want to play at a place like this. Bennett is a schmuck.
In order to be even the tiniest bit successful as a blogger, you have to stand apart from everyone else in some way. For lack of a better word, you need a schtick. 20 months in and I still have no idea what I do along those lines, but I know what I don't do: Joe Loudmouth the Internet Fan who wants it all and wants it all yesterday and thinks that was fine when it happened but what have you done for me lately? That is more or less from whom you'll hear Option B, so you'd think that would leave me, the supposedly level-headed one, in Camp A.
Y'know, it's not that easy. For one thing, yeah, we can all praise Tony Bennett for applying his standards consistently. But when you think about it, what is he supposed to do? Learn that his player completely blew off class and just ignore it? We're not Florida State. I have no respect for Bobby Bowden and I've ripped him in the past for actively not giving a shit whether his players go to school or not. And that's the attitude that leads to exactly the sort of problem FSU ran into in the end. If you're going to care even just a tiny bit about your players' academic obligations (and at Virginia you had better because a cheating scandal leads to expulsion, not just a suspension for the Western Carolina game) then you have no choice but to suspend a guy who's been blowing off his classes.
Besides, if you're surprised that Bennett would do this, you haven't been paying attention. Go ask Jamil Tucker if he's surprised.
So we know now, if you didn't figure it out when he suspended Assane Sene and suspended Calvin Baker and booted Tucker and kept Tristan Spurlock on the bench all year, that Tony Bennett has Standards and if you don't meet them you're not playing basketball. This is all part of building the foundation for long-term success. Bennett truly gets what it means to be at the University of Virginia and it will result in getting the type of recruits we need to finally build a long-lasting run of real success.
My brain tells me this is true, and one part of me is listening and believes it. Because it is true. You might have some success - or at least the illusion of it, which is basically the same thing from the viewpoint of the fan - but you're building a house of cards if you don't have standards or if you have two sets of them for different players on the team.
But that doesn't make it not hard, and it doesn't make it not risky. The hard part is having to grit your teeth and wait out the process, which is going to be excruciating. I know I'm already sick and goddam tired of listening to smug-ass Hokies trumpet their newfound basketball good times to go with their football good times, as if that shithole has ever accomplished even the slightest damn thing in basketball. It's no fucking fun losing 11 games in the ACC, especially nine in a row. And if you buy into the line about building a foundation, then you're just going to have to suck it up next year too. Because how's this for a worst-case scenario: Sylven Landesberg, Tristan Spurlock, and Mike Scott all leave next year (by the way, thanks for pissing Scott off, fair-weather fans - but that's a rant for another time) and what do we have left? A shortage of scholarship players, a bunch of guys who can't shoot (harsh but true), and a huge raft of freshmen ready to be thrown into the fire. That is not a recipe for success in 2011.
And then what? In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of basketball, can Tony Bennett still recruit to a UVA team that may well be looking at four years in a row of double-digit conference losses? Or perhaps - and this is the risky part - the foundation of success we're laying here turns out to be capable of supporting little more than middling NCAA seeds at best and NIT berths at worst? That'd certainly be better than what we have now, but if you're not trying to win ACC championships, you're not trying. And eventually this principled stand wouldn't even matter, because we'd all - including the AD - eventually get tired of that kind of success and Bennett would be out the door and we'd start this whole thing over again.
So yeah, when you're going through this whole change-the-culture process with your two favorite football teams and your two favorite basketball teams all at once, it starts to get real easy to begin to see the Option B side of things, the one that is really, really worried that we just drove our star player out the door. As I've said - when you get down to it, Bennett had no choice but to suspend Landesberg. The rational and patient side of me knows that, and knows it was the right way to go. But it's never that simple, and the rational and patient side of me - and yours too, probably - is going to spend a very nervous offseason followed by (if the worst comes to pass) fending off the inner impatient douchebag (not to mention the ones wearing maroon) for the duration of the following year as well.
Monday, March 1, 2010
weekend review: championship edition, again
Y'know what, let's just do this the same way we did last week....
SWIMMING
Huzzah, again. The men followed up the ladies to sweep the pool in Chapel Hill and bring home the third ACC championship of the season. And it turned out not to be quite as close as it looked like it might. Didn't even come down to the last relay, but we won that anyway, so, whee. Here are the results, and a summary below:
1st places:
800 free relay
500 free
50 free
200 free relay
200 free
400 medley relay
100 free
400 free relay
1st-place swimmers (individual only):
Matt McLean (500 free)
Scot Robison (50 free, 200 free, 100 free)
NCAA 'A' cuts:
800 free relay (Azar/Smith/Robison/McLean)
200 free (Robison)
400 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Azar/McLean)
NCAA 'B' cuts:
200 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Azar)
500 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 IM (Houser, Azar, Casey, Inwood)
50 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Oleson/Azar)
400 IM (Howser, Ankosko, Hayes, Inwood)
100 fly (Oleson, Geissinger)
200 free (McLean, Azar, Smith, Snawerdt)
100 breast (Casey, Norstedt)
100 back (Oleson, Johnson, Murray, Wren)
400 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Robison)
1650 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 back (Johnson, Murray, Wren)
100 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 breast (Azar, Norstedt, Casey)
200 fly (Houser)
ACC records:
200 free (Robison, 1:32.45)
100 free (Robison, 42.42)
Miscellaneous domination notes: Took 1-2-3-5 in the 500 free and 200 free ... won 800 free relay by 6 and a half seconds (that's over half the pool length) ... won every freestyle event but the 1650.
We didn't win many individual events, but we just killed the relays and owned everything that had "freestyle" in it. There are a lot of those events, so it's nice to be deep there. And as you might guess from all those NCAA cut times, we're pretty deep everywhere else too, if not quite elite. Scot Robison was the Most Valuable Swimmer, and as you can see was very, very deserving, but I can't let this go without a shout for John Azar, who gets my nod for Ironman.
Azar anchored the 200 medley relay - for him, that meant a pure-speed, balls-to-the-wall sprint - and then got back in and led off the 800 free relay (so for him, a 200 free) on the same evening. I think he was the only swimmer on any team to swim both events, let alone anchor one and lead off the next. And this former swimmer thought in his swimming days that the 200 free was the worst event in history, as it's not quite a sprint but not exactly a distance race where you can lay off the first few lengths, either. Oh, Azar also swam the 200 breast - a very difficult endurance-ish race that doesn't exist on the high school level. Oh, and the 200 IM, which you start off with 50 yards of the most torturous stroke known to man - the butterfly. Gutsy meet.
So. ACC champs again, woot. Give Bernardino a raise for pulling a comfortable winning lineup out of what looked like it'd be a very close meet. Whatever it takes to make sure that man is UVA's swim coach for the next thirty years.
BASKETBALL
What did you expect without Sylven Landesberg?
Hell, what did you expect with Sylven Landesberg?
BASEBALL
Nice to know the bats are in good working order, yes? I'd like to know what Keith Werman's been eating for breakfast, because he's 10-for-15 on the season.
We can hit, that's been established. The pitching still needs to settle out a bit though. Some of our guys have been their usual lights-out selves, and I'm looking mainly in the direction of Danny Hultzen and Kevin Arico here. All isn't roses, though. I'd say Cody Winiarski still hasn't put the iron grip on the starter's job yet, despite the seven strikeouts on Sunday. URI isn't a chump team, but they're the kind we shouldn't be giving up more than maybe three runs to. Tyler Wilson has had a really rough start, too.
Wilson should be fine. We saw last year what he can do for us in that middle relief role, and it's high-quality workhorse stuff. He'll get settled. Winiarski is still mostly an unknown quantity, though, as are most of the guys who might step up if O'Connor decides to go in a different direction. Will Roberts is probably the most well-known, and that's not saying much, what with only 11 appearances last year. Eventually you'd have to figure Branden Kline will be eased into a starting role too, beginning as a second weekday starter and going from there.
We have one weekend left to sort it out, because after that is Florida State.
LACROSSE
Since I'm talking about lacrosse, that must mean it's time to harp on faceoffs again. The bane of existence for the UVA lax fan. You might remember me mentioning that Stony Brook returned last year's #1 faceoff guy in the nation, so our guys had a big test this week, and.....they did really, really well. Adam Rand was that guy, and we held him to a measly 11-of-24. Ryan Benincasa was a sparkling 12-of-16. This may not mean we will be excellent on faceoffs going forward, but for sure, it means we can be.
Now just tighten up that first-quarter defense. Adam Ghitelman should not have to make seven saves in a period, ever. I think it's clear, even after three games against non-elite competition, we really miss Mike Timms and Matt Kelly. 'Specially Timms.
So. It's Syracuse week, and it's a rare chance to play the game at Klockner and not a neutral or road site. So let's keep the snow off the ground in Charlottesville this week, OK, because having to play that game on the Turf Field would suck. The weather forecast has it getting steadily warmer all week in Charlottesville with Saturday getting up to 52 degrees and Sunday being a balmy 55. No snow. Klockner plz.
****************************
Through circumstances that actually were almost completely under my control, I only put three posts up last week, which is some kind of laziness record for me. Not going to be a lot better about it this week, I'm afraid. Tomorrow, in lieu of posting, I'll be working on the long-promised and not-delivered highlight videos of one of the basketball games I've been sitting on. Probably Miami, because I've been sitting on it longer. This is so as to do my small part to hopefully break the string of bad juju the basketball team has been dealing with. (I think I just set some kind of record for two-letter words in a row.) It's a good time to try, because I've got tickets to the Wednesday game at BC and I'd rather they won that one.
SWIMMING
Huzzah, again. The men followed up the ladies to sweep the pool in Chapel Hill and bring home the third ACC championship of the season. And it turned out not to be quite as close as it looked like it might. Didn't even come down to the last relay, but we won that anyway, so, whee. Here are the results, and a summary below:
1st places:
800 free relay
500 free
50 free
200 free relay
200 free
400 medley relay
100 free
400 free relay
1st-place swimmers (individual only):
Matt McLean (500 free)
Scot Robison (50 free, 200 free, 100 free)
NCAA 'A' cuts:
800 free relay (Azar/Smith/Robison/McLean)
200 free (Robison)
400 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Azar/McLean)
NCAA 'B' cuts:
200 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Azar)
500 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 IM (Houser, Azar, Casey, Inwood)
50 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 free relay (Robison/Geissinger/Oleson/Azar)
400 IM (Howser, Ankosko, Hayes, Inwood)
100 fly (Oleson, Geissinger)
200 free (McLean, Azar, Smith, Snawerdt)
100 breast (Casey, Norstedt)
100 back (Oleson, Johnson, Murray, Wren)
400 medley relay (Oleson/Casey/Geissinger/Robison)
1650 free (McLean, Snawerdt, Smith, Ankosko)
200 back (Johnson, Murray, Wren)
100 free (Robison, Geissinger)
200 breast (Azar, Norstedt, Casey)
200 fly (Houser)
ACC records:
200 free (Robison, 1:32.45)
100 free (Robison, 42.42)
Miscellaneous domination notes: Took 1-2-3-5 in the 500 free and 200 free ... won 800 free relay by 6 and a half seconds (that's over half the pool length) ... won every freestyle event but the 1650.
We didn't win many individual events, but we just killed the relays and owned everything that had "freestyle" in it. There are a lot of those events, so it's nice to be deep there. And as you might guess from all those NCAA cut times, we're pretty deep everywhere else too, if not quite elite. Scot Robison was the Most Valuable Swimmer, and as you can see was very, very deserving, but I can't let this go without a shout for John Azar, who gets my nod for Ironman.
Azar anchored the 200 medley relay - for him, that meant a pure-speed, balls-to-the-wall sprint - and then got back in and led off the 800 free relay (so for him, a 200 free) on the same evening. I think he was the only swimmer on any team to swim both events, let alone anchor one and lead off the next. And this former swimmer thought in his swimming days that the 200 free was the worst event in history, as it's not quite a sprint but not exactly a distance race where you can lay off the first few lengths, either. Oh, Azar also swam the 200 breast - a very difficult endurance-ish race that doesn't exist on the high school level. Oh, and the 200 IM, which you start off with 50 yards of the most torturous stroke known to man - the butterfly. Gutsy meet.
So. ACC champs again, woot. Give Bernardino a raise for pulling a comfortable winning lineup out of what looked like it'd be a very close meet. Whatever it takes to make sure that man is UVA's swim coach for the next thirty years.
BASKETBALL
What did you expect without Sylven Landesberg?
Hell, what did you expect with Sylven Landesberg?
BASEBALL
Nice to know the bats are in good working order, yes? I'd like to know what Keith Werman's been eating for breakfast, because he's 10-for-15 on the season.
We can hit, that's been established. The pitching still needs to settle out a bit though. Some of our guys have been their usual lights-out selves, and I'm looking mainly in the direction of Danny Hultzen and Kevin Arico here. All isn't roses, though. I'd say Cody Winiarski still hasn't put the iron grip on the starter's job yet, despite the seven strikeouts on Sunday. URI isn't a chump team, but they're the kind we shouldn't be giving up more than maybe three runs to. Tyler Wilson has had a really rough start, too.
Wilson should be fine. We saw last year what he can do for us in that middle relief role, and it's high-quality workhorse stuff. He'll get settled. Winiarski is still mostly an unknown quantity, though, as are most of the guys who might step up if O'Connor decides to go in a different direction. Will Roberts is probably the most well-known, and that's not saying much, what with only 11 appearances last year. Eventually you'd have to figure Branden Kline will be eased into a starting role too, beginning as a second weekday starter and going from there.
We have one weekend left to sort it out, because after that is Florida State.
LACROSSE
Since I'm talking about lacrosse, that must mean it's time to harp on faceoffs again. The bane of existence for the UVA lax fan. You might remember me mentioning that Stony Brook returned last year's #1 faceoff guy in the nation, so our guys had a big test this week, and.....they did really, really well. Adam Rand was that guy, and we held him to a measly 11-of-24. Ryan Benincasa was a sparkling 12-of-16. This may not mean we will be excellent on faceoffs going forward, but for sure, it means we can be.
Now just tighten up that first-quarter defense. Adam Ghitelman should not have to make seven saves in a period, ever. I think it's clear, even after three games against non-elite competition, we really miss Mike Timms and Matt Kelly. 'Specially Timms.
So. It's Syracuse week, and it's a rare chance to play the game at Klockner and not a neutral or road site. So let's keep the snow off the ground in Charlottesville this week, OK, because having to play that game on the Turf Field would suck. The weather forecast has it getting steadily warmer all week in Charlottesville with Saturday getting up to 52 degrees and Sunday being a balmy 55. No snow. Klockner plz.
****************************
Through circumstances that actually were almost completely under my control, I only put three posts up last week, which is some kind of laziness record for me. Not going to be a lot better about it this week, I'm afraid. Tomorrow, in lieu of posting, I'll be working on the long-promised and not-delivered highlight videos of one of the basketball games I've been sitting on. Probably Miami, because I've been sitting on it longer. This is so as to do my small part to hopefully break the string of bad juju the basketball team has been dealing with. (I think I just set some kind of record for two-letter words in a row.) It's a good time to try, because I've got tickets to the Wednesday game at BC and I'd rather they won that one.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
argh
Doesn't take long to put an end to one's tournament dreams, does it? I'd say it took just over two minutes of game time - about what it took to lose a three-point lead in Cassell - to slam home the reality that what we have here is just what I called it during the Q&A lead-in to the GT game: a lower-mid-level ACC squad. Capable of beating you if doing things right, but only if for forty consecutive minutes. The hoopsters followed up the loss to Poly with a very balanced effort - crappy defense in the next game and crappy offense in the one following - and the result is that a very different style of bracketology is in the cards for the rest of the year.
I look at this two ways: one, I clearly jinxed the team to hell and back with that post that highlighted the team's offensive improvement; and two, they couldn't have done a better job proving that post correct. Other than the Maryland game (which was still as bad a meltdown on offense as the other four games in this losing streak) nothing has really changed on defense. Honestly. It's as solid (or not solid, whichever you think) as it's ever been this year. But the offense took a dump on the floor and rolled around in it. It's that bad. I could recite a litany of numbers to this effect, but I think the one that really matters is 15-for-81: that's the three-point shooting in these four losses. 18.5%, if you want to know. You'll never win basketball games like that.
What's going on, then?
- As you might have guessed from that statistic, Sammy Zeglinski is just completely ice-cold. Nothing he shoots goes in these days.
- Sylven can't go anywhere on the court without being hounded by two defenders. Obviously nobody is scared of anyone else ever hitting a bucket, and with good reason. Try to set a screen for Sylven and not only does your own defender switch over to him and cut off his lane, but Sylven's guy just drops underneath the screen and finishes the double team. He's also showing a pretty clear reluctance to try anything left-handed, and the defenders are giving it away knowing he won't take it.
- Florida State played pretty good defense, but even when they weren't, the team forgot all their junior-high fundamentals. They pump-faked open shots and then took the shot once the defender had arrived to contest. They drove the lane without any forethought whatsoever. They grabbed offensive rebounds and did the infuriating one-dribble before taking the shot back up. They got careless with the ball and lost the handle on it. They forgot about the shot clock entirely. They passed to phantom teammates. That game was 2009 redux: terrible offense leading to easy buckets for the opposition and making the defense look worse than it actually was.
- We have defensive players and we have offensive players, and the problem is the defensive players can't all be on the court at the same time and the same holds true for the offensive guys. I think Tony Bennett sees this and is awfully limited in his substitutions as a result. There are only three players who are about equally useful on both offense and defense: Scott, Sherill, and Farrakhan - and the latter is such a streaky shooter that he's really a stretch. The rest have gaping holes in their game on one end or the other. Ever see, for example, Sene and Meyinsse on the floor at the same time? Rarely, because you can't pass to either one of them in the post. Try putting Jones and Zeglinski both in the game at once and the perimeter defense is going to collapse miserably. Even Landesberg gets beat more often than he should. Jontel has no jumper and Baker has no handle, and you won't see them share a backcourt much, if ever. So rather than totally give up one end or the other of the court, Bennett pairs an offensive player with a defensive one and the result is predictable - sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. This is actually just fine as long as the offensive players are playing effective offense, but that hasn't happened lately.
There are lots of things we could try here and there to fix this mess and right the ship. Finding the open man when Sylven gets doubled off the screen would be a great start. Not letting Calvin Baker play the point would be another. Four out of five dentists agree, though: hitting your jump shots® is the most effective treatment for Shitty Offense Syndrome. It's amazing how many problems would fix themselves when the jump shots are falling and the defense has to care about that. It sounds overly simplistic, doesn't it? Sometimes that's the way things are.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not going to use the three-games-in-five-days excuse. Was it a factor? Maybe it was. Me, I hope it wasn't, otherwise we can forget about ever winning an ACC tournament.
Remember, now, I made no predictions for this season other than to guarantee an improvement over the 4-12, 11th-place showing from last year. This has been done, so theoretically everything else is gravy, but it sure would suck to end the season on a nine-game losing streak. Make that improvement feel like no improvement at all. There are two games left on the schedule against teams worse off than we are in the ACC standings, and both are on the road but not in the scariest gyms in the world. Winning these games, which happen to be against Miami and Boston College, would do wonders. Two lousy games, that's all we need. That would be good enough for the NIT, which has proven itself happy to take a 7-9 ACC team and doesn't concern itself much with resumes and strength-of-schedule wins and all that jazz that the big tournament cares about.
****************************************
Programming note: I am so sowwy for not having anything for you to read yesterday; it was supposed to be the first day of my ACC baseball preview, but circumstances conspired against me. So that gets pushed back to next week, because tomorrow the baseball team kicks off the season with a big series against East Carolina, and I want to do something to actually acknowledge that that exists.
I look at this two ways: one, I clearly jinxed the team to hell and back with that post that highlighted the team's offensive improvement; and two, they couldn't have done a better job proving that post correct. Other than the Maryland game (which was still as bad a meltdown on offense as the other four games in this losing streak) nothing has really changed on defense. Honestly. It's as solid (or not solid, whichever you think) as it's ever been this year. But the offense took a dump on the floor and rolled around in it. It's that bad. I could recite a litany of numbers to this effect, but I think the one that really matters is 15-for-81: that's the three-point shooting in these four losses. 18.5%, if you want to know. You'll never win basketball games like that.
What's going on, then?
- As you might have guessed from that statistic, Sammy Zeglinski is just completely ice-cold. Nothing he shoots goes in these days.
- Sylven can't go anywhere on the court without being hounded by two defenders. Obviously nobody is scared of anyone else ever hitting a bucket, and with good reason. Try to set a screen for Sylven and not only does your own defender switch over to him and cut off his lane, but Sylven's guy just drops underneath the screen and finishes the double team. He's also showing a pretty clear reluctance to try anything left-handed, and the defenders are giving it away knowing he won't take it.
- Florida State played pretty good defense, but even when they weren't, the team forgot all their junior-high fundamentals. They pump-faked open shots and then took the shot once the defender had arrived to contest. They drove the lane without any forethought whatsoever. They grabbed offensive rebounds and did the infuriating one-dribble before taking the shot back up. They got careless with the ball and lost the handle on it. They forgot about the shot clock entirely. They passed to phantom teammates. That game was 2009 redux: terrible offense leading to easy buckets for the opposition and making the defense look worse than it actually was.
- We have defensive players and we have offensive players, and the problem is the defensive players can't all be on the court at the same time and the same holds true for the offensive guys. I think Tony Bennett sees this and is awfully limited in his substitutions as a result. There are only three players who are about equally useful on both offense and defense: Scott, Sherill, and Farrakhan - and the latter is such a streaky shooter that he's really a stretch. The rest have gaping holes in their game on one end or the other. Ever see, for example, Sene and Meyinsse on the floor at the same time? Rarely, because you can't pass to either one of them in the post. Try putting Jones and Zeglinski both in the game at once and the perimeter defense is going to collapse miserably. Even Landesberg gets beat more often than he should. Jontel has no jumper and Baker has no handle, and you won't see them share a backcourt much, if ever. So rather than totally give up one end or the other of the court, Bennett pairs an offensive player with a defensive one and the result is predictable - sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. This is actually just fine as long as the offensive players are playing effective offense, but that hasn't happened lately.
There are lots of things we could try here and there to fix this mess and right the ship. Finding the open man when Sylven gets doubled off the screen would be a great start. Not letting Calvin Baker play the point would be another. Four out of five dentists agree, though: hitting your jump shots® is the most effective treatment for Shitty Offense Syndrome. It's amazing how many problems would fix themselves when the jump shots are falling and the defense has to care about that. It sounds overly simplistic, doesn't it? Sometimes that's the way things are.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, no, I'm not going to use the three-games-in-five-days excuse. Was it a factor? Maybe it was. Me, I hope it wasn't, otherwise we can forget about ever winning an ACC tournament.
Remember, now, I made no predictions for this season other than to guarantee an improvement over the 4-12, 11th-place showing from last year. This has been done, so theoretically everything else is gravy, but it sure would suck to end the season on a nine-game losing streak. Make that improvement feel like no improvement at all. There are two games left on the schedule against teams worse off than we are in the ACC standings, and both are on the road but not in the scariest gyms in the world. Winning these games, which happen to be against Miami and Boston College, would do wonders. Two lousy games, that's all we need. That would be good enough for the NIT, which has proven itself happy to take a 7-9 ACC team and doesn't concern itself much with resumes and strength-of-schedule wins and all that jazz that the big tournament cares about.
****************************************
Programming note: I am so sowwy for not having anything for you to read yesterday; it was supposed to be the first day of my ACC baseball preview, but circumstances conspired against me. So that gets pushed back to next week, because tomorrow the baseball team kicks off the season with a big series against East Carolina, and I want to do something to actually acknowledge that that exists.
Friday, February 12, 2010
game preview: Gauntlet of Doom
If it wasn't before, it's time to get serious now. Put on your war face, lock up the valuables, break out the lucky t-shirt, whatever it takes to get ready for the week ahead. By this time next week, we'll have an extremely good idea about where we stand if we're thinking about dancing.
Honestly, if you're a Virginia basketball fan, and you probably are, could you ask for anything better? Three games to determine our tournament fate, and two of them in hostile gyms against the two biggest rivals we've got. That is a worthy challenge. Tomorrow, a revenge game against Virginia Tech. Monday, equally-despised Maryland in snowbound DC. And Wednesday, back to the friendly confines for the enigmatic Florida State. Because our tournament hopes rest so heavily on this three-game stretch, it's only fitting they all get lumped into one big-ass preview.
A sweep of either variety will seal our fate. Losing all three will set us back to 5-6, and if you think 10-6 is good enough for the tournament, then you'd better hope we can get past Duke, because 9-7 will not do the trick. Winning all three, if I might be allowed to hope against hope we can pull off that stunt, would get us to 8-3, with extraordinarily winnable (albeit road) games against Miami and BC remaining, as well as an already-beaten Maryland at home. Barring a collapse of stupid proportions, we'd be a very, very good bet to get in.
Much more likely is some kind of combination, and, no, 1-2 ain't gonna cut it any better than 0-3 would. Your best hope is a 2-1 split of some kind, landing us at 7-4 with work to do but the finish line clearly in sight.
Joe Lunardi fans will note that it's fitting we start this run off with VT, because check out who the first two teams out of his latest bracket are. As close as these two teams are in the tournament race, if we're going to go 2-1 in this three-game stretch, this is definitely not the game to lose. If we don't make the tournament, the first VT game will be the #1 cause of woulda-coulda-shoulda-itis among loyal Hoos. I still have a hard time believing we're actually a worse team than Tech is, but you wouldn't know it by the way we closed out the halves. The other flaw in that theory is that VT is riding a pretty nice hot streak. Not only did they get their kicks in on UNC like everyone else, they also dispatched NC State and Clemson with prejudice - the latter with a huge assist from the referees. How often does a team score more points from the free-throw line than the field and still win? Anyway, bitching about Karl Hess aside, this is still the most winnable game of the three.
Maryland is next, and it would have already happened if Maryland was interested in following ACC protocol. (Both teams and two of three refs in town? Game on, even if the arena is a ghost town because the city is buried under another blizzard. I wonder who in our administration signed off on a postponement?) Maryland is a fast-paced team with a high-powered offense, and one of the few teams in the league that has someone who can match Sylven Landesberg bucket for bucket. You might want to rip Greivis Vasquez's throat inside out every time you watch him play, but you can't deny he's one of the top all-around players in the conference, and worse, he's got a highly competent supporting cast.
Hate to say it, but Maryland is one of the best teams in the conference. Their low turnover numbers are even more impressive given the number of possessions they generate, they have a lot of players that can beat you, they don't foul much, and their ACC resume is impressive.
In order to beat Maryland on the road, it'll be necessary to slow the game down even more than usual. The Twerps can score from all over the court and with a lot of different players, and they're deadeye shots from the free-throw line, so "snail's pace" doesn't even begin to describe how we want to play the game. If the Hoos win, it might well be the lowest scoring game all season, because we're certainly not winning a shootout. A win here would be a clear upset. To put it in a little perspective, KenPom says our chances of beating Duke at home are better than winning Monday at Maryland.
As for Florida State, argh big men. This is decidedly a frontcourt-oriented team, with bigs Solomon Alabi and Chris Singleton doing the job of putting points on the board. We have no answer for Alabi and he will crush us, because he's seven damn feet tall, and he and Singleton make the best shot-blocking tandem in the conference. The UNC formula is going to be the key here: deny that entry pass like your life depends on it. This may actually be easier than it seems. FSU is a turnover-prone team, and not just because the bigs handle the ball so much. Their guards don't take good care of the ball either, and they also won't scare anyone with their three-point skills. The outcome of the game likely boils down to one very simple equation: the more their guards have the ball and the less their bigs do, the better our chances of a win. And the opposite is the case on the other end. When the other team has shot-blockers, it's obviously more effective if you can just shoot over them from the outside instead of trying to go at them head on.
This coming week in order from easiest to hardest, you've got VT, TFSU, and Maryland. And there's a big gap between the Hokies and Noles. That means that VT is the biggest part of this big week. Lose on Saturday and a tournament-killing 0-3 run will be staring us in the face. Win in a hostile gym and it just might (in my ever-sunny outlook) be the catalyst for an exciting run.
Honestly, if you're a Virginia basketball fan, and you probably are, could you ask for anything better? Three games to determine our tournament fate, and two of them in hostile gyms against the two biggest rivals we've got. That is a worthy challenge. Tomorrow, a revenge game against Virginia Tech. Monday, equally-despised Maryland in snowbound DC. And Wednesday, back to the friendly confines for the enigmatic Florida State. Because our tournament hopes rest so heavily on this three-game stretch, it's only fitting they all get lumped into one big-ass preview.
A sweep of either variety will seal our fate. Losing all three will set us back to 5-6, and if you think 10-6 is good enough for the tournament, then you'd better hope we can get past Duke, because 9-7 will not do the trick. Winning all three, if I might be allowed to hope against hope we can pull off that stunt, would get us to 8-3, with extraordinarily winnable (albeit road) games against Miami and BC remaining, as well as an already-beaten Maryland at home. Barring a collapse of stupid proportions, we'd be a very, very good bet to get in.
Much more likely is some kind of combination, and, no, 1-2 ain't gonna cut it any better than 0-3 would. Your best hope is a 2-1 split of some kind, landing us at 7-4 with work to do but the finish line clearly in sight.
Joe Lunardi fans will note that it's fitting we start this run off with VT, because check out who the first two teams out of his latest bracket are. As close as these two teams are in the tournament race, if we're going to go 2-1 in this three-game stretch, this is definitely not the game to lose. If we don't make the tournament, the first VT game will be the #1 cause of woulda-coulda-shoulda-itis among loyal Hoos. I still have a hard time believing we're actually a worse team than Tech is, but you wouldn't know it by the way we closed out the halves. The other flaw in that theory is that VT is riding a pretty nice hot streak. Not only did they get their kicks in on UNC like everyone else, they also dispatched NC State and Clemson with prejudice - the latter with a huge assist from the referees. How often does a team score more points from the free-throw line than the field and still win? Anyway, bitching about Karl Hess aside, this is still the most winnable game of the three.
Maryland is next, and it would have already happened if Maryland was interested in following ACC protocol. (Both teams and two of three refs in town? Game on, even if the arena is a ghost town because the city is buried under another blizzard. I wonder who in our administration signed off on a postponement?) Maryland is a fast-paced team with a high-powered offense, and one of the few teams in the league that has someone who can match Sylven Landesberg bucket for bucket. You might want to rip Greivis Vasquez's throat inside out every time you watch him play, but you can't deny he's one of the top all-around players in the conference, and worse, he's got a highly competent supporting cast.
Hate to say it, but Maryland is one of the best teams in the conference. Their low turnover numbers are even more impressive given the number of possessions they generate, they have a lot of players that can beat you, they don't foul much, and their ACC resume is impressive.
In order to beat Maryland on the road, it'll be necessary to slow the game down even more than usual. The Twerps can score from all over the court and with a lot of different players, and they're deadeye shots from the free-throw line, so "snail's pace" doesn't even begin to describe how we want to play the game. If the Hoos win, it might well be the lowest scoring game all season, because we're certainly not winning a shootout. A win here would be a clear upset. To put it in a little perspective, KenPom says our chances of beating Duke at home are better than winning Monday at Maryland.
As for Florida State, argh big men. This is decidedly a frontcourt-oriented team, with bigs Solomon Alabi and Chris Singleton doing the job of putting points on the board. We have no answer for Alabi and he will crush us, because he's seven damn feet tall, and he and Singleton make the best shot-blocking tandem in the conference. The UNC formula is going to be the key here: deny that entry pass like your life depends on it. This may actually be easier than it seems. FSU is a turnover-prone team, and not just because the bigs handle the ball so much. Their guards don't take good care of the ball either, and they also won't scare anyone with their three-point skills. The outcome of the game likely boils down to one very simple equation: the more their guards have the ball and the less their bigs do, the better our chances of a win. And the opposite is the case on the other end. When the other team has shot-blockers, it's obviously more effective if you can just shoot over them from the outside instead of trying to go at them head on.
This coming week in order from easiest to hardest, you've got VT, TFSU, and Maryland. And there's a big gap between the Hokies and Noles. That means that VT is the biggest part of this big week. Lose on Saturday and a tournament-killing 0-3 run will be staring us in the face. Win in a hostile gym and it just might (in my ever-sunny outlook) be the catalyst for an exciting run.
Monday, February 8, 2010
laying to rest a misconception
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to put to rest a common misconception about Virginia basketball. It is the halfway point of the ACC season and so it is only fit that we do this today.
As I need not explain to you, Tony Bennett came in as coach this year and made as his #1 priority the installation of the pack-line defense, a strict system that, when properly executed, is godawful painful to try and score upon. Just ask North Carolina. This, plus the demand that his team play a measured, deliberate pace, is the hallmark of the Tony Bennett system. The results on the defensive end have been impressive enough to earn a mention in the NCAA's official blog. Mention, hell: they wrote a whole article detailing the defensive improvement. The spectacular drop from 72.5 PPG allowed to just 60.9 is cited as the reason for the improvement on the standings sheet. They're not the only ones - it's basically conventional wisdom. Improve on defense, improve the record, it sounds simple. Hooray for Tony Bennett and his pack-line.
Wrong.
Wait, what? Yup. The truth is, the team hasn't actually improved that damn much on defense at all. Somewhat, yes. But the main reason we've gone from doormat to an outside shot at the NCAA tournament is because of the huge improvement on offense, not defense. I shall explain.
For those unfamiliar with the KenPom ratings, the fundamental point is this: What's the point of defense? Answer: to stop the other team from scoring on the current possession. Therefore the possession, not the game, should be the base unit of measurement. KenPom's offensive and defensive ratings are based on points per 100 possessions. Very very roughly, the average team gets about a point per possession, so above 100 on defense is bad and below is good. Roughly.
KenPom further adjusts his stats by applying some complex logarithmic exponential differential whatever formula to the raw stats. This is to take away the effects of strength of schedule and try to simulate how the team would do against a perfectly average opponent on a neutral court. We'll be using adjusted stats here.
This year we're averaging about 93.7 points allowed per 100 defensive possessions; last year we averaged 95 points allowed per 100 possessions. There's hardly any difference. Tony Bennett is known for his slow pace, and that is most definitely borne out in KenPom's stats. In 2009, a UVA game averaged 68.2 (adjusted) possessions, 92nd in the country; in 2010, that number is down to about 63 (adjusted) - 322nd in the country. (That's per team per game.) They weren't kidding when they said Bennett slows the game down.
Multiply 93.7 by 0.63 and you get about 59. What do you know - that is just about exactly how many points per game we actually give up. Only off by a point or so. The stats work. Do the same for 2009 - multiply 95 by .682 - and you get 65. That's actually quite a bit fewer than our actual PPG average, but the discrepancy is very easily explained the fact that we average four fewer turnovers than last year. That's four fewer possessions for the opposition, and possessions off turnovers - those caused by steals anyway - tend to be fastbreak opportunities, meaning more points. The four-turnover difference is actually more like an eight-possession swing in our favor: four fewer possessions for the bad guys, and four more chances for us that don't turn into an automatic zero.
But our offense? Improved? Obviously. Again, if you look only at points per game, you'll miss the point entirely. Last year, 70 points per game. This year, 70 points per game. But remember: that's on six fewer possessions per game. Whether you look at KenPom's raw or adjusted numbers, we are scoring ten more points per 100 possessions. We're 43rd in the country in offensive efficiency at 111 points per 100, up from 165th in the country last year.
The numbers don't lie. Our defensive efficiency is about the same as it was. (If you use real-world numbers the improvement is a lot greater, but that doesn't account for the fact that we have yet to play the hardest part of the schedule.) Offensively, we're much better. So what's the real difference?
One, we can shoot. Last year I repeatedly lamented our inability to hit a simple jump shot. This lousy shooting caused a lot of long rebounds and hurt our defensive numbers because teams were scoring easy transition buckets. We're shooting so much better it's unbelievable. Sammy has found a shot, JJ has found a shot, Sylven has found a shot. Such a difference when you can make your three-pointers.
Two, did I mention Sylven Landesberg? He's no longer a freshman and there are two major differences in his game: Turnovers are down and three-point shooting is up. This is big. He's not a deadeye shot from downtown, but he's good enough that people now have to respect it. Good enough to get a little pub for POTY, in fact.
Three, the ACC has been playing out exactly as I told you it would. We are better because we didn't lose any major pieces from last year's team, and the teams we've beaten, with the exception of Georgia Tech, are worse. NC State has taken a step back, Miami has taken about twenty steps back, and UNC has crashed into the goddamned mountain.
If all this sounds like it's taking credit away from Tony Bennett, it's not meant to. He did, as I've harped on, walk into a good situation in that his team is basically the same as last year only a year older, a year wiser, and a year better. And the ACC is, in general, worse. But the turnover numbers are all Bennett. He emphasizes "take care of the ball" more than Leitao did, and his slow pace makes it much easier to do so. Leitao's offense was almost literally indescribable, because nobody was quite sure what it was. (OK, that's not quite fair to Leitao, but the offense was still a mess last year.) Bennett has a philosophy and it results in better shots. Bennett is calmer; Leitao's style was a bit rough on a young team. And Bennett's slow pace keeps the game closer, a plus for a team facing a talent deficiency the way we have been against teams like GT and Wake.
And finally, there's this: Leitao played a pretty traditional man-to-man defense. The guys have been doing that for a while. It's not hard to learn and the players had experience with it. Bennett brought in a whole new thing, which demanded the players scrap their old ways of thinking and do things, in some cases, entirely the opposite of what they'd been taught: do not switch on screens, and such-like. Yes, the defense is only just as effective as it was last year, but to be as effective in a totally brand-new system is an accomplishment in itself - while at the same time improving rather dramatically on offense. Just you wait til this pack-line defense becomes second nature.
As I need not explain to you, Tony Bennett came in as coach this year and made as his #1 priority the installation of the pack-line defense, a strict system that, when properly executed, is godawful painful to try and score upon. Just ask North Carolina. This, plus the demand that his team play a measured, deliberate pace, is the hallmark of the Tony Bennett system. The results on the defensive end have been impressive enough to earn a mention in the NCAA's official blog. Mention, hell: they wrote a whole article detailing the defensive improvement. The spectacular drop from 72.5 PPG allowed to just 60.9 is cited as the reason for the improvement on the standings sheet. They're not the only ones - it's basically conventional wisdom. Improve on defense, improve the record, it sounds simple. Hooray for Tony Bennett and his pack-line.
Wrong.
Wait, what? Yup. The truth is, the team hasn't actually improved that damn much on defense at all. Somewhat, yes. But the main reason we've gone from doormat to an outside shot at the NCAA tournament is because of the huge improvement on offense, not defense. I shall explain.
For those unfamiliar with the KenPom ratings, the fundamental point is this: What's the point of defense? Answer: to stop the other team from scoring on the current possession. Therefore the possession, not the game, should be the base unit of measurement. KenPom's offensive and defensive ratings are based on points per 100 possessions. Very very roughly, the average team gets about a point per possession, so above 100 on defense is bad and below is good. Roughly.
KenPom further adjusts his stats by applying some complex logarithmic exponential differential whatever formula to the raw stats. This is to take away the effects of strength of schedule and try to simulate how the team would do against a perfectly average opponent on a neutral court. We'll be using adjusted stats here.
This year we're averaging about 93.7 points allowed per 100 defensive possessions; last year we averaged 95 points allowed per 100 possessions. There's hardly any difference. Tony Bennett is known for his slow pace, and that is most definitely borne out in KenPom's stats. In 2009, a UVA game averaged 68.2 (adjusted) possessions, 92nd in the country; in 2010, that number is down to about 63 (adjusted) - 322nd in the country. (That's per team per game.) They weren't kidding when they said Bennett slows the game down.
Multiply 93.7 by 0.63 and you get about 59. What do you know - that is just about exactly how many points per game we actually give up. Only off by a point or so. The stats work. Do the same for 2009 - multiply 95 by .682 - and you get 65. That's actually quite a bit fewer than our actual PPG average, but the discrepancy is very easily explained the fact that we average four fewer turnovers than last year. That's four fewer possessions for the opposition, and possessions off turnovers - those caused by steals anyway - tend to be fastbreak opportunities, meaning more points. The four-turnover difference is actually more like an eight-possession swing in our favor: four fewer possessions for the bad guys, and four more chances for us that don't turn into an automatic zero.
But our offense? Improved? Obviously. Again, if you look only at points per game, you'll miss the point entirely. Last year, 70 points per game. This year, 70 points per game. But remember: that's on six fewer possessions per game. Whether you look at KenPom's raw or adjusted numbers, we are scoring ten more points per 100 possessions. We're 43rd in the country in offensive efficiency at 111 points per 100, up from 165th in the country last year.
The numbers don't lie. Our defensive efficiency is about the same as it was. (If you use real-world numbers the improvement is a lot greater, but that doesn't account for the fact that we have yet to play the hardest part of the schedule.) Offensively, we're much better. So what's the real difference?
One, we can shoot. Last year I repeatedly lamented our inability to hit a simple jump shot. This lousy shooting caused a lot of long rebounds and hurt our defensive numbers because teams were scoring easy transition buckets. We're shooting so much better it's unbelievable. Sammy has found a shot, JJ has found a shot, Sylven has found a shot. Such a difference when you can make your three-pointers.
Two, did I mention Sylven Landesberg? He's no longer a freshman and there are two major differences in his game: Turnovers are down and three-point shooting is up. This is big. He's not a deadeye shot from downtown, but he's good enough that people now have to respect it. Good enough to get a little pub for POTY, in fact.
Three, the ACC has been playing out exactly as I told you it would. We are better because we didn't lose any major pieces from last year's team, and the teams we've beaten, with the exception of Georgia Tech, are worse. NC State has taken a step back, Miami has taken about twenty steps back, and UNC has crashed into the goddamned mountain.
If all this sounds like it's taking credit away from Tony Bennett, it's not meant to. He did, as I've harped on, walk into a good situation in that his team is basically the same as last year only a year older, a year wiser, and a year better. And the ACC is, in general, worse. But the turnover numbers are all Bennett. He emphasizes "take care of the ball" more than Leitao did, and his slow pace makes it much easier to do so. Leitao's offense was almost literally indescribable, because nobody was quite sure what it was. (OK, that's not quite fair to Leitao, but the offense was still a mess last year.) Bennett has a philosophy and it results in better shots. Bennett is calmer; Leitao's style was a bit rough on a young team. And Bennett's slow pace keeps the game closer, a plus for a team facing a talent deficiency the way we have been against teams like GT and Wake.
And finally, there's this: Leitao played a pretty traditional man-to-man defense. The guys have been doing that for a while. It's not hard to learn and the players had experience with it. Bennett brought in a whole new thing, which demanded the players scrap their old ways of thinking and do things, in some cases, entirely the opposite of what they'd been taught: do not switch on screens, and such-like. Yes, the defense is only just as effective as it was last year, but to be as effective in a totally brand-new system is an accomplishment in itself - while at the same time improving rather dramatically on offense. Just you wait til this pack-line defense becomes second nature.
Monday, February 1, 2010
was that cool or what?
"There’s a lot to like about what Tony Bennett has done in his brief time at Virginia, and given his record, a lot more to expect in the future. But while the suit-and-open-collar look is perfect for boarding an NBA charter, perhaps he might find a tie appropriate once in a while -- maybe for a national TV game against the defending national champions?"
- Luke DeCock, Charlotte Observer writer
The Dean Dome isn't a five-star restaurant, but despite the silly ignorance of the above local hack (nothing like a flip statement to prove you haven't scouted your opponent at all) the man has stumbled on a very apropos metaphor anyway. Bennett and co. made like Rodney Dangerfield's Al Czervik at the fancy Bushwood affair and totally failed to respect the hallowed tradition of the mighty Dean Smith Center and its resident powerhouse. The Hoos came in, mocked the judge, danced with his wife, insulted the cook, disrupted the music, and had the time of their lives doing it. By the time the clock made it down near the three-minute mark, the fans were so mortified and silent that you could hear Roy Williams' head trying not to explode, and the cheerleaders' plucky attempts at firing up their home team echoed off the empty seats in the upper deck.
Yes, UNC has eight losses, and yes, Roy Williams is frustrated beyond belief, but let's not underestimate this. It is huge. It probably means very little for the future, because this is still a developing and undertalented team, but it is huge. We don't win in Chapel Hill very often. Nobody does. UNC was clearly the bigger, more athletic team yesterday (more on that later) and we were in their house, and we never trailed and beat them by 15 and it wasn't even that close. Michigan State - that's "#5 Michigan State" to you - couldn't even beat them, let alone by 15.
So what did we do to earn this?
- First, it's all about the pack-line. Defensively that is 100% of the reason we won. A near-perfectly executed pack-line defense. Now you know how it's supposed to work. I'm not sure what the final points-in-the-paint stat was, but at one point it was 20-5 in favor of the good guys. UNC is huge. You can't swing a dead cat in their locker room without hitting two or three guys who are 6'10". That's why they were killing us on the boards. Nobody with that many big galoots - all we have is Assane Sene and he played seven minutes - should be getting beat that badly in the paint, but it's hard to score from the paint if you can't get the ball to the paint. UNC couldn't pass the ball in there or dribble it in there or get it in there at all except by heaving up a missed three-pointer and hoping for the offensive rebound.
- Second: SYLVEN. Holy God, 29 points. Seemed like everything we tried on offense happened to work, and better yet, the Heels had nothing for Sylven Landesberg. How weird is it when you're playing UNC and they don't have the best guy on the floor?
- Jontel Evans is starting to catch up to the speed of the college game. He's starting to see the higher degree of difficulty plays that are out there for the making. Earlier in the season he would bring the ball up, dump it off to the wing, and run around not getting the ball while the offense went on without him. Now he's seeing where his options are and figuring out when he can make a play himself. He doesn't always get it right (as evidenced by his four turnovers) or even necessarily know where the lines are (as evidenced by one of those turnovers caused by having his damn heel on the sideline arrrgghh) but you can see the light bulb brighten as the season goes on.
- You know that feeling of dread when certain opposing players - J.J. Redick being the extreme example - go up for the shot from threeland? Do you think our opponents are feeling that way yet about Sammy? If not, they should - .470 is nasty good and good for best in the ACC right now.
What a difference a year makes in North Carolina games. Last year it was UVA fans bitching about Dave Leitao wearing a Carolina blue tie for the Carolina game. This year it's UNC's fans (yeah, not just the beat writers) bitching about Tony Bennett not wearing one at all. Following up a football win in Chapel Hill with a basketball win in Chapel Hill.....it's like the ghost of Ronald Curry came back to UNC and decided to extend his curse to Carolina's home games, too.
Miscellaneous items o' fun:
- Matt Schaub is your Pro Bowl MVP after nearly getting snubbed out of the game entirely. That'll learn 'em.
- Scott Stadium is the best venue in the ACC.
- Recruiting board update: 2010 only. Last one before signing day. Now I owe you two recruit profiles: Lawe, and Mike Rocco. I don't know what the hell I'm going to write about yet another quarterback.
- UNC game video will be posted later tonight, so watch for that. EDIT - this is now done, and you can find it as usual by clicking through to the videos page.
Friday, January 22, 2010
game preview: Wake Forest
One of the best things about sucking for a little bit and then snapping out of it and winning some games you maybe weren't supposed to is that people start to pay attention. And then you get some of that sweet sweet coverage you've been dying for all this time, and neat stuff to read about your team. It started last weekend and hasn't stopped. There's a fairly formulaic "everyone's surprised but us" kind of article over at Yahoo, which also has some interesting stat comparisons between this year and last. I've been tempted to write up just such a stat comparison, but purposely avoided it because it's too soon - the easy part of our schedule is out of the way and the hard part is mostly yet to come, so the lessons you can learn are limited.
You also get some Sylven Landesberg fluff from SI.com, but actually some really worthwhile fluff, better than usual. Recommended reading. And Jay Bilas sends a little love for the way the Hoos have taken care of the ball. Winning the turnover battle: definitely a plus.
Fortunately, you know Tony Bennett won't be letting his team bask in the accolades, because nobody's gonna remember that you led the conference in January. Toughest game of the ACC season so far is tomorrow. One of the toughest all season, in fact.
I've long thought Wake is a highly legit contender for the tournament, because they're very well rounded. Aminu can destroy you from inside, Ish Smith can destroy you off the dribble, and C.J. Harris and Ari Stewart will destroy you with long-range artillery. This isn't Georgia Tech, where they think they can shoot three-balls and can't. Nor is it VT, where seven guys sit around for 40 minutes waiting for three guys to score. They're also extraordinarily solid on defense, ranked 19th in KenPom's adjusted defense rankings. We might look like we're doing a great job of holding down the opponent's scoring, but when you take tempo out of the equation as KenPom does, Wake is way better on a per-possession basis - 19th in the country, in fact. (We're 104th.) Tough.
You might remember, back when Tony Bennett was hired, that some notes were made that another team in the ACC had been picking his brain (and his dad's) for pointers on how to run that pack-line of his. That's these guys here, and it's been a big success. Dino Gaudio likes KenPom too, by the way, and likes even more the massive improvement his team has made using the pack-line. Should be interesting, as both teams will have that seen-it-in-practice-like-every-fricking-day advantage when they bring the ball up the court. Wake's been using the system longer than we have, but they've been learning it from the apprentice, not the master. Bennett goes bonkers in practice when someone gives up a baseline drive, because it ruins what the defense is trying to do - bet you anything one of our guys tries to go baseline sometime early, just to see what happens.
Not that Wake is a complete machine. Dino Gaudio might have brought in Tony Bennett's pack-line defense, but not his insistence that you take care of the ball. Wake has an absolutely brutal A/T ratio - .81 and 241st in the country (we're 14th, which is nice) and their turnover margin is equally sucky. Ish can dish for sure, but he also can be a little crazy with the ball sometimes, and you can bet he won't spend a minute on the court not being hounded by Jontel Evans or Mustapha Farrakhan, both of whom have a special way with annoying other people's point guards.
All in all, though, it's hard to predict a win here. Honestly, this is the first real road test of the ACC season - students were on break at NC State and it was like a mausoleum. For a Saturday afternoon game against a team just coming off a demolition of UNC, I expect a madhouse. A loss here will probably make the pundits go, "yup, that sounds about right," and they'll go back to following Kentucky and wondering if the Pac-10 can somehow squeeze a second team into the NCAA tournament. Find a way to somehow win, and we really will be legit.
You also get some Sylven Landesberg fluff from SI.com, but actually some really worthwhile fluff, better than usual. Recommended reading. And Jay Bilas sends a little love for the way the Hoos have taken care of the ball. Winning the turnover battle: definitely a plus.
Fortunately, you know Tony Bennett won't be letting his team bask in the accolades, because nobody's gonna remember that you led the conference in January. Toughest game of the ACC season so far is tomorrow. One of the toughest all season, in fact.
I've long thought Wake is a highly legit contender for the tournament, because they're very well rounded. Aminu can destroy you from inside, Ish Smith can destroy you off the dribble, and C.J. Harris and Ari Stewart will destroy you with long-range artillery. This isn't Georgia Tech, where they think they can shoot three-balls and can't. Nor is it VT, where seven guys sit around for 40 minutes waiting for three guys to score. They're also extraordinarily solid on defense, ranked 19th in KenPom's adjusted defense rankings. We might look like we're doing a great job of holding down the opponent's scoring, but when you take tempo out of the equation as KenPom does, Wake is way better on a per-possession basis - 19th in the country, in fact. (We're 104th.) Tough.
You might remember, back when Tony Bennett was hired, that some notes were made that another team in the ACC had been picking his brain (and his dad's) for pointers on how to run that pack-line of his. That's these guys here, and it's been a big success. Dino Gaudio likes KenPom too, by the way, and likes even more the massive improvement his team has made using the pack-line. Should be interesting, as both teams will have that seen-it-in-practice-like-every-fricking-day advantage when they bring the ball up the court. Wake's been using the system longer than we have, but they've been learning it from the apprentice, not the master. Bennett goes bonkers in practice when someone gives up a baseline drive, because it ruins what the defense is trying to do - bet you anything one of our guys tries to go baseline sometime early, just to see what happens.
Not that Wake is a complete machine. Dino Gaudio might have brought in Tony Bennett's pack-line defense, but not his insistence that you take care of the ball. Wake has an absolutely brutal A/T ratio - .81 and 241st in the country (we're 14th, which is nice) and their turnover margin is equally sucky. Ish can dish for sure, but he also can be a little crazy with the ball sometimes, and you can bet he won't spend a minute on the court not being hounded by Jontel Evans or Mustapha Farrakhan, both of whom have a special way with annoying other people's point guards.
All in all, though, it's hard to predict a win here. Honestly, this is the first real road test of the ACC season - students were on break at NC State and it was like a mausoleum. For a Saturday afternoon game against a team just coming off a demolition of UNC, I expect a madhouse. A loss here will probably make the pundits go, "yup, that sounds about right," and they'll go back to following Kentucky and wondering if the Pac-10 can somehow squeeze a second team into the NCAA tournament. Find a way to somehow win, and we really will be legit.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
should we readjust expectations?
So here we are: it's finals week, and that means the basketball team is taking a break, and that means it's a good time to sit down and figure out what the hell. We are 4-4, which incidentally is exactly where we were last year after eight games, only that involved a bare-bones win over USF and a loss that shouldn't ever have happened. It would have been really nice to get one of those four losses back, because Auburn was our last chance at a win over a major-league program outside the ACC. But the plus side is that there aren't any losses to Liberty or teams of a similar caliber.
That's going to be kind of a theme here as we try and decide today whether or not the expectations we (okay, I) had for the basketball team were too high. For every minus, there's a plus. I'd say that's probably par for the course for a rebuilding team learning a new system like ours.
First off, obviously, when I said there was an outside chance we might be interested in the results of Selection Day, obviously that's obviously not going to happen, obviously. Neither is the NIT. So that's some readjustment right there.
What's been going on, as best as my non-coaching eyes can tell, is that we're still getting murdered by the nuances of the pack-line defense. It's not automatic yet. I think it's clear the team has bought into the system and is working feverishly on getting it right, because if you've read about the basics of the defense, you can see it very very clearly on the court. Things like, stay inside the imaginary line, don't switch on screens, don't ever give up the baseline, and put your feet in such and such a place when guarding a player inside the line without the ball. When given just a split second to process his responsibilities, each player gets it right probably at least 85-90% of the time. The problem is, this is basketball, you don't always have that split second, and we're only eight games into using the system so it's not even close to automatic. And when another team runs their offense with enough precision to eliminate that split-second, bad things happen; and because of it we're especially susceptible to the three-ball because the guards haven't figured out how to stay true to the principles of the defense and still get out and contest the three.
On the plus side of the defense is the turnovers. We're getting them and winning the turnover battles. We haven't turned the ball over more than the opposition this season, except for the first game. Especially - and I don't know if this is just me or what - I think we're seeing a significant increase in shot-clock violations by the opposition. The turnovers his defense is causing has to put a smile on Tony Bennett's face.
What else is hurting? Well, the freshmen aren't as ready as we'd hoped. Spurlock hasn't even got up off the bench half the time, and Evans has played in every game, but sometimes just a minute or two. I said before the season Evans would be a big X-factor of sorts - the more he plays, the less we have to rely on guys like Baker for point guard stuff. Evans had a big-time breakthrough against Auburn with 18 minutes, 5 assists, 3 steals, and zero turnovers. And it's no coincidence at all that in the same game, Calvin Baker only played 10 minutes and Mustapha Farrakhan 9, and that we were in a position to win at the end. Right now, those two are ice-cold from the floor, and it's not helping.
Speaking of shooting, it's still a weakness. The hoped-for jump shot from Sylven hasn't quite materialized. He's not an outside threat, and neither are the aforementioned Farrakhan and Baker. HOWEVA! Jeff Jones is well on his way. His shooting is vastly improved. Like, big-time. It's not there every game yet, but any maroon can watch five minutes of any one of our games and realize we're a much, much better team when Jones' shot is falling.
So what about those readjusted expectations? Well, we've lopped off the top end. Any kind of tournament that gets any attention is out. But I made one guarantee, and I'm sticking to it: We'll improve over our 11th-place finish in the ACC. And we were 10-18 last year; I see improvement over that in our future too. The upcoming five-game stretch in between finals and the ACC program is the easiest of the year. Three of those teams are just bottom-of-the-barrel horrible. (That was the idea. We need wins.) Then there's UNC-Wilmington and UAB. Both dangerous. But neither overwhelming. At worst, we come out of this stretch and into the ACC schedule sitting at 7-6. I think 8-5 is more likely, and a five-game win streak to get us to 9-4 isn't a pipe dream. And remember - we won four games last year in an ACC that was stronger than this. So I expect to improve on that, even if only by a little.
Which brings us to what I said should be the two baseline expectations for this team: Improve on 11th place in the ACC, and go to the postseason. Hey, the CBI is the postseason. And I will tell you what: nine more wins (say, four out of five in the remaining OOC sked and five more in the ACC - that's 13-14 if you're keeping track, 13-15 or maybe 14-15 counting the ACC tournament) will get us there.
Addendum: There is one other improvement over last season I forgot to mention, and it's a big one. Last season, not a single one of our wins was broadcasted on TV up here where I could get my highlight-clipping hooks into them. This year, I finally got one. It's not, like, a big important game or anything - it's Cleveland State - but, as much for the practice of making a basketball video as anything, I'll eventually be getting this one up into the videos section.
That's going to be kind of a theme here as we try and decide today whether or not the expectations we (okay, I) had for the basketball team were too high. For every minus, there's a plus. I'd say that's probably par for the course for a rebuilding team learning a new system like ours.
First off, obviously, when I said there was an outside chance we might be interested in the results of Selection Day, obviously that's obviously not going to happen, obviously. Neither is the NIT. So that's some readjustment right there.
What's been going on, as best as my non-coaching eyes can tell, is that we're still getting murdered by the nuances of the pack-line defense. It's not automatic yet. I think it's clear the team has bought into the system and is working feverishly on getting it right, because if you've read about the basics of the defense, you can see it very very clearly on the court. Things like, stay inside the imaginary line, don't switch on screens, don't ever give up the baseline, and put your feet in such and such a place when guarding a player inside the line without the ball. When given just a split second to process his responsibilities, each player gets it right probably at least 85-90% of the time. The problem is, this is basketball, you don't always have that split second, and we're only eight games into using the system so it's not even close to automatic. And when another team runs their offense with enough precision to eliminate that split-second, bad things happen; and because of it we're especially susceptible to the three-ball because the guards haven't figured out how to stay true to the principles of the defense and still get out and contest the three.
On the plus side of the defense is the turnovers. We're getting them and winning the turnover battles. We haven't turned the ball over more than the opposition this season, except for the first game. Especially - and I don't know if this is just me or what - I think we're seeing a significant increase in shot-clock violations by the opposition. The turnovers his defense is causing has to put a smile on Tony Bennett's face.
What else is hurting? Well, the freshmen aren't as ready as we'd hoped. Spurlock hasn't even got up off the bench half the time, and Evans has played in every game, but sometimes just a minute or two. I said before the season Evans would be a big X-factor of sorts - the more he plays, the less we have to rely on guys like Baker for point guard stuff. Evans had a big-time breakthrough against Auburn with 18 minutes, 5 assists, 3 steals, and zero turnovers. And it's no coincidence at all that in the same game, Calvin Baker only played 10 minutes and Mustapha Farrakhan 9, and that we were in a position to win at the end. Right now, those two are ice-cold from the floor, and it's not helping.
Speaking of shooting, it's still a weakness. The hoped-for jump shot from Sylven hasn't quite materialized. He's not an outside threat, and neither are the aforementioned Farrakhan and Baker. HOWEVA! Jeff Jones is well on his way. His shooting is vastly improved. Like, big-time. It's not there every game yet, but any maroon can watch five minutes of any one of our games and realize we're a much, much better team when Jones' shot is falling.
So what about those readjusted expectations? Well, we've lopped off the top end. Any kind of tournament that gets any attention is out. But I made one guarantee, and I'm sticking to it: We'll improve over our 11th-place finish in the ACC. And we were 10-18 last year; I see improvement over that in our future too. The upcoming five-game stretch in between finals and the ACC program is the easiest of the year. Three of those teams are just bottom-of-the-barrel horrible. (That was the idea. We need wins.) Then there's UNC-Wilmington and UAB. Both dangerous. But neither overwhelming. At worst, we come out of this stretch and into the ACC schedule sitting at 7-6. I think 8-5 is more likely, and a five-game win streak to get us to 9-4 isn't a pipe dream. And remember - we won four games last year in an ACC that was stronger than this. So I expect to improve on that, even if only by a little.
Which brings us to what I said should be the two baseline expectations for this team: Improve on 11th place in the ACC, and go to the postseason. Hey, the CBI is the postseason. And I will tell you what: nine more wins (say, four out of five in the remaining OOC sked and five more in the ACC - that's 13-14 if you're keeping track, 13-15 or maybe 14-15 counting the ACC tournament) will get us there.
Addendum: There is one other improvement over last season I forgot to mention, and it's a big one. Last season, not a single one of our wins was broadcasted on TV up here where I could get my highlight-clipping hooks into them. This year, I finally got one. It's not, like, a big important game or anything - it's Cleveland State - but, as much for the practice of making a basketball video as anything, I'll eventually be getting this one up into the videos section.
Monday, November 23, 2009
the non-football weekend
It's Thanksgiving week! And that means it's time to carve a turkey if you catch my drift. But first, the other sports are starting to get exciting too. Today we'll just be talking about soccer and basketball. After that, I'm going to try and cram a whole week's worth of blogging into about two and a half days, since my flight out is on Wednesday afternoon. A couple things will be sacrificed, but don't worry: not if it has to do with that hayseed, Icehouse-swilling school (a term I use generously) down the road.
Soccer first. Weirdly, the NCAA set us up a guaranteed rematch in the second (third, actually) round of the tournament should we get past Bucknell. Which we did, by the way, in spectacular fashion. Will Bates, after a slow first month and a half of the season, has officially gone apeshit, and his latest contribution to the scoresheet is a hat trick to sink Bucknell on Sunday. Now, about that rematch: our opponent for next Sunday is Portland, which was last seen allowing us to score three goals in the opening game of the season. Their defense has been like that all season - it's very mediocre, ranking 30th of 48 tournament teams at basically a goal allowed per game, good for 50th in the country. Bucknell, incidentally, ranked 49th. Portland scores a bit more than we do, though.
It might be easy to take Portland for granted given that we rolled them to start the season and that that's not exactly a major-league school in a major-league conference - except you'd be wrong about that last point when it comes to soccer. Portland went just 4-4-4 in West Coast Conference action, but that's a conference that sent four of its seven soccer-playing teams to the tournament. (Ironically, it was the bottom four in the conference's preseason coaches' poll.) They have a couple other skins on their wall, too: a regular season win over tournament team St. Louis, and of course the two wins it took them to get here, including the one over NC State. Should we beat them? Yes, handily. They're still dangerous, though.
Time to switch gears and sing the praises of Tony Bennett. Let's get this part out of the way: We beat a MAAC team and a Summit League team, yes. But:
- Rider was coming off a season-opening upset of Mississippi State, and Oral Roberts had just knocked off Stanford. Are either one the cream of their conference? No, not by a long shot, but then, neither are we, you know. And Mississippi State was ranked in the preseason poll, and still might make the tournament.
- We kicked the crap out of both of them. And we did it playing Tony Bennett defense. That's what good teams do: play their system correctly and beat the snot out of sub-major conference teams. Not that we're a good team yet, but four games into the season I'm more than willing to accept a convincing imitation of one.
So that's the kind of weekend that will do something for me that football has failed to do for many long weeks now: make me look forward to the next game like a kid who asked Santa for a new bike. I spent yesterday and today wishing I was watching us take on Stanford right now. Dammit, that's how these things should be. I don't think I've had that feeling about the football team all year.
Now, this ain't the Stanford you remember. This isn't the Stanford team that went to the NCAAs every year but one between 1995 and 2008 and only twice had a seed lower than four (including four one-seeds and five two-seeds.) This is the Stanford that went to the CBI last year and then graduated four seniors. This version of Stanford has had its frontcourt depth destroyed by injury and academic problems. They get all their scoring from their guards, and remember what I told you about teams that don't get any scoring from their big men? About how our chances are better the smaller the opponent's lineup? And Rider proved it.
Somebody will have to work very hard to contain the Cardinal's Landry Fields. This guy torches people. And if we're not careful, we'll get destroyed by Stanford's three-point shooting. They have a few guys who can launch 'em, and Tony Bennett's pack-line is a little bit vulnerable to getting beat from deep if the defenders aren't really on point as far as being in the right place at the right time. Oral Roberts was proving that for the first few minutes, and Stanford is better at it than they are. They kind of specialize in it, because they're not going to get hardly any production at all from down low.
Still, Mike Scott should have a monster game, and if they have Fields, we have Landesberg. This is a very, very winnable contest. If we want to play in any kind of a postseason tournament, this is a terrific opportunity to prove we're more than just a team that beats up on sub-majors and mid-majors. We're 3-1, which is a nice start (and the way things are going in South Florida, we might get that other one back eventually as far as the record books are concerned) and well on our way, I think, to doing what we need to do in order to get into the postseason in some flavor.
Soccer first. Weirdly, the NCAA set us up a guaranteed rematch in the second (third, actually) round of the tournament should we get past Bucknell. Which we did, by the way, in spectacular fashion. Will Bates, after a slow first month and a half of the season, has officially gone apeshit, and his latest contribution to the scoresheet is a hat trick to sink Bucknell on Sunday. Now, about that rematch: our opponent for next Sunday is Portland, which was last seen allowing us to score three goals in the opening game of the season. Their defense has been like that all season - it's very mediocre, ranking 30th of 48 tournament teams at basically a goal allowed per game, good for 50th in the country. Bucknell, incidentally, ranked 49th. Portland scores a bit more than we do, though.
It might be easy to take Portland for granted given that we rolled them to start the season and that that's not exactly a major-league school in a major-league conference - except you'd be wrong about that last point when it comes to soccer. Portland went just 4-4-4 in West Coast Conference action, but that's a conference that sent four of its seven soccer-playing teams to the tournament. (Ironically, it was the bottom four in the conference's preseason coaches' poll.) They have a couple other skins on their wall, too: a regular season win over tournament team St. Louis, and of course the two wins it took them to get here, including the one over NC State. Should we beat them? Yes, handily. They're still dangerous, though.
Time to switch gears and sing the praises of Tony Bennett. Let's get this part out of the way: We beat a MAAC team and a Summit League team, yes. But:
- Rider was coming off a season-opening upset of Mississippi State, and Oral Roberts had just knocked off Stanford. Are either one the cream of their conference? No, not by a long shot, but then, neither are we, you know. And Mississippi State was ranked in the preseason poll, and still might make the tournament.
- We kicked the crap out of both of them. And we did it playing Tony Bennett defense. That's what good teams do: play their system correctly and beat the snot out of sub-major conference teams. Not that we're a good team yet, but four games into the season I'm more than willing to accept a convincing imitation of one.
So that's the kind of weekend that will do something for me that football has failed to do for many long weeks now: make me look forward to the next game like a kid who asked Santa for a new bike. I spent yesterday and today wishing I was watching us take on Stanford right now. Dammit, that's how these things should be. I don't think I've had that feeling about the football team all year.
Now, this ain't the Stanford you remember. This isn't the Stanford team that went to the NCAAs every year but one between 1995 and 2008 and only twice had a seed lower than four (including four one-seeds and five two-seeds.) This is the Stanford that went to the CBI last year and then graduated four seniors. This version of Stanford has had its frontcourt depth destroyed by injury and academic problems. They get all their scoring from their guards, and remember what I told you about teams that don't get any scoring from their big men? About how our chances are better the smaller the opponent's lineup? And Rider proved it.
Somebody will have to work very hard to contain the Cardinal's Landry Fields. This guy torches people. And if we're not careful, we'll get destroyed by Stanford's three-point shooting. They have a few guys who can launch 'em, and Tony Bennett's pack-line is a little bit vulnerable to getting beat from deep if the defenders aren't really on point as far as being in the right place at the right time. Oral Roberts was proving that for the first few minutes, and Stanford is better at it than they are. They kind of specialize in it, because they're not going to get hardly any production at all from down low.
Still, Mike Scott should have a monster game, and if they have Fields, we have Landesberg. This is a very, very winnable contest. If we want to play in any kind of a postseason tournament, this is a terrific opportunity to prove we're more than just a team that beats up on sub-majors and mid-majors. We're 3-1, which is a nice start (and the way things are going in South Florida, we might get that other one back eventually as far as the record books are concerned) and well on our way, I think, to doing what we need to do in order to get into the postseason in some flavor.
Monday, November 16, 2009
weekend review: of hoops and soccer
So, while we wait for the NCAA to get back to us with the soccer bracket, a little celebration is in order for our ACC champion soccer team. I wish they would have ever put any of these games on TV. Seems like the sort of thing that ESPNU was invented for, but what do I know? I guess more people are so starved for football they'd prefer to watch yapping talking heads debate over and over what Tony Pike's injury means for this week's epic clash with whatever random crappy Big East team is on the slate this week. Or whatever. Such is the midweek programming on ESPNU. This is basically the reason I stopped putting anything related to soccer up here. How often can you look at a boxscore and say "gee, I wish we'd score more"?
Funny thing is, that's what our opponents have been saying. All season long. The last goal we gave up was almost exactly one month ago - October 17 in the 13th minute against VT. That's about 837 minutes, give or take, of shutout soccer. The last time we gave up two goals in a game was last year. Unbelievable.
So - the bracket. It's our 29th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance - the longest active streak in the country, by the way - and (unless Tim Weiser is involved) winning the ACC tends to give you a nice seed in the tourney. In our case: 2nd. We'll get the winner of Bucknell/Princeton, and then if we win, a rematch against NC State. There are seven ACC teams in the NCAAs, four of which are seeded. It speaks to the depth of the conference - that, and the fact that the ACC final was the #5 vs. #7 seed.
Now. Hoops! I don't know about you, but I'm really digging on the notion that we're now in basketball season instead of wishing it would start. I don't know how long this happy optimism will last - it might be that that particular bubble gets burst tonight after South Florida's twin 6'10" and above towers expose our donut hole in the middle. I'm willing to enjoy it while we're still undefeated, though.
It would have been really cool not to have been outscored in the second half against Longwood, but for right now, we'll take it. You know Tony Bennett'll get rid of that defensive sloppiness. Not tonight, surely, and probably not even this year entirely, but every indication out of the JPJA is that this is a team that has bought in to what Tony's selling. Two things I think we can count on this year: we will both lose a game and win a game we're not supposed to.
The Good Ol' Blog singles out Farrakhan and Landesberg as two players whose defense stood out, and the writer goes into more depth about those two on the boards (that's "message boards" not rebounding) as well. Mu also racked up 17 points. I bet he never gets that many again all season, but it doesn't matter: Playing defense Coach's way will get him a nice concrete niche in the rotation, and we'll get our answer to the question of whether or not that'll bring about more consistent shooting. And obviously it's nice to see that the guy who'll play the most minutes this year is also the one playing quality defense.
For a little bit of South Florida preview action, in case you read this in the hour or so between now and the game: USF is a Big East team, but only in the most technical sense. It doesn't mean they're good, it means they have no say in the matter of being dog chow for UConn every year. They are also 1-0, having squeaked past SMU 67-61. SMU is a bad team in a mediocre conference - you don't beat them by six if you want to make the NCAAs. (You also don't get outscored by Longwood in the second half but that is entirely beside the point.)
However. We are, of course, without our 7-footer for another two games, which is unhealthy when your opponent starts one player who is 6'10" and another who is 6'11". We still don't have a grasp on what kind of strategy Bennett likes to employ in situations like this, but here's my best guess: We'll start four guards again, that much is likely, and attempt to run the Bulls out of the gym from the get-go. On Friday that was portrayed as a reaction to the way Longwood likes to play; tonight, we'll try and make USF react. Outside shooting is huge. If the game goes well, our guards will dominate our side of the scoresheet.
If the shooting is cold and their bigs aren't tired, and we can't defend two big men at once, we'll see a lot more biggish guys rotate in and try to rough it up a bit. We could see Will Sherrill if for no other reason than he brings five fouls to the court. Spurlock should see a bigger role regardless. Meyinsse and Scott are going to have to pretend to be centers. I'm willing to bet that the number of minutes played by "post" types (not that we have many true ones, but for now, these are Scott, Meyinsse, Sherrill, and Spurlock in a great big emergency) vs. the number of minutes played by guard types (specifically the reserves, Jones and Evans, and maybe Farrakhan too) will be a great predictor of the outcome. More guard minutes? Win. More post minutes? Ehhhhhhh maybe not so much.
One fun thing: South Florida's roster includes freshman guard Jordan Dumars, the son of Pistons great Joe.
For the rest of the week, look for the following things: ACC roundtable, Q&A with Block-C (as it's Clemson week), Jim Grobe, Clemson preview, and probably every basketball thought that pops into my head, unfiltered.
Funny thing is, that's what our opponents have been saying. All season long. The last goal we gave up was almost exactly one month ago - October 17 in the 13th minute against VT. That's about 837 minutes, give or take, of shutout soccer. The last time we gave up two goals in a game was last year. Unbelievable.
So - the bracket. It's our 29th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance - the longest active streak in the country, by the way - and (unless Tim Weiser is involved) winning the ACC tends to give you a nice seed in the tourney. In our case: 2nd. We'll get the winner of Bucknell/Princeton, and then if we win, a rematch against NC State. There are seven ACC teams in the NCAAs, four of which are seeded. It speaks to the depth of the conference - that, and the fact that the ACC final was the #5 vs. #7 seed.
Now. Hoops! I don't know about you, but I'm really digging on the notion that we're now in basketball season instead of wishing it would start. I don't know how long this happy optimism will last - it might be that that particular bubble gets burst tonight after South Florida's twin 6'10" and above towers expose our donut hole in the middle. I'm willing to enjoy it while we're still undefeated, though.
It would have been really cool not to have been outscored in the second half against Longwood, but for right now, we'll take it. You know Tony Bennett'll get rid of that defensive sloppiness. Not tonight, surely, and probably not even this year entirely, but every indication out of the JPJA is that this is a team that has bought in to what Tony's selling. Two things I think we can count on this year: we will both lose a game and win a game we're not supposed to.
The Good Ol' Blog singles out Farrakhan and Landesberg as two players whose defense stood out, and the writer goes into more depth about those two on the boards (that's "message boards" not rebounding) as well. Mu also racked up 17 points. I bet he never gets that many again all season, but it doesn't matter: Playing defense Coach's way will get him a nice concrete niche in the rotation, and we'll get our answer to the question of whether or not that'll bring about more consistent shooting. And obviously it's nice to see that the guy who'll play the most minutes this year is also the one playing quality defense.
For a little bit of South Florida preview action, in case you read this in the hour or so between now and the game: USF is a Big East team, but only in the most technical sense. It doesn't mean they're good, it means they have no say in the matter of being dog chow for UConn every year. They are also 1-0, having squeaked past SMU 67-61. SMU is a bad team in a mediocre conference - you don't beat them by six if you want to make the NCAAs. (You also don't get outscored by Longwood in the second half but that is entirely beside the point.)
However. We are, of course, without our 7-footer for another two games, which is unhealthy when your opponent starts one player who is 6'10" and another who is 6'11". We still don't have a grasp on what kind of strategy Bennett likes to employ in situations like this, but here's my best guess: We'll start four guards again, that much is likely, and attempt to run the Bulls out of the gym from the get-go. On Friday that was portrayed as a reaction to the way Longwood likes to play; tonight, we'll try and make USF react. Outside shooting is huge. If the game goes well, our guards will dominate our side of the scoresheet.
If the shooting is cold and their bigs aren't tired, and we can't defend two big men at once, we'll see a lot more biggish guys rotate in and try to rough it up a bit. We could see Will Sherrill if for no other reason than he brings five fouls to the court. Spurlock should see a bigger role regardless. Meyinsse and Scott are going to have to pretend to be centers. I'm willing to bet that the number of minutes played by "post" types (not that we have many true ones, but for now, these are Scott, Meyinsse, Sherrill, and Spurlock in a great big emergency) vs. the number of minutes played by guard types (specifically the reserves, Jones and Evans, and maybe Farrakhan too) will be a great predictor of the outcome. More guard minutes? Win. More post minutes? Ehhhhhhh maybe not so much.
One fun thing: South Florida's roster includes freshman guard Jordan Dumars, the son of Pistons great Joe.
For the rest of the week, look for the following things: ACC roundtable, Q&A with Block-C (as it's Clemson week), Jim Grobe, Clemson preview, and probably every basketball thought that pops into my head, unfiltered.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
hoops preview part deux
Yesterday, obviously, was part one. If you missed it, we're going player by player and trying to figure out what to expect from them. We'll do that, and then a rough sketch of what I expect from this season. And we left off with:
#15 - Sylven Landesberg
Best-case scenario: Develops jump shot. Scores points at a rapid clip and doesn't drop off much as ACC season wears on. Decides Tony Bennett is building something special and stays to see it through.
Worst-case scenario: Doesn't develop jump shot. Defenses figure him out the way they did last year. Scoring is still wicked high anyway, NBA scouts drool and convince him to make the leap.
If Allen Iverson is the Answer and Paul Pierce is the Truth, Sylven Landesberg is the Reason. As in, the Reason last year didn't suck as bad as it could have, and the Reason this year should be better. The Reason people are excited about basketball, and the Reason butts are going to be in the seats. You chalk Syl up for 15 points every night, minimum, and then everything above that is why he's that good. Better yet, nobody will ever accuse him of being a ballhog.
But there are nitpicks, as always. He could stand to turn the ball over less. Could be a little bit better three-point shooter. Could be a bit better conditioned - but you gotta cut him some slack for being a freshman in that respect. If Landesberg doesn't improve on any of this stuff, he'll still be a dynamic player, one of the very best in the ACC. After all, he scores, rebounds, scores, dishes, scores, and rebounds. If he does improve? He'll make all his teammates better too. And he's got the work ethic and motivation to make you confident he'll start off great and get better. If he decides to be a four-year player at UVA, he'll join Sampson, Singletary, and the rest in the rafters. Respect the Reason.
#23 - Jeff Jones
Best-case scenario: Shoots well.
Worst-case scenario: Shoots poorly.
This will sound unfairly harsh. But one of the reasons we've been so bad lately is because the guy we recruited for the role of top gun from outside has been shooting the ball so badly. Shooting percentage last year: .345. Worst on the team unless you count Solomon Tat, who took 15 shots all year. Three-point percentage: .290. Jones was the star recruit of the '07 class and we beat a lot of ACC schools for his services. But it hasn't come together.
However. Good things have been said about his performances in preseason work. And shooting in college isn't any different than shooting in high school, at least, not in the way, say, defense is, or learning new schemes. It's one of those things that's 90% technical and the other half is mental. Jones was a deadeye shooter in high school, and hell, Tony Bennett was known for his shooting in his playing days and still thinks he can beat anyone. So it's not something you forget how to do. Jones was another victim of Leitao's magic-8-ball rotations last year, and like Farrakhan, we should be able to find out whether a more settled role for Jones means better shooting. It's a make-or-break year for him, and he'll be judged almost completely on his jump shots.
#24 - Tristan Spurlock
Best-case scenario: Plays his way into the starting lineup. 20-25 minutes a night. ACC Freshman of the Year candidate.
Worst-case scenario: Plays his way further down the bench. 8-12 minutes a night, and fewer as the season goes on. Just a plain ol' freshman.
Whew. One of the first things Tony Bennett did to endear him to the fans was to convince Spurlock to stay on board after the coaching change. Let's face it. This rebuilding project would have been a million times harder if an entire recruiting class had disappeared into the vapor, and everyone knew it. Spurlock is crucial. He's the bridge into the Tony Bennett era. (Evans, too.)
Spurlock should be seen as essentially the replacement for Mamadi Diane. And I hate to say this because we all liked Diane, but that is one of the three reasons I guarantee we'll be better than 11th. No friggin' way Spurlock is as unproductive as Diane post-injury. That injury ruined a perfectly good player. Take out Diane's six points a game and replace it with eight from Spurlock, but with the potential for more and the talent to push his way into the starting lineup. Spurlock's not going to go all Sylven Landesberg on us and explode onto the scene that way, but that was an exceedingly rare thing to see. What we really want is for him to prove himself indispensible, force his way into the starting lineup, and become the second or third scoring option. And of course, play defense. That'll be counted as living up to his recruiting rankings, and it'll be a good thing for this season but a fantastic thing for the future.
#32 - Mike Scott
Best-case scenario: Continues to boost his rebounding, and figures out how to be more assertive on offense. Primary post scoring option. Double-double machine.
Worst-case scenario: Stagnates.
It's weird about Scott. Clearly, he was the team's second-best player last year after Landesberg, and his stats are very pleasing to the eye. He was the team's leader in double-doubles, the leading rebounder, and leading shooter by percentage at a very nice .544. Plus, he can shoot free throws, which makes him dangerous as a big man. And yet there's this feeling he can be so much better. This comes from actually watching him. He's a natural rebounder and collects them through sheer force of will, a skill that has a way of occasionally disappearing. He's got a number of good moves on offense, which he occasionally refuses to use. There's always a sense of something left out. If Scott starts using the same force of will with the ball in his hands in the post, good things will happen. He'll have more offensive rebounds, simply by virtue of tipping in misses. He'll have a lot more points, because he's good at putting the ball in the basket when he wants to and he shoots free throws well. Scott can and should be our second scoring option, but the danger is that he might not know it.
#45 - Solomon Tat
Best-case scenario: Can be called on for a few good minutes and hold down the fort for a bit while we work off some foul trouble, or worse, injury trouble. In other words, '07-'08.
Worst-case scenario: As with last year, team exasperates coach so much that he is inserted into the starting lineup because nobody else is really deserving of the "starter" label. In other words, '08-'09.
Tat doesn't do anything especially well, though he's a respectable defender. The good news is that he's not usually a disaster in any aspect either. That might be damning with faint praise, but the harsh truth is that if Tat is in the regular rotation, we are in major trouble. In '07-'08, Tat shot the ball well in his limited time and did basically what I think the best-case is: get a little pre-garbage time in blowouts, came in every so often when we hit some really bad foul trouble, and looked respectable against the other team's bench. Last year? He hit four shots. All year long. This is probably because Leitao kept starting him and throwing him out there against the best the ACC had to offer. Largely, I think, to prove a point to the rest of the team. This was batshit insane. Tat works very hard and is a reasonably good defender (it's why Leitao saw fit to start him) but doesn't have ACC-caliber skills (it's why Leitao sat him at the first opportunity.) If played sparingly and against the right opposing players, Tat will be a contributor. This will happen, because Tony Bennett isn't batshit insane.
#55 - Jerome Meyinsse
Best-case scenario: Decent second-unit big-man.
Worst-case scenario: Gets eaten up by ACC second-line centers.
Fun fact: Meyinsse's middle name means "God-given" in French. That has nothing to do with basketball, but I like it. Anyway, Meyinsse, in an ideal world, would be exclusively a forward, and we would have a second seven-footer (or nearly so) to play center in John Brandenburg. We don't, so Meyinsse is going to have to be a center. And most definitely not on the first unit, except for in these first couple games while Sene works off his suspension and Scott gets his foot healthy. (Major uh-oh.) This is not going to go well, but fortunately it's not ACC play yet. Because Meyinsse just isn't a center.
That being the case, he isn't going to be asked to be much of a scoring option. He'll be judged on how well he can defend other guys who aren't really centers and the occasional majorly gumpy white kid with seven-foot height and no foot speed. However, he also might be the brainiest guy on the team and should pick up the ins and outs of Bennett's pack-line defense as well as anyone. He's also got a positive A/T ratio, an extreme rarity in a big man. Bottom line: Meyinsse is a little-thing guy, not a stat sheet guy.
Outlook
I said it before and I'll say it again. The media predicted we'd finish 11th again. I guarantee - guarantee - we will improve on that. Three reasons:
1. Leitao was considered a sub-average X's and O's coach. Bennett is considered an X's and O's ninja. We should see a major, major improvement in in-game coaching.
2. Nearly everyone in the ACC loses at least one major scoring component. We do not. We lose Tunji Soroye - big-man depth, but no scoring - and Mamadi Diane, who is replaced by Tristan Spurlock. Spurlock will be a big improvement over '08-'09 Diane.
3. We have the easy, Duke-only-once, UNC-only-once schedule this year.
I fully expect us to make some kind of postseason tournament this year. Even if it's just the CBI or whatever that other one is. If we play to our capability, we can be an NIT team. If we play out of our minds, I don't think it's a major stretch to say we could be a bubble team come February. This would be exciting, but probably unlikely. As I said, I guarantee we'll improve on that 11th place finish - the fun part will be finding out how much.
I think three players will be the big keys to all this. Obviously everyone has to contribute, but the biggest three are these:
- Jontel Evans.
- Jeff Jones.
- Mike Scott.
Evans, because if he can be a dependable second point guard, we can rotate that position between him and Sammy almost exclusively and use our other players where they'll be at their most effective. Jones, because we could not shoot last year and had absolutely no outside threat whatsoever. Changing that will be huge. Scott, because we're a major donut team (no middle) and he's the only chance we have to get any scoring from inside.
OK. So on the principle of perfect honesty, that paragraph was written pre-trivia night at O'Brien's, and this and all following paragraphs are written post-trivia night. Which is to say, post-beer. I promise I will reread this and if any of this stuff makes no sense, I'll fix it. Meantime, I remind you I am not actual media, I am a blogger, and I get to write when I want, how I want. And if that means holding my thoughts on the schedule until after I'm done getting shitty and answering trivia questions, so be it.
Anyway, our schedule. As I mentioned, we have the easy conference schedule this year. It's the same one we had in 2007, which sent us to the NCAA tournament as a fourth seed and the ACC tournament tied for #1 in the regular season. So that is a big plus. Duke and UNC will crush our souls, but only once. The non-conference schedule is....interesting. There are, for starters, an inordinate number of crappy independent teams, all of whom we should beat handily. The rest of it looks like a bunch of teams we also should beat handily, but beware. Remember: Liberty. We have, for example, Oral Roberts. It's teams like that, or Rider maybe, that could end up as trap games. We'd be a nice feather in their cap - they don't care about the difference between a bad ACC team and a good one, they just want to beat one.
Bottom line is that trying to get to the Dance on a schedule like this is nigh-impossible. It's light on big-timers. But that's not the goal, that'd be gravy. But just plain ol' wins? That's what this schedule is for. That's why I say, I expect to be in a postseason tournament. Look, if you can manage a .500 record as an ACC team, you're getting invited somewhere. We can make .500 with this schedule, easy. There might be some losses in there - Auburn, last year, turned out not to be the SEC whipping boy they were when we scheduled 'em. But there's enough NJITs to roll over for us. I don't know how much of this schedule is Littlepage's idea and how much is Tony Bennett's, but it's just the medicine for a rebuilding squad like ours that isn't too sure how good they are.
So, to reiterate and summarize: Postseason play should be in the cards. An ACC finish better than 11th is a guarantee. Both father and son Bennett are trying to downplay this team's potential so as not to set everyone up for disappointment, and in some ways they're honestly telling the cold hard truth and in some ways they're just doing a little PA and managing expectations. Don't be fooled. I believe this team has potential, has talent, and has coaching. I thought that Dave Leitao could take it to the NIT. I still think that's realistic. Acknowledge the realities, but do not let your expectations slip. This team has question marks, but it has answers too. They'll surprise some folks. They'll never score as few as 45 points, Gottlieb, you idiot. (Douche.) And they will play in a postseason tournament, after the ACC one. Expect that. And enjoy the ride, as they find out just how far past that they can go.
#15 - Sylven Landesberg
Best-case scenario: Develops jump shot. Scores points at a rapid clip and doesn't drop off much as ACC season wears on. Decides Tony Bennett is building something special and stays to see it through.
Worst-case scenario: Doesn't develop jump shot. Defenses figure him out the way they did last year. Scoring is still wicked high anyway, NBA scouts drool and convince him to make the leap.
If Allen Iverson is the Answer and Paul Pierce is the Truth, Sylven Landesberg is the Reason. As in, the Reason last year didn't suck as bad as it could have, and the Reason this year should be better. The Reason people are excited about basketball, and the Reason butts are going to be in the seats. You chalk Syl up for 15 points every night, minimum, and then everything above that is why he's that good. Better yet, nobody will ever accuse him of being a ballhog.
But there are nitpicks, as always. He could stand to turn the ball over less. Could be a little bit better three-point shooter. Could be a bit better conditioned - but you gotta cut him some slack for being a freshman in that respect. If Landesberg doesn't improve on any of this stuff, he'll still be a dynamic player, one of the very best in the ACC. After all, he scores, rebounds, scores, dishes, scores, and rebounds. If he does improve? He'll make all his teammates better too. And he's got the work ethic and motivation to make you confident he'll start off great and get better. If he decides to be a four-year player at UVA, he'll join Sampson, Singletary, and the rest in the rafters. Respect the Reason.
#23 - Jeff Jones
Best-case scenario: Shoots well.
Worst-case scenario: Shoots poorly.
This will sound unfairly harsh. But one of the reasons we've been so bad lately is because the guy we recruited for the role of top gun from outside has been shooting the ball so badly. Shooting percentage last year: .345. Worst on the team unless you count Solomon Tat, who took 15 shots all year. Three-point percentage: .290. Jones was the star recruit of the '07 class and we beat a lot of ACC schools for his services. But it hasn't come together.
However. Good things have been said about his performances in preseason work. And shooting in college isn't any different than shooting in high school, at least, not in the way, say, defense is, or learning new schemes. It's one of those things that's 90% technical and the other half is mental. Jones was a deadeye shooter in high school, and hell, Tony Bennett was known for his shooting in his playing days and still thinks he can beat anyone. So it's not something you forget how to do. Jones was another victim of Leitao's magic-8-ball rotations last year, and like Farrakhan, we should be able to find out whether a more settled role for Jones means better shooting. It's a make-or-break year for him, and he'll be judged almost completely on his jump shots.
#24 - Tristan Spurlock
Best-case scenario: Plays his way into the starting lineup. 20-25 minutes a night. ACC Freshman of the Year candidate.
Worst-case scenario: Plays his way further down the bench. 8-12 minutes a night, and fewer as the season goes on. Just a plain ol' freshman.
Whew. One of the first things Tony Bennett did to endear him to the fans was to convince Spurlock to stay on board after the coaching change. Let's face it. This rebuilding project would have been a million times harder if an entire recruiting class had disappeared into the vapor, and everyone knew it. Spurlock is crucial. He's the bridge into the Tony Bennett era. (Evans, too.)
Spurlock should be seen as essentially the replacement for Mamadi Diane. And I hate to say this because we all liked Diane, but that is one of the three reasons I guarantee we'll be better than 11th. No friggin' way Spurlock is as unproductive as Diane post-injury. That injury ruined a perfectly good player. Take out Diane's six points a game and replace it with eight from Spurlock, but with the potential for more and the talent to push his way into the starting lineup. Spurlock's not going to go all Sylven Landesberg on us and explode onto the scene that way, but that was an exceedingly rare thing to see. What we really want is for him to prove himself indispensible, force his way into the starting lineup, and become the second or third scoring option. And of course, play defense. That'll be counted as living up to his recruiting rankings, and it'll be a good thing for this season but a fantastic thing for the future.
#32 - Mike Scott
Best-case scenario: Continues to boost his rebounding, and figures out how to be more assertive on offense. Primary post scoring option. Double-double machine.
Worst-case scenario: Stagnates.
It's weird about Scott. Clearly, he was the team's second-best player last year after Landesberg, and his stats are very pleasing to the eye. He was the team's leader in double-doubles, the leading rebounder, and leading shooter by percentage at a very nice .544. Plus, he can shoot free throws, which makes him dangerous as a big man. And yet there's this feeling he can be so much better. This comes from actually watching him. He's a natural rebounder and collects them through sheer force of will, a skill that has a way of occasionally disappearing. He's got a number of good moves on offense, which he occasionally refuses to use. There's always a sense of something left out. If Scott starts using the same force of will with the ball in his hands in the post, good things will happen. He'll have more offensive rebounds, simply by virtue of tipping in misses. He'll have a lot more points, because he's good at putting the ball in the basket when he wants to and he shoots free throws well. Scott can and should be our second scoring option, but the danger is that he might not know it.
#45 - Solomon Tat
Best-case scenario: Can be called on for a few good minutes and hold down the fort for a bit while we work off some foul trouble, or worse, injury trouble. In other words, '07-'08.
Worst-case scenario: As with last year, team exasperates coach so much that he is inserted into the starting lineup because nobody else is really deserving of the "starter" label. In other words, '08-'09.
Tat doesn't do anything especially well, though he's a respectable defender. The good news is that he's not usually a disaster in any aspect either. That might be damning with faint praise, but the harsh truth is that if Tat is in the regular rotation, we are in major trouble. In '07-'08, Tat shot the ball well in his limited time and did basically what I think the best-case is: get a little pre-garbage time in blowouts, came in every so often when we hit some really bad foul trouble, and looked respectable against the other team's bench. Last year? He hit four shots. All year long. This is probably because Leitao kept starting him and throwing him out there against the best the ACC had to offer. Largely, I think, to prove a point to the rest of the team. This was batshit insane. Tat works very hard and is a reasonably good defender (it's why Leitao saw fit to start him) but doesn't have ACC-caliber skills (it's why Leitao sat him at the first opportunity.) If played sparingly and against the right opposing players, Tat will be a contributor. This will happen, because Tony Bennett isn't batshit insane.
#55 - Jerome Meyinsse
Best-case scenario: Decent second-unit big-man.
Worst-case scenario: Gets eaten up by ACC second-line centers.
Fun fact: Meyinsse's middle name means "God-given" in French. That has nothing to do with basketball, but I like it. Anyway, Meyinsse, in an ideal world, would be exclusively a forward, and we would have a second seven-footer (or nearly so) to play center in John Brandenburg. We don't, so Meyinsse is going to have to be a center. And most definitely not on the first unit, except for in these first couple games while Sene works off his suspension and Scott gets his foot healthy. (Major uh-oh.) This is not going to go well, but fortunately it's not ACC play yet. Because Meyinsse just isn't a center.
That being the case, he isn't going to be asked to be much of a scoring option. He'll be judged on how well he can defend other guys who aren't really centers and the occasional majorly gumpy white kid with seven-foot height and no foot speed. However, he also might be the brainiest guy on the team and should pick up the ins and outs of Bennett's pack-line defense as well as anyone. He's also got a positive A/T ratio, an extreme rarity in a big man. Bottom line: Meyinsse is a little-thing guy, not a stat sheet guy.
Outlook
I said it before and I'll say it again. The media predicted we'd finish 11th again. I guarantee - guarantee - we will improve on that. Three reasons:
1. Leitao was considered a sub-average X's and O's coach. Bennett is considered an X's and O's ninja. We should see a major, major improvement in in-game coaching.
2. Nearly everyone in the ACC loses at least one major scoring component. We do not. We lose Tunji Soroye - big-man depth, but no scoring - and Mamadi Diane, who is replaced by Tristan Spurlock. Spurlock will be a big improvement over '08-'09 Diane.
3. We have the easy, Duke-only-once, UNC-only-once schedule this year.
I fully expect us to make some kind of postseason tournament this year. Even if it's just the CBI or whatever that other one is. If we play to our capability, we can be an NIT team. If we play out of our minds, I don't think it's a major stretch to say we could be a bubble team come February. This would be exciting, but probably unlikely. As I said, I guarantee we'll improve on that 11th place finish - the fun part will be finding out how much.
I think three players will be the big keys to all this. Obviously everyone has to contribute, but the biggest three are these:
- Jontel Evans.
- Jeff Jones.
- Mike Scott.
Evans, because if he can be a dependable second point guard, we can rotate that position between him and Sammy almost exclusively and use our other players where they'll be at their most effective. Jones, because we could not shoot last year and had absolutely no outside threat whatsoever. Changing that will be huge. Scott, because we're a major donut team (no middle) and he's the only chance we have to get any scoring from inside.
OK. So on the principle of perfect honesty, that paragraph was written pre-trivia night at O'Brien's, and this and all following paragraphs are written post-trivia night. Which is to say, post-beer. I promise I will reread this and if any of this stuff makes no sense, I'll fix it. Meantime, I remind you I am not actual media, I am a blogger, and I get to write when I want, how I want. And if that means holding my thoughts on the schedule until after I'm done getting shitty and answering trivia questions, so be it.
Anyway, our schedule. As I mentioned, we have the easy conference schedule this year. It's the same one we had in 2007, which sent us to the NCAA tournament as a fourth seed and the ACC tournament tied for #1 in the regular season. So that is a big plus. Duke and UNC will crush our souls, but only once. The non-conference schedule is....interesting. There are, for starters, an inordinate number of crappy independent teams, all of whom we should beat handily. The rest of it looks like a bunch of teams we also should beat handily, but beware. Remember: Liberty. We have, for example, Oral Roberts. It's teams like that, or Rider maybe, that could end up as trap games. We'd be a nice feather in their cap - they don't care about the difference between a bad ACC team and a good one, they just want to beat one.
Bottom line is that trying to get to the Dance on a schedule like this is nigh-impossible. It's light on big-timers. But that's not the goal, that'd be gravy. But just plain ol' wins? That's what this schedule is for. That's why I say, I expect to be in a postseason tournament. Look, if you can manage a .500 record as an ACC team, you're getting invited somewhere. We can make .500 with this schedule, easy. There might be some losses in there - Auburn, last year, turned out not to be the SEC whipping boy they were when we scheduled 'em. But there's enough NJITs to roll over for us. I don't know how much of this schedule is Littlepage's idea and how much is Tony Bennett's, but it's just the medicine for a rebuilding squad like ours that isn't too sure how good they are.
So, to reiterate and summarize: Postseason play should be in the cards. An ACC finish better than 11th is a guarantee. Both father and son Bennett are trying to downplay this team's potential so as not to set everyone up for disappointment, and in some ways they're honestly telling the cold hard truth and in some ways they're just doing a little PA and managing expectations. Don't be fooled. I believe this team has potential, has talent, and has coaching. I thought that Dave Leitao could take it to the NIT. I still think that's realistic. Acknowledge the realities, but do not let your expectations slip. This team has question marks, but it has answers too. They'll surprise some folks. They'll never score as few as 45 points, Gottlieb, you idiot. (Douche.) And they will play in a postseason tournament, after the ACC one. Expect that. And enjoy the ride, as they find out just how far past that they can go.
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