game preview: North Carolina

Date/Time: Monday, January 20; 7:00

TV: ESPN

Record against the Heels: 50-128

Last meeting: UNC 93, UVA 81; 2/16/13, Chapel Hill

Last game: UVA 78, FSU 66 (1/18); UNC 82, BC 71 (1/18)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 63.4 (#330)
UNC: 72.2 (#22)

Offense:
UVA: 108.8 (#81)
UNC: 106.1 (#132)

Defense:
UVA: 88.2 (#5)
UNC: 92.6 (#17)

Pythag:
UVA: .9172 (#15)
UNC: .8268 (#41)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (4.3 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 3.4 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (10.8 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 1.9 apg)
SF: Joe Harris (11.3 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 1.9 apg)
PF: Akil Mitchell (6.7 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 1.3 apg)
C: Mike Tobey (7.5 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 0.4 apg)

North Carolina:

PG: Marcus Paige (17.2 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 4.2 apg)
SG: Leslie McDonald (9.8 ppg, 1.9 rpg, 1.6 apg)
SF: J.P. Tokoto (9.9 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 2.8 apg)
PF: James Michael McAdoo (14.6 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 1.5 apg)
C: Joel James (3.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.2 apg)

So Florida State turned out not all that scary, and the supposed advantage of being able to make adjustments never panned out for the Noles.  (Actually, it's more like this: I suspect they were made, and I base this on FSU's pretty good shooting percentage, but two things gave UVA the win.  One, a leopard can adjust but can't change his spots, and FSU's spots happen to spell "turnover machine."  Two, somehow I managed to totally forget that UVA won that Tallahassee game without Joe Harris.  Getting him back was the best adjustment you can make, case closed, game over.)

However, I remain wary.  UNC's start to the season has been awful, sure.  Most everyone will lose to Syracuse, but good teams don't lose to Wake and Miami and let BC give them a run in their own gym.  Then again, nobody else is going to beat Kentucky and blow out Louisville and Michigan State in one year, either.  Carolina is liable to blow up at any minute if you ask me.  Let's just hope they wait til after Monday.

-- UVA on offense

Whatever the problem with UNC, it's probably not defense.  Even in most of their losses, the opponent scores less than 1 PPP.  Carolina gets steals, blocks shots, defends shooters, all the stuff you'd expect out of an athletic and fairly big team like UNC basically always is.  It's not just the guards getting in on the swiping; shooting guard Nate Britt is tops in steal rate but not far ahead of James Michael McAdoo, a power forward who's more athletic than most of the conference's power forwards.

UNC's backcourt rotation, though, is all over the charts.  The above starting lineup is nigh-guaranteed to be wrong.  A couple weeks ago, in the Heels' season preview, I wrote that it has all the appearances of Roy Williams practically pulling names out of a hat just to see what sticks.  The starting lineup against Boston College more or less confirmed that; it included junior forward Jackson Simmons, who's been averaging 7.5 minutes a game.  (Fun fact: Simmons is so little-used that one of his KenPom "most similar" comparisons to his season last year is Jerome Meyinsse's '08 season, when Meyinsse was a sophomore and firmly glued to the bench.)

Williams's conundrum is that, other than McAdoo and Brice Johnson, his frontcourt is pretty much generically interchangeable.  They all foul a lot, for one - if any of them were 25-minute players, they'd spend a lot of time in foul trouble, but they rotate out so much that it's not a concern.  (What will be a concern will be Akil Mitchell making his free throws.  He could find himself at the line five or six times.)  Johnson fouls a lot too, but he's a heck of a shot-blocker, elite rebounder, and even chips in with steals, and in general is UNC's best defender.

For our part, UVA has had some trouble lately with shot-blockers, seeing over 10% of their shots rejected, but the good news is that UNC is mostly lacking in enormous galoots like Boris Bojanovsky and Beejay Anya.  Okaro White is a player not unlike McAdoo, and White got three blocks on Saturday, but overall I think UVA will fare better here and have less trouble in the rejection department.  But they will have to make free throws, because of that UNC tendency to put people on the line.

Overall, UVA will probably find scoring fairly tough, barring another explosion of threes.  (They were 7-for-11 against FSU.)  UNC is kind of a middling rebounding team - McAdoo looks like a solid rebounder but that's largely due to getting so many minutes.  He's actually not a great rebounder.  Johnson is better, and Kennedy Meeks is a widebody big and pulls down quite a few (and in far, far fewer minutes) but otherwise they're quite average on the defensive boards.  All that said, defense is something UNC does well, so the odds are against another 40+ point half.

-- UVA on defense

The alpha and omega of UNC's offense is point guard Marcus Paige, a prolific scorer who does point-guardy stuff pretty well, too.  Paige is almost never out of the game, and UNC always runs an up-tempo game, so his scoring numbers are slightly inflated - but only slightly.  He shoots equally often from three as from two - and almost all his twos are jumpers.  Paige does quite like the pullup, preferring it almost exclusively to driving all the way to the rim.  It keeps his free-throw rate down, which is a small plus for defenses since he's almost automatic at the stripe.

McAdoo, meanwhile, is beginning to improve his consistency, becoming a better shooter on the two-point midrange shots he likes.  He, too, gets a much larger percentage of his shots away from the rim, but in his case the numbers are skewed a little because it doesn't count as a shot if you're fouled and miss - and McAdoo is fouled a lot.  Teams beat him up because he's barely a 50% shooter at the line.

UNC also gets some good complementary scoring from Brice Johnson, and to a lesser extent J.P. Tokoto, but Tokoto is not going to consistently hurt you, and you don't really mind the ball in his hands.  He's more liable to give it back.  Another Heel with turnover issues is Nate Britt, whose UNC career is off to a really rough start.  Britt's shots aren't falling, he's turnover-prone, and he recently relinquished his starting spot to Leslie McDonald.  McDonald's efficiency has gone down quite a bit after a hot start, but he's a better alternative for the Heels than Britt, who saw just 10 minutes against Boston College.

Profile-wise, UNC is interesting in how much they eschew the three-point shot.  No team in the country gets a smaller percentage of its points from threes, and only Paige and McDonald usually bother shooting them.  (Tokoto may let one fly, but he's one you almost dare to shoot them.)  I'm sure you're thinking by now how much the pack-line may find a favorable matchup in this, and you're probably right.  UVA may want to play this the way they used to play Erick Green's VT teams: let the star (in this case, Paige) go completely off and try to shut down everyone else.  McAdoo is a good place to focus the defense - if a guy like Tokoto beats you, well, OK, but that's not likely.  This would've been an easier strategy when UNC was relying more heavily on Britt and didn't have McDonald, but still.  Double-team, frustrate, and hack McAdoo and UNC looks a lot less frightening.

-- Outlook

I'll probably never in my life believe UNC is a dead team till I see it for like four or five years in a row, and certainly not in a season when they've beaten so many national title contenders.  But, for whatever reason, this Tar Heel team has gotten off to just an awful, awful start to the ACC season.  Virginia Tech beat the Hurricanes, so there's no reason anyone else shouldn't either.  Wake Forest's ACC losses have a combined 12-3 record, but still.  Boston College is absolute crap and no real UNC team would've been caught letting them be within two points, in their own Dean Dome, 30+ minutes into the game.

So if I'm gonna be in the business of predicting outcomes, I just can't pick a team with no momentum and half a set rotation, on the road, against a team that's made a habit of setting fire to its ACC competition and coming one stupid-lucky bounce short of beating Duke in their own barn.  UVA is fired up after a chippy outing against FSU; the ending of that game was the perfect antidote to post-rout complacency.  Is it possible UNC could find themselves and explode for 85 points, controlling the tempo the whole way and throwing cold water on UVA's early-season magic?  Absolutely it is.  But the signs don't point in that direction.

Final score: UVA 64, UNC 56

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.

ACC baseball preview, part 3

I know, I know - we just won a big ol' basketball game and all Mr. Bloggerman wants to talk about is baseball. Well, I gotta finish this up, mmmk? Don't worry, there's plenty of basketball in the future. Here, I'll give you a bonus preview of the Duke game tomorrow: we're gonna get our asses kicked. Such is the tangible reward for winning a game such as today's. The intangibles are where it's really at when it comes to rewards here.

Anyway, on with the show. Part 3 begins now; part 1 and part 2 are right there.

North Carolina State

Last season: Missed ACC tournament
Record: 25-31 (10-20, 10th in ACC)
Return: 65% of ACC starts; 48% of total innings pitched
Names to know: SS Dallas Poulk, IF Andrew Ciencin, C/IF Pratt Maynard

My initial take, when NC State opened their season with a 32-3 assassination of overmatched La Salle, enroute to a 65-run weekend, was that NC State needed all the wins they could get and might as well enjoy them now. That changed a bit the following weekend when the Wolfpack shocked then-#6 UC-Irvine, whom you might remember from last year, in Myrtle Beach. Irvine's been in a little bit of a freefall since then, but NC State was also plenty competitive later on in the weekend despite losing to hosts Coastal Carolina.

Since then they've continued proving the early-season bats were no fluke. It shouldn't be much surprise, as most of last year's usual suspects return in the field. Three weekends in and they have five hitters batting over .400. Dallas Poulk has always been a hitter, but his best season was three years ago as a freshman - he looks to be embarking on a campaign to fix that. He bats low in the lineup and seems to have plenty of people setting the table for him. Poulk was the only NC Stater to start all 30 ACC games, but right behind him were a pair of freshmen, Andrew Ciencin and the multi-useful Pratt Maynard, who catches, plays first, and in a pinch can be used on the mound, too. The bats look legit, which would be a huge improvement over last year's ACC-worst team BA of .265.

And any mention of the NC State baseball team would be remiss without Russell Wilson, who is used literally all over the field, off the bench as well as in the starting lineup. Yes, the Russell Wilson who quarterbacks the football team. He's not always the most consistent hitter, and is too shaky on the mound to be a regular there, but when he gets hold of the ball it goes a mile. So far this season he's got more extra-base hits than singles, and it was his moonshot to center field that won the Irvine game for the Pack.

Three weeks into the season and the NC State bats look legit, but the pitching? The front line is a little thin here. NC State lost terrific starter Jimmy Gillheeny to the Seattle Mariners, and the rest of the pitching was frankly garbage last year. Hence the 20 ACC losses. So far this year, a couple reliable starters have emerged from the wreckage of last season in Jake Buchanan and Cory Mazzoni. But can they find a third? The other regular starter has been Danny Healey, and he's failed to make it past the second inning in two of three starts. Nobody else has been any better, and we're talking competition like Quinnipiac here.

So it remains to be seen if NC State can keep the momentum going. Things are certainly looking a lot better than a year ago at this time, but the lack of anyone remotely qualified to be a third weekend starter will be a big handicap. They'll likely look to the bats to steal a few 15-12 games if they want to get to the ACC tournament this year.

Virginia Tech

Last season: Missed ACC tournament
Record: 32-21 (12-17, 9th in ACC)
Return: 72% of ACC starts, 76% of total innings pitched
Names to know: IF/OF Austin Wates, SP Justin Wright, SP Jesse Hahn, OF Steve Domecus

Tech has yet to reach the ACC baseball tournament, but they're a popular choice to break that streak this year. Or were until ace Justin Wright got shelled by SEC also-ran Kentucky. Losing to Bryant didn't help matters either. (Again - what is it with ACC teams getting beat this season by crappy teams from the great snowy north?)

Still, VT's in decent shape. Between Wright and Jesse Hahn, Tech's got a pretty good 1-2 punch on the mound, and it looks like they've found another good one in freshman Joe Mantiply to round out the weekend rotation. And closer Ben Rowen has made eight appearances so far without letting a run cross the plate.

And the bats? Not bad either. Just like last season, Domecus and Wates are leading the way at the plate, and Wates is also a tremendously efficient basestealer. VT also plugs Arkansas transfer Tim Smalling into shortstop and moves Ronnie Shaban to third. Smalling is an instant upgrade with the glove; Shaban is something of a butcher in the field and his platoonmate at shortstop was worse. Smalling's also provided quality hitting, leading the team in RBI. So despite a few questionable early losses, Tech indeed looks like a smart bet to end their ACC tournament drought.

Fun fact: Not satisfied with having the worst colors in all of collegiate history, Tech holds their split-squad fall series between "Team Camo" and "Team Throwback." The camo is about what you'd expect. For throwback uniforms, Tech goes with the Houston Astros look. It's, uh, about par for the course, actually.

Wake Forest

Last season: Missed ACC tournament
Record: 22-30 (6-24, 12th in ACC)
Return: 53% of ACC starts, 67% of total innings pitched
Names to know: OF Ryan Semeniuk, C Mike Murray, SP Tim Cooney

At least the Maryland series will be interesting. Wake Forest was absolutely brutal last season, and they'll fight with Maryland this year for ownership of the cellar. We'll start with the most horrifying stat of all: the 7.30 team ERA in 2009. That's earned runs, mind you; Wake was pushing nine runs allowed per game overall. Can't be easy to win games when you basically have to score 10 runs to win and your offense was six runs shy of a tie for last place in that category too.

There are a few hitters in the linup. Semeniuk steps into a starting role this year after getting only nine ACC starts last year, and is showing he deserves the job, leading in nearly every hitting category. And the ones he's not leading, Mike Murray probably is. Murray's a team captain, the starting catcher, an excellent hitter for both power and average, and has Pudge Rodriguez skills with the glove. The only downside for Wake here is that you can steal him blind - he threw out just 8 of 78 baserunners last year and only has one to his credit so far in 2010.

If Tim Cooney lives up to the hype - and so far he has - then the pitching will be better by default because the Deacons will finally have a single dependable weekend starter. Wake's coach declares him the pitcher with the best command on the team, and that was before the team played a single game. Probably not the best endorsement of last season's "ace", Austin Stadler. Stadler was the only pitcher not to be tossing beachballs to the opposition every time he pitched - just some of the time - but this season doesn't look like it'll be much better so far.

Predictions:

OK, crystal ball time. Here's how I think the ACC seedings will shake out when all's said and done:

#1: Florida State
#2: Georgia Tech
#3: Virginia
#4: Clemson
#5: Miami
#6: North Carolina
#7: Virginia Tech
#8: Boston College
#9: NC State
#10: Duke
#11: Wake Forest
#12: Maryland

Why third for UVA? For the simple and totally not fair reason that FSU and GT get to skip each other on the schedule, and we miss out on the feast that is Wake Forest pitching. But we can have a big say in that ranking with a good showing this weekend against Florida State. Matchup of the titans here - we're #1 or #2 in every publication, and FSU is top-5 in all of them too. So tomorrow, having given you every other team in the ACC, will be our own big season preview.

Some other quick stuff worth mentioning:

- Congrats are in order for Jerome Meyinsse, the ACC's top scholar-athlete in basketball this year. Meyinsse is an econ major with a minor in math. The guy goes all-out on the court and in the classroom; it's a shame his example won't be around next year for the huge freshman class to follow. Exactly the kind of quality individual that every Hoo should be proud to have representing our University.

- Further congratitutions for the mens' swim team, which qualified all five relays and seven swimmers in three individual events each - the max - for the NCAA championships. Special congrats to Scot Robison, the #1 national seed in the 200 free and #2 in the 100 free. We could have a national champion - possibly a dual champion - on our hands here, and both swim teams will be gunning for a top-ten finish.

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....

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.

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.

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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.

game preview: UAB

So we're back. Hope your Christmas was a good one. Lots of schwag from Santa's bag, family, big-ass ham or turkey or other tasty animal (or maybe latkes if you maybe light a menorah instead of a tree), too many cookies, mistletoe, the works.

The hoopsters had a pretty good time of it while FOV was on break, but only against the crappiest of crappy competition; we didn't get the answer to whether or not UNC-Wilmington would be the roadblock we worried about. Everybody played against both NJIT and Hampton, which is about the extent of the analysis you need - both games were slaughters, as expected. We'll get our crack at Wilmington in a few more weeks.

Might seem like the Wilmington game will be diminished in importance, what with it now coming in the middle of the ACC season, but I say just the opposite. There's a scary-real chance we'll need that game to break up a three-game losing streak.

Anyway, the task at hand is UAB. And if you weren't convinced by their #24 ranking in the AP poll, I'll tell you right now: we're as underdoggy as we'll be in a lot of our ACC games this year. UAB already has one major-conference skin on their wall (Cincinnati) and a win over never-shabby Butler. They'll probably be a tournament team this year.

The good news is Mike Scott is back on the court, and should probably be in action tomorrow. We'll need him in order to take advantage of (what I think is) UAB's weakness - they're very much a donut team. No middle. They start four guards and a forward, and they rely very heavily on their starting five. Pretty strict 8-man rotation, and only three forwards in the group, two of which are bench players and really don't even get half the minutes of the guards. On the offensive end, if we can get the post players involved, Scott especially but also Sene, Sherrill, and/or Meyinsse, we ought to be able to find a mismatch somewhere. Either that or force them to take their better players off the court.

At the other end, UAB would seem to be the kind of team we match up well against. There's only one real scoring threat down low - that'd be forward Howard Crawford, whom a healthy Mike Scott would dominate on the boards - and they don't rely all that much on the three-pointer nor shoot it exceptionally well. It's the kind of offense the pack-line should handle pretty well. What worries me is Elijah Millsap. In our losses, we've been vulnerable to shred-a-thons by the opposition's top guy. Penn State had Talor Battle. USF had Dominique Jones. Stanford had Landry Fields. They all topped 20 points and mostly without needing a lot of three-pointage to do it. Millsap is both a scorer and rebounder, and the #1 worry for this game would be that he decides it's a good time for 26 points.

The other obvious worry is the talent gap, which sucks to say as an ACC team going into a game with a C-USA team. Mismatches go both ways - if we can find them with our size, they should be able to find a few by forcing our bigs to guard their quicker players. Jerome Meyinsse is many things, but quick is not one of them. This will probably be a closer game than the rankings and records would indicate, but, as with pretty much every game from here on out, we need to do everything right in order to come out on top.

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.

the recruit: Akil Mitchell

Name: Akil Mitchell
Position: SF
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
School: Charlotte Christian
Height: 6'7"
Weight: 210

Rivals: three stars
ESPN: 91, #35 SF
Scout: two stars

How big a sleeper is Akil Mitchell? How much information is out there on the Internet about him? Put it this way: when you Google up his name, this very blog - which up til now has had no information on Mitchell beyond "I dunno" - is third in the results list. Mitchell wasn't even showing up in all the databases until he committed a few weeks ago. (It really seems like a lot longer than that.)

Anyway. Tony Bennett, having stocked the cupboard for 2010 with four fairly-well known quantities (yes, even Harrell), had the luxury of going a little deeper into the well and picking out someone based more on their showing at camps and such rather than their track record. A project. And you won't find many players that fit the definition of a project better than Mitchell.

For starters, nobody can quite agree whether he's better suited for the three or the four. Right now, the answer is three for sure, where he says he feels most comfortable. And the scouting report here reads exactly like a three ought to read. Plus, he's a little short for the four. Right now our options at power forward are basically Scott, Meyinsse, and Tucker, and they're all taller. Mitchell might get taller his own self, though. He's skinny and certainly not done growing outwards - once he gets to UVA, Mike Curtis will set him to work bulking up. He might not be done growing upwards, either, and if he does that he'll be just right for the four.

The other term that keeps popping up for Mitchell is "late bloomer." I'm not sure if that's quite as fair. Mitchell was injured his freshman year of high school and so got a bit of a late start. Last year, his junior year, he was simply overshadowed by talented seniors on his team. Digging up old boxscores shows that Mitchell really wasn't the go-to guy most nights; the leading scorer for Charlotte Christian last year was usually a kid named Willis Hall, who this year will be a freshman at College of Charleston. So Mitchell wasn't the guy everyone was intending to see when they went to a CC game. And why should they notice the skinny kid who hadn't had much of a growth spurt yet?

It's hard not to like the scouting reports that have trickled down the pipe about Mitchell, but at the same time it's hard to know what to make of them. I mean, when's the last time an ACC team signed a player, whether in college he was a superstar or a yutz, whose scouting reports out of the camps said, "too slow, too small, won't rebound, can't shoot"? They're all the same sort of shining write-ups that often just seem to rearrange the words from player to player. But that in itself is encouraging - that Tony Bennett can run out and dig up one of these sorts of players (and ESPN has given him a pretty good grade) that can legitimately be called an ACC-caliber guy and yet hadn't had any looks from ACC teams. Plus, y'know, he's smart. Got that 4+ GPA at a tough school. Can't complain about that.

So Mitchell probably won't be the kind who comes in right away and jumps right into the rotation. As much as anything it'll be because the coaches will be figuring out where he best fits. Even now we know about what kind of players we're expecting Joe Harris and James Johnson and such to be. What I'm hoping for out of Mitchell is that he can develop into being a really versatile and really valuable bench guy that can be put in the game as either the small guy in a big lineup or the big guy in a small lineup, depending on the situation. Someone who might not be able to go toe-to-toe with the ACC heavyweight starters, but does a little bit of everything well enough to create matchup nightmares for other teams' bench guys. In other words, what Jamil Tucker might be if he could defend anyone.

game preview: Miami

So the lax team went out and did its thing again last night. After peppering Stony Brook with 62 shots, Mt. St. Mary's got the same treatment as the team racked up another 60. Garrett Billings, fresh off a record-tying goal-scoring performance at Stony Brook, didn't score at all and took only four shots. Chad Gaudet won 11 of 16 faceoffs, which is pretty excellent stuff, but like I said earlier, I'll get excited after I see how we do at Syracuse. That should be a great game and I'm looking forward to watching it and....oh. Right - it's not televised. Well, that's awesome. When I turn my TV to channel 134 on Friday night, Siena vs. Niagara will be on. I know its basketball season, and it's great to give a little exposure to a team like Siena which is quietly having a fine season, but what does ESPNU exist for if not to broadcast the marquee matchup of the year of the #1 and #2 teams in what is arguably the East Coast's most popular non-revenue sport?

Preview time, anyway. Basketball, that is.

Virginia Cavaliers (9-14, 3-9) vs. Miami Hurricanes (16-10, 5-8)

Possible starting lineups:

UVA:

PG: Sammy Zeglinski (9.0 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 3.5 apg)
SG: Calvin Baker (7.8 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 2.6 apg)
SF: Sylven Landesberg (18.0 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 2.9 apg)
F: Solomon Tat (0.8 ppg, 1.0 rpg, 0.3 apg - but mad hustle, yo)
C: Assane Sene (2.9 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 1.7 bpg)

Miami:

G: Jack McClinton (20.1 ppg, 3.3 rpg, 3.0 apg)
G: James Dews (8.5 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 1.3 apg)
F: Brian Asbury (7.5 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 1.3 apg)
F: Dwayne Collins (11.0 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 1.5 apg)
C: Jimmy Graham (3.7 ppg, 6.1 apg, 0.6 apg)

Hope we like the number 11, because we're just about locked into that seed for the ACC tournament. Georgia Tech isn't going to run the table, and we're not bloody likely to overtake Miami or NC State, even with a win tomorrow night. For now, that means an opening-round game against Boston College.

Anyway, you and I both know about Dave Leitao's wackity rotations, with rhyme and reason not always clear. If he wants to continue baffling UVA fans and changing things up, this would be a great time to reinsert Jerome Meyinsse. You remember him - he got minutes all the way up until the BC game (the no-subs-in-the-second-half one) and inexplicably played 20+ in a few games without much indication as to why. Since then he hasn't sniffed the court.

Miami, however, has a whole bunch of guys that measure up between 6'7" and 6'9" and weigh 230 pounds or more. More so than most teams, and certainly more than us. Lord only knows how many minutes Mike Scott is going to get from game to game - he hasn't been in the starting lineup lately - and Jamil Tucker is 6'8" 240 and plays like he's 6'3" 215. We tried the small-and-quick thing against NC State's bigger guys and it failed miserably. We're gonna get run over by Miami's bigs - Graham, McGowan, Collins, Thomas, Asbury - if we can't run out some size of our own. Given the matchups, Meyinsse would be a good candidate to get some of these minutes that have been going to Solomon Tat lately.

The other problem we're going to have is Jack McClinton, who leads the league in threes made and shoots them at almost 48%. Of late we've done a good job at limiting our own three attempts, which is nice because we suck at shooting them. What concerns me is that when you combine a hot hand for the opponent, and a bunch of big guys defending that don't let you into the lane, the temptation is to launch away and hope for the best. Bottom line: I don't like the way we match up with these guys, and I think the best chance we have is to press, turn defense into transition offense, and generally run the floor and try to do everything faster than they do. Because we're going to get killed if it turns into a halfcourt game.