This was promised to you much earlier, but then I realized: if I write this before Justin Anderson makes his decision known, the whole thing will be littered with uncertainty and caveats. Now we know, so we can get the show on the road.
#0 - Devon Hall - rFr. PG
Preview quote: "UVA's backcourt is fairly young this year, so a good-sized contribution from Hall is more important than it might seem."
This didn't turn out that way, because there was such a quantum leap forward from other players. Justin Anderson, of course, and London Perrantes also became more of a scorer. Hall was decidedly the last rotation option in the backcourt, and scored more than three points just three times. He sat out 11 games entirely, and in ACC action, saw just over five minutes a game - that is, outside a particular stretch late in the season.
That would of course be the stretch that Anderson missed. Hall didn't play against Pittsburgh, but averaged 15 minutes in five others. And when London Perrantes was suspended to start the season, Hall got his only start of the year, in game one against JMU.
And that in a nutshell was Hall's role: it was other guys who ran the show, mostly, but when a spot opened up, Hall was counted on for a decent share of the minutes. Redshirting and then the understudy role probably wasn't what he envisioned to start his career. But it's hard to say he deserved scads more time; his defense was OK but not outstanding (that said, the point guard isn't asked to be the star of the pack-line) and his offense wasn't as efficient as you'd like. He showed some flashes at times. The Wake Forest game - the curbstomping, not the close one - was a particularly excellent showing. But overall he played about as well as his minutes imply. Not lousy, or he wouldn't have been the first option to replace a regular in the rotation - but not much to take note of.
Anderson's departure opens up about 28 backcourt minutes. Perrantes and Malcolm Brogdon are just about maxed out, but the competition is still going to be fierce for them. Darius Thompson joins the fray next year, and it's whispered he brings a quickness and slashing dimension to the team that was lacking this year. Marial Shayok is due for a big increase too. Hall will have to work his tail off this offseason if he wants to make a large dent next year. His role should increase, but it probably won't be til 2016-2017, after this large crop of rising seniors graduates, that he really becomes one of the front-and-center players.
#1 - Justin Anderson - Jr. SF
Preview quote: "He's got to take some part of his game - any part of his game, it really doesn't even matter - up a level or two."
I don't know. Do you think he might've accomplished that?
I guess if going from under 30% to over 45% behind the arc counts. Anderson actually cooled off as the season went on, because he started up over 60% - after Tennesee State, which he buried with 5-for-5 three-point shooting, he was over 68%, five games in.
That was enough to capture a lot of attention nationwide, but Anderson also gave a few other parts of his game a lift - he became more dependable from the free throw line, he fouled less and played better defense overall (though with fewer circus blocks, unfortunately) and he took better care of the ball. He singlehandedly answered the question of who would replace Joe Harris's scoring, and became the infectiously enthusiastic face of the whole team. And then, because We Can't Have Nice Things, he broke his damn hand.
That was really what drove home the point about what he meant to this team. UVA only lost one game without him, but they weren't easy wins, and three out of his four games after his return were a mess. He scored zero points in the whole ACC tournament and only defensively-challenged Belmont allowed him to look like his former self. Anderson's play suffered, and along with it basically the whole offense.
A terrific shame. Anderson was an exciting player his first two years, but he was a ridiculously athletic curiosity for the most part. An X-factor, but the game was dominated by others. This year he took over and became the guy Maryland fans are still pissed off about missing out on. This is what's most disappointing about Anderson leaving. The team, actually, will be just fine. Tony Bennett is working on a nice track record of seeing his players take huge strides in the offseason, and no doubt someone will do the same this year. Or a couple someones. In fact, the team might be best off in the long run for this - if Anderson returned, the backcourt would've been incredibly crowded. Now, some younger guys will get extensive playing time and the baton will be more easily passed off in later years. But a full year of a guy like Justin Anderson in a starring role would've been some of the best entertainment in all of college hoops.
#2 - B.J. Stith - Fr. SG
Preview quote: "Stith has a good head on his shoulders and a dad who won't let him screw himself up, so I'll put in a SWAG here and say Stith redshirts."
Well, that was over quick. Stith didn't redshirt, but he might as well have for all the playing time he got - almost exclusively with the walk-ons at the end of blowouts - and amid a smattering of talk that cracking the rotation might not ever be in the cards, Stith decided to rejoin his father and brother at ODU next year. We won't get to see the second chapter of a Stith lighting it up in a Virginia uniform after all.
#4 - Marial Shayok - Fr. SF
Preview quote: "Shayok's calling card when he came in was his versatility."
Honest, I totally forgot that I'd written that as I watched Shayok this season and thought, "man, this guy can score a lot of different ways." Versatile was exactly the word for what he did with the ball. He showed he could get to the rim; he showed he could shoot the three; he showed he could create a few chances for his teammates. He played a reasonably steady 15 minutes a game - right about average for the fourth guy in the backcourt rotation - and had a higher assist rate than everyone but Perrantes and Brogdon, the team's highest steal rate, and the backcourt's best block rate. A better block rate than Anderson, in fact, and Anthony Gill as well.
You can't ask for a lot more out of a bench guy, and you can't ask for preseason impressions to turn out much more accurate than that. Shayok didn't do anything dominatingly well, and he was plagued with occasional freshman inconsistency, but he did a hell of a lot of different things at an ACC level. Out of a fairly large group of freshmen, Shayok was easily the best.
A guy who can score a lot of different ways is a good bet to find chances to do it more often. Shayok doesn't have the kind of wild athleticism you see in early draft entrants, and that means Tony Bennett might have hit the sweet spot in recruiting here. Shayok appears to have a well-developed court sense and has a great chance to be a four-year star for the Hoos. And for that matter, a three-year starter.
#5 - Darion Atkins - Sr. PF
Preview quote: "Atkins probably won't start many games, if at all, and isn't a huge scoring threat. He probably trusts his hook shot a little too much."
Nice preview. Atkins started 27 games, in fact, including all of them but one after New Year's, and in that one he played 31 minutes. Oh, and he was one of the most indispensible players on the team. ACC Defensive POY. That hook shot I thought he trusted too much became a deadly weapon. Simply put, he was one of the ACC's best interior forces anywhere.
Atkins got back all the bounce and athleticism he'd lost when the shin splints struck him two years ago. And he played with a chip on his shoulder, as if making up for lost time and getting revenge on the fates that robbed him of a year and a half of usefulness. It was so much fun to see him get that redemption and his year in the spotlight that nobody minded a bit when he got a technical for hanging on the rim against VT. Sometimes you just let a guy have a moment. This was the player that UVA and Notre Dame fought over in the recruiting wars.
Stories like his are what make college hoops fun. Now there's a small conundrum. Before the season the whole fanbase figured that "only" losing Atkins would mean basically the exact same team would come back next year, only a year older and stronger and wiser. Now he's gotta be replaced. It won't be easy; whereas Atkins was plausibly seen as very similar to Akil Mitchell, there isn't anyone left in that mold, nor much experience among the candidates.
#10 - Mike Tobey - Jr. C
Preview quote: "Keep him on the development curve at the same time and he's got a chance to open a lot of eyes in the ACC this year."
There hasn't been a more polarizing UVA basketball player since Sammy Zeglinski. With Tobey, whether you like his game or not, there's evidence to support your position. Tobey was only a secondary scorer at best, and his minutes actually dropped from last year. He's really not useful against teams without big traditional centers, because he's fairly easily beaten on the block by smaller, quicker forwards. His defense is a little slow and he doesn't appear to be a natural in the pack-line.
On the other hand, he's extremely useful against teams that do have traditional centers, because he's almost always much more skilled than they are, able to guard them with relative ease thanks to the security blanket of the pack-line and his better athleticism, and he has little trouble scoring against slow-footed galoots. This season was easily his best offensively. He was much more efficient than last year; he shot free throws as well as most guards, he was a terrific rebounder especially on offense, he made good outlet passes, and he turned the ball over very little.
I think a lot of criticism directed at Tobey - much of it to do with a perceived lack of effort - is unwarranted. It's not any more valid than the idea that Atkins was disgruntled and unhappy because his face was kinda hangdog all the time. Amateur psychology. That and the expectations heaped on him when he was recruited. If there were no such thing as recruiting analysts, Tobey would catch a lot less flak. That said, he can be maddening at times. He needs to find ways to get himself on the court more. If he does, he's still got it in him to be an all-ACC player.
Showing posts with label atkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atkins. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
culture shock
This is the post I should've written before Sunday, so you'd know what was coming. I only managed to nod suggestively in its direction. Now it's just about making sense of what happened.
Because to make sense of what happened, you have to get Michigan State. Darion Atkins doesn't, or else he wouldn't have talked sideways about his teammates not wanting it enough. No, I don't actually blame Atkins one bit. He's frustrated, he just walked off a college basketball court for the last time, and to the uninitiated, what just happened really did look an awful lot like one team wanting it a lot more than the other. But I'd venture to say nobody in the UVA locker room really gets Michigan State, nor do 99% of UVA fans. After this, you'll know the true story of UVA's 2015 tournament exit.
See, MSU is built on a certain culture that Tom Izzo has cultivated. It's a culture of birthright, of entitlement. It makes them arrogant. There's a hint of punk in their game. Not Joey Ramone punk. Think Greivis Vasquez punk. The Spartans are cocky to an extreme, and it works extremely well for them. They've been brought up to believe two things: one, that it's their right to beat Michigan, and two, that it's their right to excel in March.
This doesn't make them complacent. On the contrary, it makes them hungry. I often say that getting college kids to believe they've been disrespected is the easiest thing in the world. They view the very existence of an opponent as disrespect. That you would think you have any claim to winning a game against their birthright is disrespect on the order of making a rival claim to the throne.
As a result, they're really sore losers. Some say that's a good thing; Vince Lombardi was the sorest loser in history. "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser," he said. Several years ago, Michigan made the U-M/MSU game a rivalry again by reeling off three straight wins; when MSU got one back, Draymond Green boasted that "The world is back into place." He wasn't kidding. Green had been recruited to MSU under the premise that beating Michigan is something you do as naturally as breathing.** Three straight losses threw off his world order. Izzo and his players have developed a pattern of saying in post-loss press conferences, "I'm not here to make excuses," and then rattling off a dozen excuses to rationalize why the world didn't turn out the way they expect.
-- After losing to Duke in the 2013 NCAA tournament, Gary Harris complained about a free throw disparity; MSU had shot 24 free throws to Duke's 16 before the first stop-the-clock foul.
-- After losing to Michigan last year, Izzo bemoaned Keith Appling's sore wrist as a reason for his poor shooting night. Appling's sore wrist had put together two straight 20-point games just a couple weeks before and would follow up the Michigan loss with a 3-for-6 performance from three against Iowa.
-- The same loss to Michigan, in the very same press conference, saw Izzo simultaneously complain that he couldn't get Appling enough rest, and that Appling was in foul trouble too early and had to sit.
MSU takes this attitude into the postseason. This is why I called them a zombie team. It played out exactly like that on Sunday. Every time the momentum looked like it might shift, something happened, and it didn't. Darion Atkins gets a huge block and starts a mini 5-0 run; MSU gets re-energized by a wide-open dunk and then immediately gets the benefit of a TV timeout to let their momentum simmer. UVA gets within two just after the half, misses the shot that would put them in the lead, and Denzel Valentine hits a three on the other end, sparking another run. UVA gets a brilliant double team and a potential turnover, only to have the refs give them a loose-ball timeout and follow it up with an all-ball foul on Darion Atkins, sending our one effective post guy back to the bench. Zombies. You shoot and shoot and shoot and they don't die. All that stuff conspired to remind MSU that March is their birthright, and they kept on playing like it.
Dollars to donuts, the pregame speech in the MSU locker room had a theme like this: "Hey. This is March. This is what we play for, and this is our time. Those guys over there - they're January warriors. They're great in the regular season. Now they think they're gonna stroll in here and take what's ours? They don't know March. They can't handle March. We know March." They don't view you as an obstacle; that would be giving you respect. You're in the Michigan State Show. You think you're ready to make your run and beat them, they simply make a play, slap the floor, strut a bit, and that's that.
Michigan finally beat them and made it a rivalry again by finally being sick of their shit. In 2011, Michigan finally swept the Spartans for the first time long enough that everyone had to look it up; the second game - at Michigan - got a little woofy, and Michigan's Darius Morris told MSU's Kalin Lucas to "Get the fuck off my court." This is not a paraphrase or a metaphor. The only response Lucas could muster was to throw the ball at Morris.
That's one way to beat them, but it took years of abuse. UVA had one loss to them, not ten years worth of losses. The other way to beat them? Develop a winning culture of your own. Our two years of being near the top of the world is nice, but it's not enough. Here are the teams that've knocked MSU out of the tournament in the last ten years:
Connecticut, Duke, Louisville, UCLA, Butler, North Carolina, Memphis, North Carolina, George Mason, North Carolina.
That list is all blue-blood teams, with three exceptions: the first of two Butler teams to reach the championship; Derrick Rose; and a George Mason team that didn't know any better and wound up in the Final Four. In fact, seven of those ten teams went to the Final Four; four went to the national championship, and two won it all. These are teams that laugh when you slap the floor, because they've earned the right to do so. Any other reaction and you're doomed.
That's what UVA was up against. Probably a Final Four team now. Oklahoma, bless their heart, is screwed. MSU will look at them like a less-talented version of UVA and walk all over them. The only team left in this region with a chance is Louisville.
To be fair to our players, there's a lot of breaks that, had they bounced the right way, we'd be scouting Oklahoma right now. Hitting two end-of-shot-clock three pointers while your opponent goes 1-for-13 is part been-there-before and part luck. But I can look at that game and find ways to win without a single one of those missed threes going down. And so damn much of it can be chalked up to a culture that we just don't have yet.
**He'd also been recruited to MSU with the promise of playing in a Final Four. Izzo literally had every single one of his recruiting classes go to the Final Four at least once, a streak that was finally broken last year. Guaranteed, though, the substance of the pitch is the same even if the exact words no longer are.
Because to make sense of what happened, you have to get Michigan State. Darion Atkins doesn't, or else he wouldn't have talked sideways about his teammates not wanting it enough. No, I don't actually blame Atkins one bit. He's frustrated, he just walked off a college basketball court for the last time, and to the uninitiated, what just happened really did look an awful lot like one team wanting it a lot more than the other. But I'd venture to say nobody in the UVA locker room really gets Michigan State, nor do 99% of UVA fans. After this, you'll know the true story of UVA's 2015 tournament exit.
See, MSU is built on a certain culture that Tom Izzo has cultivated. It's a culture of birthright, of entitlement. It makes them arrogant. There's a hint of punk in their game. Not Joey Ramone punk. Think Greivis Vasquez punk. The Spartans are cocky to an extreme, and it works extremely well for them. They've been brought up to believe two things: one, that it's their right to beat Michigan, and two, that it's their right to excel in March.
This doesn't make them complacent. On the contrary, it makes them hungry. I often say that getting college kids to believe they've been disrespected is the easiest thing in the world. They view the very existence of an opponent as disrespect. That you would think you have any claim to winning a game against their birthright is disrespect on the order of making a rival claim to the throne.
As a result, they're really sore losers. Some say that's a good thing; Vince Lombardi was the sorest loser in history. "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser," he said. Several years ago, Michigan made the U-M/MSU game a rivalry again by reeling off three straight wins; when MSU got one back, Draymond Green boasted that "The world is back into place." He wasn't kidding. Green had been recruited to MSU under the premise that beating Michigan is something you do as naturally as breathing.** Three straight losses threw off his world order. Izzo and his players have developed a pattern of saying in post-loss press conferences, "I'm not here to make excuses," and then rattling off a dozen excuses to rationalize why the world didn't turn out the way they expect.
-- After losing to Duke in the 2013 NCAA tournament, Gary Harris complained about a free throw disparity; MSU had shot 24 free throws to Duke's 16 before the first stop-the-clock foul.
-- After losing to Michigan last year, Izzo bemoaned Keith Appling's sore wrist as a reason for his poor shooting night. Appling's sore wrist had put together two straight 20-point games just a couple weeks before and would follow up the Michigan loss with a 3-for-6 performance from three against Iowa.
-- The same loss to Michigan, in the very same press conference, saw Izzo simultaneously complain that he couldn't get Appling enough rest, and that Appling was in foul trouble too early and had to sit.
MSU takes this attitude into the postseason. This is why I called them a zombie team. It played out exactly like that on Sunday. Every time the momentum looked like it might shift, something happened, and it didn't. Darion Atkins gets a huge block and starts a mini 5-0 run; MSU gets re-energized by a wide-open dunk and then immediately gets the benefit of a TV timeout to let their momentum simmer. UVA gets within two just after the half, misses the shot that would put them in the lead, and Denzel Valentine hits a three on the other end, sparking another run. UVA gets a brilliant double team and a potential turnover, only to have the refs give them a loose-ball timeout and follow it up with an all-ball foul on Darion Atkins, sending our one effective post guy back to the bench. Zombies. You shoot and shoot and shoot and they don't die. All that stuff conspired to remind MSU that March is their birthright, and they kept on playing like it.
Dollars to donuts, the pregame speech in the MSU locker room had a theme like this: "Hey. This is March. This is what we play for, and this is our time. Those guys over there - they're January warriors. They're great in the regular season. Now they think they're gonna stroll in here and take what's ours? They don't know March. They can't handle March. We know March." They don't view you as an obstacle; that would be giving you respect. You're in the Michigan State Show. You think you're ready to make your run and beat them, they simply make a play, slap the floor, strut a bit, and that's that.
Michigan finally beat them and made it a rivalry again by finally being sick of their shit. In 2011, Michigan finally swept the Spartans for the first time long enough that everyone had to look it up; the second game - at Michigan - got a little woofy, and Michigan's Darius Morris told MSU's Kalin Lucas to "Get the fuck off my court." This is not a paraphrase or a metaphor. The only response Lucas could muster was to throw the ball at Morris.
That's one way to beat them, but it took years of abuse. UVA had one loss to them, not ten years worth of losses. The other way to beat them? Develop a winning culture of your own. Our two years of being near the top of the world is nice, but it's not enough. Here are the teams that've knocked MSU out of the tournament in the last ten years:
Connecticut, Duke, Louisville, UCLA, Butler, North Carolina, Memphis, North Carolina, George Mason, North Carolina.
That list is all blue-blood teams, with three exceptions: the first of two Butler teams to reach the championship; Derrick Rose; and a George Mason team that didn't know any better and wound up in the Final Four. In fact, seven of those ten teams went to the Final Four; four went to the national championship, and two won it all. These are teams that laugh when you slap the floor, because they've earned the right to do so. Any other reaction and you're doomed.
That's what UVA was up against. Probably a Final Four team now. Oklahoma, bless their heart, is screwed. MSU will look at them like a less-talented version of UVA and walk all over them. The only team left in this region with a chance is Louisville.
To be fair to our players, there's a lot of breaks that, had they bounced the right way, we'd be scouting Oklahoma right now. Hitting two end-of-shot-clock three pointers while your opponent goes 1-for-13 is part been-there-before and part luck. But I can look at that game and find ways to win without a single one of those missed threes going down. And so damn much of it can be chalked up to a culture that we just don't have yet.
**He'd also been recruited to MSU with the promise of playing in a Final Four. Izzo literally had every single one of his recruiting classes go to the Final Four at least once, a streak that was finally broken last year. Guaranteed, though, the substance of the pitch is the same even if the exact words no longer are.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
game preview: Belmont
Date/Time: Friday, March 20; 3:10
TV: truTV
Record against the Bruins: 1-0
Last meeting: UVA 94, Belmont 74; 12/28/99, Charlottesville
Last game: UNC 71, UVA 67 (3/13); Belmont 88, Murray St. 87 (3/7)
KenPom:
Tempo:
UVA: 58.2 (#349)
Belmont: 67.0 (#68)
Offense:
UVA: 112.2 (#25)
Belmont: 107.9 (#63)
Defense:
UVA: 85.5 (#1)
Belmont: 106.3 (#251)
Pythag:
UVA: .9580 (#4)
Belmont: .5407 (#146)
Projected lineups:
Virginia:
PG: London Perrantes (6.4 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 4.8 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.9 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 2.5 apg)
SF: Evan Nolte (3.2 ppg, 1.5 rpg, 0.6 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.5 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.5 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 0.8 apg)
Belmont:
PG: Reece Chamberlain (8.5 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 6.1 apg)
SG: Craig Bradshaw (18.1 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 3.2 apg)
SG: Taylor Barnette (10.7 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.3 apg)
PF: Amanze Egekeze (5.3 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Evan Bradds (14.3 ppg, 7.2 rpg, 1.3 apg)
Win or go home, you know the drill. You no doubt also know a bit of the (very recent) history here: that it was former Hoo Taylor Barnette hitting the game-winning shot for Belmont that punched their dance ticket. (This tourney is loaded with former Hoos. Will Regan is still suiting up for Buffalo and Paul Jesperson is in with Northern Iowa.)
Memories of last year's first-round game are still fresh; UVA found itself down by as many as nine to 16-seed Coastal Carolina. Belmont - a small school sitting in Vanderbilt's shadow in Nashville - is the kind of team that could make the Hoos nervous again ... but also the kind that could get completely rolled.
-- UVA on offense
Belmont's not the worst defensive team in the tournament - that honor belongs to Eastern Washington - but it's close. Their efficiency of 106.3 places them outside the top 250 in the country. Size has something to do with it, but the OVC isn't exactly loaded with seven-footers, either. Belmont was even crummy within their own conference.
Belmont let most opponents shoot over 50% from inside the arc, especially if that opponent had a functioning big man. UVA has three. This is where the Hoos will have just an incredible, unfair advantage. Belmont simply doesn't have big men. Tyler Hadden is 6'10", 240 and Mack Mercer is 6'9", 220, and both play about six minutes a game. Taking most of the big-man minutes are starters Amanze Egekeze and Evan Bradds; Bradds is 6'7", 205, and Egekeze is only an inch taller and ten pounds heavier.
Tobey, Gill, and Atkins are going to have a field day with this. Belmont has the choice of using players who are barely OVC-caliber, or using guys who are small enough to get posted up by Evan Nolte. The Hoos are going to want to feed the post all day long; if they find a hot hand, that guy might score 20. This is to say nothing of the rebounding advantage UVA will have.
It's not only the bigs; our old friend Barnette, more power to him, but he's going to have to guard one of Brogdon, Nolte, or Anderson, and there's a reason he couldn't get on the court much while competing with them for playing time. Not to single him out; it's more an illustration of the talent difference here.
Frankly, there's no reason UVA shouldn't be able to score a whole bunch. The patient approach they have is going to break down this defense. I'd expect a bunch of double-teams to make up for Belmont's lack of size, but with so many mismatches on the floor, it shouldn't matter.
-- UVA on defense
Here's what makes me nervous. The huge size advantage UVA has is nullified in a way. Belmont won't be able to drive much and they'll never be able to post up. They might find some clever passing angles for an open bucket or two, but mainly, they'll be forced to shoot a lot of threes. Which is exactly what they want to do.
That's how you beat the Hoos, of course. Belmont attempted more threes than all but four teams in the country, and the thing about shooting is, an open three is an open three regardless of talent level or conference or whatever. In other words, just because they're a 15 seed doesn't mean a 40% shooter is gonna be any worse against a 2 seed.
Craig Bradshaw leads the way, shooting 42%. Barnette, of course, has a very green light, and Nick Smith, despite playing only 15 minutes a game, has the third-most attempts on the team. But truthfully, just about anyone on the court is fair game to fire away. Mack Mercer, who barely plays anyway, is the only player to be really complacent about.
I think we'll see the post double employed very little - partly because the ball just won't be in the post much, but partly because it doesn't make sense to leave three-point shooters temporarily open so you can double a guy that Anthony Gill could eat for lunch anyway.
With a ton of shooters all bombing away, it's too much to think they'll all go cold all at once. Some of these are going to drop. You just figure that the defenders need to be able to close out; fortunately, with no real post threat, there isn't much need to collapse too far in the first place. Belmont is going to shoot like 20 threes regardless of what the defense does; if most of them are contested, UVA should be able to keep the Bruins at arms' length.
-- Outlook
Belmont has half the traditional formula for a big upset. They shoot threes - lots of them, and well. So often, though, the scrappy underdog also has a legit big man who seems like he's everywhere. No doubt the Bruin bigs are going to scrap, but they're likely doomed to being dominated in all aspects of the game. I think Belmont keeps it closer than we'd like, shooting well enough to not let the game get out of hand. But they're not going to play enough defense, either.
Final score: UVA 79, Belmont 66
Thursday, March 5, 2015
senior moments
I kind of wish the lacrosse game had been after the basketball game. (Yes, I mean Syracuse - and yeah, I kinda like this deal where we get both of those games on the same weekend.) I might've stuck around for the second half. I guess the lax crew looked a lot better after halftime. I wouldn't know, having had my fill after two quarters of only winning faceoffs if the ball first found its way to one corner of the field.
I don't need to learn that lesson for basketball, because Tony always figures it out. I suppose one day maybe he won't, but, I mean, if you've been paying attention you know how he preaches, and even the worst fifteen minutes of offense in anyone's recollection isn't insurmountable if the defense is still defensing.
For all the criticism announcers take, sometimes they hit the target, and the crew on Monday night did just that when they said all it took to fix the putrid offense was an attitude adjustment. Might be that Evan Nolte's three-pointer kicked off the run, but what made it a run was the decision by the ballhandlers to attack the zone. It's amazing how things just fell into place after that.
And through it all, the defense. The offense swung as violently between extremes as any team's offense ever did this season, and the defense was the defense, which makes it sort of fitting the Hoos wrapped up the regular-season title that way, because it was Tony's preaching brought to life in lurid fashion.
Myron Medcalf can keep on being snide. (And he does, believe me.) Anyone who isn't entertained by this team has no business watching college basketball. Three games in a week, all of them vastly different from one another yet all of them with unmistakeable Tony Bennett fingerprints. Tony just engineered two of the three double-ups in ACC history, in one season. If the Hoos win in Louisville, Tony will be, as far as anyone can tell, the only ACC coach, probably the only coach in any conference, to improve his win total six years in a row. These are mind-boggling feats of strength. Are you not entertained?
**************************************
-- I found myself caught in the trap that most writers fall into, to wit: pre-forming a narrative and hoping the facts turn out to fit it. In this case I was planning on writing about how last week was revenge on a pair of teams that woke the dragon by daring to play the two closest games we've seen all season. Wake certainly obliged. VT basically did, too, but undermined the narrative by getting three of the stupid-luckiest rolls on three-pointers I've ever seen. Tech did make the first half close, but try landing a shot like they did, just so, on the back of the iron. Take away blind luck and the VT game is a plain-Jane blowout.
-- I'm almost always a huge fuddy-duddy about showboating and punking your opponents - I thought, for example, that Kevin Stallings of Vanderbilt was 99% in the right in berating his player for clapping in someone's face. (The only quibble is that I do think there's wisdom in the maxim "praise in public, criticize in private.") But I also know the difference between having fun and being a dick, which is why I don't mind one bit that Darion Atkins got T'ed up. Except that maybe that would've been a solid time to swallow the whistle and not call an I'm-in-charge-here foul.
-- Jim Boeheim's not a bad guy, as coaches go. But Rob Vozenilek and Maleek Frazier checked in at the scorers' table to finish out the VT game. One game later, the TV cameras panned to Syracuse's Carter Sanderson sitting at the end of the bench in the final seconds of a blowout while the announcers set up the replay of his portion of the senior day festivities. That's the Tony Bennett Difference.
-- An appendectomy??? What's next for Justin Anderson, Lyme disease? Sheesh.
-- Interesting bit of news on the football side, where UVA will bolster the tight end depth chart with former QB Brendan Marshall. Makes sense, since he was being rapidly buried in the QB hierarchy and tight end is completely lacking in experience and depth. It's still lacking in experience, but the more pieces you throw at the wall, the more likely one will stick.
I don't need to learn that lesson for basketball, because Tony always figures it out. I suppose one day maybe he won't, but, I mean, if you've been paying attention you know how he preaches, and even the worst fifteen minutes of offense in anyone's recollection isn't insurmountable if the defense is still defensing.
For all the criticism announcers take, sometimes they hit the target, and the crew on Monday night did just that when they said all it took to fix the putrid offense was an attitude adjustment. Might be that Evan Nolte's three-pointer kicked off the run, but what made it a run was the decision by the ballhandlers to attack the zone. It's amazing how things just fell into place after that.
And through it all, the defense. The offense swung as violently between extremes as any team's offense ever did this season, and the defense was the defense, which makes it sort of fitting the Hoos wrapped up the regular-season title that way, because it was Tony's preaching brought to life in lurid fashion.
Myron Medcalf can keep on being snide. (And he does, believe me.) Anyone who isn't entertained by this team has no business watching college basketball. Three games in a week, all of them vastly different from one another yet all of them with unmistakeable Tony Bennett fingerprints. Tony just engineered two of the three double-ups in ACC history, in one season. If the Hoos win in Louisville, Tony will be, as far as anyone can tell, the only ACC coach, probably the only coach in any conference, to improve his win total six years in a row. These are mind-boggling feats of strength. Are you not entertained?
**************************************
-- I found myself caught in the trap that most writers fall into, to wit: pre-forming a narrative and hoping the facts turn out to fit it. In this case I was planning on writing about how last week was revenge on a pair of teams that woke the dragon by daring to play the two closest games we've seen all season. Wake certainly obliged. VT basically did, too, but undermined the narrative by getting three of the stupid-luckiest rolls on three-pointers I've ever seen. Tech did make the first half close, but try landing a shot like they did, just so, on the back of the iron. Take away blind luck and the VT game is a plain-Jane blowout.
-- I'm almost always a huge fuddy-duddy about showboating and punking your opponents - I thought, for example, that Kevin Stallings of Vanderbilt was 99% in the right in berating his player for clapping in someone's face. (The only quibble is that I do think there's wisdom in the maxim "praise in public, criticize in private.") But I also know the difference between having fun and being a dick, which is why I don't mind one bit that Darion Atkins got T'ed up. Except that maybe that would've been a solid time to swallow the whistle and not call an I'm-in-charge-here foul.
-- Jim Boeheim's not a bad guy, as coaches go. But Rob Vozenilek and Maleek Frazier checked in at the scorers' table to finish out the VT game. One game later, the TV cameras panned to Syracuse's Carter Sanderson sitting at the end of the bench in the final seconds of a blowout while the announcers set up the replay of his portion of the senior day festivities. That's the Tony Bennett Difference.
-- An appendectomy??? What's next for Justin Anderson, Lyme disease? Sheesh.
-- Interesting bit of news on the football side, where UVA will bolster the tight end depth chart with former QB Brendan Marshall. Makes sense, since he was being rapidly buried in the QB hierarchy and tight end is completely lacking in experience and depth. It's still lacking in experience, but the more pieces you throw at the wall, the more likely one will stick.
Monday, February 9, 2015
blip
At risk of blasting my own horn (oh hell, that's the whole point of this entire endeavor) I did something during the Duke game that's usually almost impossible to pull off: I pegged the game's turning point as it happened. Most of the time you have to do that in retrospect, unless the game is really close and then suddenly it's not. In this case UVA held a pretty safe lead before it happened, and a pretty safe lead after. KenPom's win probability graph had UVA's chances moving from about 98% to 96%. Who'd have thunk?
Well, me, when that tiny little knife in the pit of the stomach made its appearance on a Tyus Jones three-pointer shortly after a Justin Anderson miss on the same. Anderson's shot was thisclose to going down; Jones hit nothing but net, and the result was a six-point swing. No, it was more than six points - it was the entire spectrum of Duke's confidence. Jones gave them their fortitude back, ten seconds after it was two inches from disappearing entirely.
As much as I'd like to move that number one from the loss column to the rankings column, at least we know what it takes to beat UVA these days: six-of-eight shooting on three pointers, and all of the last four. After Anderson missed, that's what Duke did, en route to not missing a shot in the last four minutes of the game. You know what? Great. Duplicate that formula and you've finally figured out the trick to beatingVirginia Kentucky everyone up to and including the '92 Dream Team.
The rest of the week - no disrespect at all to the opponents involved - was surprisingly easy. It's all relative, of course - it wasn't, like, Harvard-easy. UNC and Louisville put up a fight, albeit not for 40 full minutes. It's easier to do, of course, when one game is at home and the other is in one of the ACC less-intimidating atmospheres. (Seriously, is there a team anywhere else, outside of Chapel Hill, where the ratio of powerhouse-ery to crowd atmosphere is so huge?) Theory on this: these three teams are completely on another level athletically, above and beyond what UVA's gotten used to seeing the past month (or more) and it took a little time to get used to. When they did, which was right about halftime of the UNC game, the game slowed down again.
I've been including the upcoming NC State game in the stretch of doom calculations, but if you believe the above theory, it might be more of a blowout than I've been assuming. I mean, BeeJay Anya's a pretty good player, but once you've tried to score on Montrezl Harrell, can it be that much harder? I still think it's a dangerous game.
That said, the chances are excellent that UVA loses just one game the rest of the way at the most, which should worry a league that all sits at least two losses behind. Beating Duke would've been great and all, but there isn't a soul among us who wouldn't have taken two out of those last three, if offered beforehand. And UVA has held double-digit leads in all three games. Despite the loss, this was a test passed with flying colors so far; if they finish the final portion of it, another long and relatively relaxing stretch awaits.
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-- It's been a while since I wrote this, so it was of course bound to rear its ugly head in a huge way: We still can't have nice things. Justin Anderson's fractured finger capped a very rough injury stretch (at least, I really hope that capped it) in which UVA lost its top scorer in basketball, top hitter in baseball, and top defenseman in lacrosse. Already thin from the transfer loss of Greg Danseglio, the lacrosse team really could not afford losing Tanner Scales to an Achilles' heel, but it did anyway. Joe McCarthy's back surgery leaves a gaping hole in the lineup. And of course, something had to be up when Evan Nolte started the second half.
Weirdly, even in a game where Anderson got hurt, Marial Shayok only got four minutes. I might automatically assume he and Nolte would pick up most of Anderson's minutes, if not for that stat. It's still logical, but Tony's been tinkering with the back end of the lineup a bit and I wouldn't make any hard-and-fast guesses for NC State, let alone four weeks from now. Good news is there's a reasonable chance Anderson is back for postseason play.
-- You have to love Syracuse, which could at any time have chosen to take a postseason sanction but chose to do it in the middle of a season that wasn't likely to land them in the NCAAs anyway.... and then throw a pity party for Rakeem Christmas's playoff dreams. Does it suck that Christmas's Syracuse career ends without any tournaments of any kind? Yes, but to avoid that, Syracuse might have had to feel a little more pain from the self-sanction. So Christmas gets thrown to the wolves, and just for a bonus, gets to be used by Syracuse as the face of their passive-aggressive campaign against having to bear such a brutal punishment. How cynical.
-- Sometimes the basketball gods are just. Not when they put Anderson's finger in a splint, no, but take Darion Atkins. Atkins dogged a Louisville player into a turnover just seconds after a defensive rebound, giving the Hoos the ball right back.... and then Atkins scored on the ensuing possession. Feed the guy who made the play - I like it.
-- I was reminded again why I like Doris Burke. 75% of sideline reporters ask the stupidest %@#&ing questions, mostly: "describe your emotions." Burke pinpointed a matchup she wanted to ask about - and made a good choice - and in doing so gave Tony Bennett an opportunity to sing the praises of a deserving player, which he proceeded to do.
-- Lacrosse starts the season the same way as last year: a one-goal win over Loyola. Now that the season is underway, that would be a good time to write a season preview, yes? This week. Short version of the game: offense good, defense eh.
-- I put together the next round of ACC simulations, but that's gonna wait til Tuesday also. So now here they are:
UVA is a frightening lock for the 1 seed; it'd take a mathematically unlikely face-fall to drop out of the top spot. What's a bit more surprising is the tight grip Duke has on #2, and UNC on #5. Neither have much of a schedule left, except each other. KenPom likes GT a lot more than the standings show, though, and UNC also has to visit Miami; that, combined with Duke's higher pythag, accounts for a lot of the difference. Fortunately, it makes sense; Duke owns the tiebreaker on everyone in the top 5 except for UNC, who they haven't played yet. By virtue of being the only team to beat UVA while the rest of the contenders have all lost, they're in great shape.
This is a great year to show off the excellence of the tourney format; five great teams looking for four double-bye slots. It might not matter early, because the first opponent will be a putz (either #12 or #13) and then you play the 4 seed anyway, but the extra game might de-freshen the legs a little as the tourney heads toward Sunday.
Me, I'd definitely welcome a Sunday rematch of last year's final. Both teams would be motivated by recent losses to the other, and the chance to beat Duke two years in a row would spark whispery but unmistakeable changing-of-the-guard talk. Not to be premature or anything.
Well, me, when that tiny little knife in the pit of the stomach made its appearance on a Tyus Jones three-pointer shortly after a Justin Anderson miss on the same. Anderson's shot was thisclose to going down; Jones hit nothing but net, and the result was a six-point swing. No, it was more than six points - it was the entire spectrum of Duke's confidence. Jones gave them their fortitude back, ten seconds after it was two inches from disappearing entirely.
As much as I'd like to move that number one from the loss column to the rankings column, at least we know what it takes to beat UVA these days: six-of-eight shooting on three pointers, and all of the last four. After Anderson missed, that's what Duke did, en route to not missing a shot in the last four minutes of the game. You know what? Great. Duplicate that formula and you've finally figured out the trick to beating
The rest of the week - no disrespect at all to the opponents involved - was surprisingly easy. It's all relative, of course - it wasn't, like, Harvard-easy. UNC and Louisville put up a fight, albeit not for 40 full minutes. It's easier to do, of course, when one game is at home and the other is in one of the ACC less-intimidating atmospheres. (Seriously, is there a team anywhere else, outside of Chapel Hill, where the ratio of powerhouse-ery to crowd atmosphere is so huge?) Theory on this: these three teams are completely on another level athletically, above and beyond what UVA's gotten used to seeing the past month (or more) and it took a little time to get used to. When they did, which was right about halftime of the UNC game, the game slowed down again.
I've been including the upcoming NC State game in the stretch of doom calculations, but if you believe the above theory, it might be more of a blowout than I've been assuming. I mean, BeeJay Anya's a pretty good player, but once you've tried to score on Montrezl Harrell, can it be that much harder? I still think it's a dangerous game.
That said, the chances are excellent that UVA loses just one game the rest of the way at the most, which should worry a league that all sits at least two losses behind. Beating Duke would've been great and all, but there isn't a soul among us who wouldn't have taken two out of those last three, if offered beforehand. And UVA has held double-digit leads in all three games. Despite the loss, this was a test passed with flying colors so far; if they finish the final portion of it, another long and relatively relaxing stretch awaits.
****************************************************
-- It's been a while since I wrote this, so it was of course bound to rear its ugly head in a huge way: We still can't have nice things. Justin Anderson's fractured finger capped a very rough injury stretch (at least, I really hope that capped it) in which UVA lost its top scorer in basketball, top hitter in baseball, and top defenseman in lacrosse. Already thin from the transfer loss of Greg Danseglio, the lacrosse team really could not afford losing Tanner Scales to an Achilles' heel, but it did anyway. Joe McCarthy's back surgery leaves a gaping hole in the lineup. And of course, something had to be up when Evan Nolte started the second half.
Weirdly, even in a game where Anderson got hurt, Marial Shayok only got four minutes. I might automatically assume he and Nolte would pick up most of Anderson's minutes, if not for that stat. It's still logical, but Tony's been tinkering with the back end of the lineup a bit and I wouldn't make any hard-and-fast guesses for NC State, let alone four weeks from now. Good news is there's a reasonable chance Anderson is back for postseason play.
-- You have to love Syracuse, which could at any time have chosen to take a postseason sanction but chose to do it in the middle of a season that wasn't likely to land them in the NCAAs anyway.... and then throw a pity party for Rakeem Christmas's playoff dreams. Does it suck that Christmas's Syracuse career ends without any tournaments of any kind? Yes, but to avoid that, Syracuse might have had to feel a little more pain from the self-sanction. So Christmas gets thrown to the wolves, and just for a bonus, gets to be used by Syracuse as the face of their passive-aggressive campaign against having to bear such a brutal punishment. How cynical.
-- Sometimes the basketball gods are just. Not when they put Anderson's finger in a splint, no, but take Darion Atkins. Atkins dogged a Louisville player into a turnover just seconds after a defensive rebound, giving the Hoos the ball right back.... and then Atkins scored on the ensuing possession. Feed the guy who made the play - I like it.
-- I was reminded again why I like Doris Burke. 75% of sideline reporters ask the stupidest %@#&ing questions, mostly: "describe your emotions." Burke pinpointed a matchup she wanted to ask about - and made a good choice - and in doing so gave Tony Bennett an opportunity to sing the praises of a deserving player, which he proceeded to do.
-- Lacrosse starts the season the same way as last year: a one-goal win over Loyola. Now that the season is underway, that would be a good time to write a season preview, yes? This week. Short version of the game: offense good, defense eh.
-- I put together the next round of ACC simulations, but that's gonna wait til Tuesday also. So now here they are:
UVA is a frightening lock for the 1 seed; it'd take a mathematically unlikely face-fall to drop out of the top spot. What's a bit more surprising is the tight grip Duke has on #2, and UNC on #5. Neither have much of a schedule left, except each other. KenPom likes GT a lot more than the standings show, though, and UNC also has to visit Miami; that, combined with Duke's higher pythag, accounts for a lot of the difference. Fortunately, it makes sense; Duke owns the tiebreaker on everyone in the top 5 except for UNC, who they haven't played yet. By virtue of being the only team to beat UVA while the rest of the contenders have all lost, they're in great shape.
This is a great year to show off the excellence of the tourney format; five great teams looking for four double-bye slots. It might not matter early, because the first opponent will be a putz (either #12 or #13) and then you play the 4 seed anyway, but the extra game might de-freshen the legs a little as the tourney heads toward Sunday.
Me, I'd definitely welcome a Sunday rematch of last year's final. Both teams would be motivated by recent losses to the other, and the chance to beat Duke two years in a row would spark whispery but unmistakeable changing-of-the-guard talk. Not to be premature or anything.
Friday, January 30, 2015
game preview: Duke
Date/Time: Saturday, January 31; 7:00
TV: ESPN
Last meeting: UVA 72, Duke 63; 3/16/14, Greensboro, NC; ACC championship
Last game: UVA 50, VT 47 (1/25); ND 77, Duke 73 (1/28)
KenPom:
Tempo:
UVA: 58.3 (#350)
Duke: 68.1 (#45)
Offense:
UVA: 117.8 (#5)
Duke: 117.4 (#6)
Defense:
UVA: 83.9 (#2)
Duke: 94.1 (#50)
Pythag:
UVA: .9801 (#2)
Duke: .9275 (#8)
Projected lineups:
Virginia:
PG: London Perrantes (5.1 ppg, 2.1 rpg, 4.4 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (13.3 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 2.7 apg)
SF: Justin Anderson (13.9 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 1.9 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.1 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 0.6 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.3 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 0.8 apg)
Duke:
PG: Tyus Jones (10.9 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 5.0 apg)
SG: Quinn Cook (14.4 ppg, 3.4 rpg, 2.8 apg)
SF: Justise Winslow (10.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 1.8 apg)
PF: Amile Jefferson (8.8 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 1.1 apg)
C: Jahlil Okafor (18.7 ppg, 9.4 rpg, 1.5 apg)
I haven't done a single one of these yet this year in light of scaling back the regular posting schedule, but how can I resist College GameDay? This is gonna be fun. UVA gets showcased for everyone who tunes into some college hoops on Saturday as a Super Bowl warmup, and they couldn't have picked a better opponent because pretty much everyone (who's otherwise neutral) will be hoping to see Duke get humbled. UVA gets a lot of temporary fans on Saturday night.
This is game one of a four-game stretch of doom. Most pundits are calling it three, but NC State is no pushover and that one's on the road. ESPN is already using the "u" word not in terms of the season past, but the season future, so you already know what kind of hype is at stake over the next week.
Duke is having a rough go of it in the ACC, having lost to every non-crappy opponent they've faced, except for Louisville after busting out a surprise zone defense on Rick Pitino. Their case for being #4 in the country is built mainly on three legitimate things: beating Wisconsin and Louisville on the road, and Jahlil Okafor. These aren't to be sneezed at, but the Fightin' Coach K's have proven vulnerable, too, and UVA is a decided favorite here.
-- UVA on offense
The Hoos had a little trouble with the VT zone last weekend, so despite the fact that Duke is usually known for aggressive man-to-man defense, you can expect to see them break it out on Saturday. I mean, it's been working, it certainly worked against Louisville, and it seems to be their best shot at reversing the trend of mediocre defense they've been lamenting this season.
With three freshmen in the starting lineup, it's probably not all that surprising that Duke's defense isn't elite. Duke's defense possesses the fingerprints of a team whose perimeter defense is beaten off the dribble with some regularity: relatively high 2-point shooting percentage allowed and rather high free-throw shooting percentage allowed, while at the same time relatively few opponents' baskets are assisted. Why include free-throw percentage allowed? Teams with higher numbers there are likely to be fouling guards more than bigs. All this points to a vulnerability to slashing guards - hence the switch to a zone defense, which compensates for that weakness.
A slasher is something that the UVA offense lacks. The UVA ballhandlers aren't exactly bad at this, but there isn't that one elite player who can do anything on the dribble. With Rasheed Sulaimon's dismissal from the team, chances are excellent that either Justin Anderson or Malcolm Brogdon - probably Brogdon - will spend a lot of time matched up against a smaller player, which should encourage that mid-range jumper that Brogdon is pretty proficient at shooting.
UVA's offensive rebounding prowess could pose a problem for Duke - not just in second-chance points, but foul trouble. Grabbing an offensive board and going straight back up is a great way to draw a foul, and Duke is thin in the frontcourt following the early-season transfer of Semi Ojeleye. Jahlil Okafor and Marshall Plumlee rotate at center with Plumlee being used mostly only to give Okafor a breather. Amile Jefferson is the only other true big; when he's out of the game, Duke usually pairs Justise Winslow with Matt Jones as small forwards. Okafor is an obvious freak of nature, one of the quickest big men you'll ever see, but also the only Duke big who matches up well with UVA's frontcourt. Mike Tobey can score on Plumlee, Jefferson is too skinny to easily handle either Anthony Gill or Darion Atkins, and the remaining forwards are 6'6" or smaller. And Okafor isn't a big-time shot-blocker - he's about average for his size, really.
Putting him in foul trouble spells bad news for Duke's frontcourt. Putting any of them in foul trouble, really. Gill is a bad mismatch for anyone who might guard him save Okafor, in which case Atkins should be able to go to work. It might be tempting to start Tobey in order to force Duke to guard him with Okafor and let Gill take advantage of the resulting mismatch.
-- UVA on defense
Okafor is scary. It's not for no reason he gets a lot of hype. It's rare to see such a big guy move so well. Okafor is 6'11", 270, and moves like he's 230. He scores on about 2/3 of his shots, and his season low is 10 points, with eight 20-point games and seven double-doubles. He's a top-notch offensive rebounder, and by the way that foul trouble thing we talked about earlier is rare, letting him play over 30 minutes a game.
Expect, then, a healthy dose of post-doubling when Okafor gets the ball. UVA won't front him per se, but the pack-line footwork is still designed to force him to catch the ball somewhere where he doesn't want it, and to let the double come quickly. Expect also a lot less post-doubling on anyone else, lest they find Okafor with an awful mismatch on him.
It's not a one-man show, though; it wouldn't be Duke if they didn't have a bunch of guys who could score. Quinn Cook moved off the ball to take a more active shooting role and let Tyus Jones run the point. Cook made 65 threes last year; a bit more than halfway through the season, he's at 53. Jones and Winslow aren't hacks at the long ball, but with Sulaimon gone, Cook is the one really big distance threat. And he's automatic from the stripe, missing only two of 44 free throws this year.
Jones, Winslow, and Jefferson are all perfectly capable scorers, too. Jefferson is shooting .639 from the field, all from two; Jones and Winslow are rangy players who like Cook can score from a lot of different places. But that's about where the good news ends for Duke. The loss of Sulaimon costs the Blue Devils their most versatile player and only reliable bench scorer. Matt Jones isn't used to shouldering any scoring load, Marshall Plumlee is a body that Duke uses to give Okafor a rest, and Greyson Allen doesn't appear to yet have the full confidence of Coach K. When Tyus Jones would go out of the game, it was Sulaimon, not the former point guard Cook, who would take over at the point; Duke's choice now is to either hand it back to Cook or make Jones play all 40 minutes. The former detracts from Cook's scoring focus and the latter is a huge risk and not sustainable.
Sulaimon provided most of his minutes at the three, though, which leaves Duke with another choice: lean more heavily on Winslow or Matt Jones. Leaning on Winslow takes away his availability at the four, and leaning on Jones risks letting Justin Anderson run wild. Sulaimon's flexibility gave Coach K a lot of options; his loss is a bigger depth hit than one man normally is.
-- Outlook
Make no mistake, this is a tough game, one of the season's hardest. My guess is that Duke will lean as hard as they can on their starters in the absence of Sulaimon to back them up, because the more they go to the bench the more they play into the hands of the deeper Hoos. Their starters can, mostly, match up well with UVA's, and they probably have an advantage at most positions.
But that's why UVA perfects a system, and that system has beaten Duke two years running. And Duke's margin for error is much smaller than UVA's. Okafor has had nagging knee twinges in more than one ACC game, and Duke can't afford to have a bad game from any of their starters or have prolonged scoring droughts, because their defense hasn't been good enough to hold off opposing runs. And playing in what's sure to be a fired-up environment won't help matters. If UVA's offense is clicking, it's over. Duke could zone UVA into oblivion, or shoot hot from three, or see one of their stars go off on a big-night bender, and put an end to UVA's win streak in a hurry. Chances are, though, that to win they'll simply need to play a more complete and balanced game - with fewer players - than they have for most of the season.
Final score: UVA 71, Duke 65
Monday, January 26, 2015
rock fights
So to be completely frank, if this terrific win streak must come to an end at some point, I'd prefer just about anywhere but Blacksburg. So it was with a little trepidation that I watched the Hokies take a ten-point lead in front of a Cassell Coliseum crowd that wasn't precisely packed to the gills, but was a lot fuller and louder than it's been for most of the season.
This is normally the point where you'd think "but that didn't last for long," but truth is it did. Various reports of the game call it a rally. Nothing of the sort happened. A rally implies a flurry of activity, a swift change in fortunes. The Hoos just stopped letting VT score, is all. VT stopped hitting shots they'd been hitting, they went back to giving the ball away a few times (like they'd done in the first half) and a glacial eight minutes after VT was up ten, the lead finally disappeared completely. There was no Cavalanche, just a big, 11-minute stop on defense and a fun play or two along the way.
It illustrates a philosophy of Tony's completely: you better play defense if you hope to come back from a deficit. Offense will happen if you don't panic, but you sure as hell ain't closing that gap if the other guys keep scoring.
So the march continues. One imagines it'll stop in the next couple weeks. Four very difficult matchups present themselves: Duke and Louisville roll into town, and the Hoos make two trips to the Triangle for UNC and NC State. KenPom says the UNC game is the toughest left on the schedule, being as it's on the road; I think it's the two home games that are the toughest matchups on paper, but the Hoos have been playing much better at home of late than on the road. Georgia Tech was mercilessly ground into powder because UVA had a home crowd behind them and the Jackets are pitiful shooters from outside four feet.
No league has as many legitimate national title contenders as the ACC, and UVA's schedule is the streakiest of any of them, so it might be fair to say these next couple weeks will be the longest, toughest stretch faced by any of the country's best teams. Even in the Big 12, which is looking a little like the ACC used to, 15 years ago. ESPN's Dana O'Neil did a rather awkwardly-premised article that boils down to "ACC and Big 12 teams will beat each other up and most of the rest of the country will coast."** If that goose egg comes out the other end unscathed, the hype machine is going all the way to 11.
**I thoroughly love the characterization of UVA as a "veteran team that actually likes games to be rock fights." That's a good identity. All we need now is a recruit who's been called "Psycho T Junior" and a Kiwi kid who thinks it's rugby. Where can we find guys like that, I wonder.
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-- Malcolm Brogdon had a fantastic little layup against Georgia Tech where he decided on a change of plan midair. It was a damn familiar-looking play:
Even more similar in motion, in fact. Except for the finish.
(Yes, I'm gonna let you stew on it if you're drawing a blank on the bottom play.)
-- Buzz Williams is amusingly demonstrative, yes, but as much as he was on the case of the refs, I'm wondering if he realizes offensive fouls do exist in the rulebook.
-- Buzz is likely going to turn VT into a not-laughingstock, maybe even do what Seth Greenberg only ever did once, and get them to the tourney. He might not even leave for so-called greener pastures; Whit Babcock appears to actually mind being a basketball backwater, and will give him an ACC contract with an ACC budget for assistants and upgrade his buildings to ACC-quality facilities. Even seeing that is worth it, because of the gift of Marial Shayok, who looks like the future of UVA ball. He's got the scoring versatility that sometimes takes years to develop.
-- Speaking of developed scoring ability, man it would've been cool if Darion Atkins hadn't had shin splints that set his development back light years. The guy wearing #5 now for UVA is the guy that Tony Bennett and Mike Brey fought a pitched recruiting battle over, back in 2010. There are some faint similarities to Mike Scott showing through, the way he likes to operate on offense in a range ring around the net, the way he sometimes says, "ok, you want me to shoot this, I'll shoot it," and knocks it right down. Senior year has been incredibly good to Atkins, there's no doubt about it.
-- GameDay notwithstanding, I'd rather play Duke this Wednesday, all things considered. Coming off an emotional win and heading on the road, from an intangibles perspective there are few riper upsets than Notre Dame over Duke this week. I think they'll get a cold-water reality check in South Bend, and I'd rather be the team giving it to them than the team right after.
**********************************************
-- North Carolina and Wake Forest are charter members of the ACC, and have shared a conference since 1936 when Wake joined the Southern Conference. It's about an hour and a half drive between the two schools. They first met in football in 1888 and have played 105 games against each other. That meeting in 1888 was the first college football game in the state of North Carolina. So it makes perfect sense that they'd want to play each other more than once every goddam seven years. Nice college football world you've delivered us, O oligarchs of the sport. Throw bread and circuses at the drooling masses in the form of a playoff thing, and meantime make sure you set everything else up to make the least sense possible.
Of course, I don't gripe without offering a solution (much) and I've already put forth a great idea to fix the problem. The best idea.
-- It was interesting to read about WR transfer T.J. Thorpe in this Jeff White article; coming to UVA was already on his mind (and leaving UNC was already decided) even as he was catching the game-winning touchdown against in October. That kind of thing is probably more common than is ever reported, especially in basketball, but it's rarely admitted.
-- Lacrosse season is here sooner than you think, so it's a good time to loosen up for it by starting with opinionz on the newest rule changes:
* Faceoff rule changes: They'll be just about transparent to the vast majority of everyone watching the game. Former FOGO guys might get interviewed by Inside Lacrosse or something, and air their gripes or praises, but nobody else will see a difference. Cleaning up faceoff play is generally always welcome, but most of the time when a faceoff violation is called, nobody ever sees what happened anyway. This won't change anything.
* Timeout changes: If the ball is to be restarted from inside the field of play, such as on an offside call, only the team with the ball can call timeout. Nobody really was complaining about that, but it's a small positive tweak nonetheless.
* Phase-in of a requirement to have a 30-second shot clock displayed for when stall warnings are given out; previously, the refs kept the time themselves and the players were left to guess. I emphatically don't want a shot clock in lacrosse, but "some schools can't afford them" was always one of the lamest arguments against them. Spend a couple hundred dollars, man. Not having the clock on the field was like having basketball's block-charge arc in the rulebook but not on the court, and the same bullshit poverty reason was given for not painting them on. This is both a positive step for the rules as they're written now, and a huge negative step in that it smells strongly of a precursor to having the full-time shot clock instituted for good.
* You can now land in the crease after scoring, provided you didn't leave your feet before you shot. Fine, good, dandy, because invariably you'd see about three to five perfectly good goals a year called back for that, and they shouldn't be. Good compromise between not letting people just launch themselves and not forcing them to make like the Flying Wallendas around the crease.
* Addition of an over-and-back rule. Used to be they'd either require you to go through the clearing clock again, or put on a stall warning if you were just being stubborn about sitting on the ball. Now you lose the ball right away, like in basketball, and this is suddenly a really dangerous thing to do because it's a quick restart and the ball is already in your defensive half with a wide-open field to play with.
* Last year for these jerseys, because in 2016 your numbers will have to contrast. Never liked those.
-- With a big basketball game this Saturday and lacrosse and baseball fast approaching, I feel a few midweek posts coming on.
This is normally the point where you'd think "but that didn't last for long," but truth is it did. Various reports of the game call it a rally. Nothing of the sort happened. A rally implies a flurry of activity, a swift change in fortunes. The Hoos just stopped letting VT score, is all. VT stopped hitting shots they'd been hitting, they went back to giving the ball away a few times (like they'd done in the first half) and a glacial eight minutes after VT was up ten, the lead finally disappeared completely. There was no Cavalanche, just a big, 11-minute stop on defense and a fun play or two along the way.
It illustrates a philosophy of Tony's completely: you better play defense if you hope to come back from a deficit. Offense will happen if you don't panic, but you sure as hell ain't closing that gap if the other guys keep scoring.
So the march continues. One imagines it'll stop in the next couple weeks. Four very difficult matchups present themselves: Duke and Louisville roll into town, and the Hoos make two trips to the Triangle for UNC and NC State. KenPom says the UNC game is the toughest left on the schedule, being as it's on the road; I think it's the two home games that are the toughest matchups on paper, but the Hoos have been playing much better at home of late than on the road. Georgia Tech was mercilessly ground into powder because UVA had a home crowd behind them and the Jackets are pitiful shooters from outside four feet.
No league has as many legitimate national title contenders as the ACC, and UVA's schedule is the streakiest of any of them, so it might be fair to say these next couple weeks will be the longest, toughest stretch faced by any of the country's best teams. Even in the Big 12, which is looking a little like the ACC used to, 15 years ago. ESPN's Dana O'Neil did a rather awkwardly-premised article that boils down to "ACC and Big 12 teams will beat each other up and most of the rest of the country will coast."** If that goose egg comes out the other end unscathed, the hype machine is going all the way to 11.
**I thoroughly love the characterization of UVA as a "veteran team that actually likes games to be rock fights." That's a good identity. All we need now is a recruit who's been called "Psycho T Junior" and a Kiwi kid who thinks it's rugby. Where can we find guys like that, I wonder.
**********************************************
-- Malcolm Brogdon had a fantastic little layup against Georgia Tech where he decided on a change of plan midair. It was a damn familiar-looking play:
Even more similar in motion, in fact. Except for the finish.
(Yes, I'm gonna let you stew on it if you're drawing a blank on the bottom play.)
-- Buzz Williams is amusingly demonstrative, yes, but as much as he was on the case of the refs, I'm wondering if he realizes offensive fouls do exist in the rulebook.
-- Buzz is likely going to turn VT into a not-laughingstock, maybe even do what Seth Greenberg only ever did once, and get them to the tourney. He might not even leave for so-called greener pastures; Whit Babcock appears to actually mind being a basketball backwater, and will give him an ACC contract with an ACC budget for assistants and upgrade his buildings to ACC-quality facilities. Even seeing that is worth it, because of the gift of Marial Shayok, who looks like the future of UVA ball. He's got the scoring versatility that sometimes takes years to develop.
-- Speaking of developed scoring ability, man it would've been cool if Darion Atkins hadn't had shin splints that set his development back light years. The guy wearing #5 now for UVA is the guy that Tony Bennett and Mike Brey fought a pitched recruiting battle over, back in 2010. There are some faint similarities to Mike Scott showing through, the way he likes to operate on offense in a range ring around the net, the way he sometimes says, "ok, you want me to shoot this, I'll shoot it," and knocks it right down. Senior year has been incredibly good to Atkins, there's no doubt about it.
-- GameDay notwithstanding, I'd rather play Duke this Wednesday, all things considered. Coming off an emotional win and heading on the road, from an intangibles perspective there are few riper upsets than Notre Dame over Duke this week. I think they'll get a cold-water reality check in South Bend, and I'd rather be the team giving it to them than the team right after.
**********************************************
-- North Carolina and Wake Forest are charter members of the ACC, and have shared a conference since 1936 when Wake joined the Southern Conference. It's about an hour and a half drive between the two schools. They first met in football in 1888 and have played 105 games against each other. That meeting in 1888 was the first college football game in the state of North Carolina. So it makes perfect sense that they'd want to play each other more than once every goddam seven years. Nice college football world you've delivered us, O oligarchs of the sport. Throw bread and circuses at the drooling masses in the form of a playoff thing, and meantime make sure you set everything else up to make the least sense possible.
Of course, I don't gripe without offering a solution (much) and I've already put forth a great idea to fix the problem. The best idea.
-- It was interesting to read about WR transfer T.J. Thorpe in this Jeff White article; coming to UVA was already on his mind (and leaving UNC was already decided) even as he was catching the game-winning touchdown against in October. That kind of thing is probably more common than is ever reported, especially in basketball, but it's rarely admitted.
-- Lacrosse season is here sooner than you think, so it's a good time to loosen up for it by starting with opinionz on the newest rule changes:
* Faceoff rule changes: They'll be just about transparent to the vast majority of everyone watching the game. Former FOGO guys might get interviewed by Inside Lacrosse or something, and air their gripes or praises, but nobody else will see a difference. Cleaning up faceoff play is generally always welcome, but most of the time when a faceoff violation is called, nobody ever sees what happened anyway. This won't change anything.
* Timeout changes: If the ball is to be restarted from inside the field of play, such as on an offside call, only the team with the ball can call timeout. Nobody really was complaining about that, but it's a small positive tweak nonetheless.
* Phase-in of a requirement to have a 30-second shot clock displayed for when stall warnings are given out; previously, the refs kept the time themselves and the players were left to guess. I emphatically don't want a shot clock in lacrosse, but "some schools can't afford them" was always one of the lamest arguments against them. Spend a couple hundred dollars, man. Not having the clock on the field was like having basketball's block-charge arc in the rulebook but not on the court, and the same bullshit poverty reason was given for not painting them on. This is both a positive step for the rules as they're written now, and a huge negative step in that it smells strongly of a precursor to having the full-time shot clock instituted for good.
* You can now land in the crease after scoring, provided you didn't leave your feet before you shot. Fine, good, dandy, because invariably you'd see about three to five perfectly good goals a year called back for that, and they shouldn't be. Good compromise between not letting people just launch themselves and not forcing them to make like the Flying Wallendas around the crease.
* Addition of an over-and-back rule. Used to be they'd either require you to go through the clearing clock again, or put on a stall warning if you were just being stubborn about sitting on the ball. Now you lose the ball right away, like in basketball, and this is suddenly a really dangerous thing to do because it's a quick restart and the ball is already in your defensive half with a wide-open field to play with.
* Last year for these jerseys, because in 2016 your numbers will have to contrast. Never liked those.
-- With a big basketball game this Saturday and lacrosse and baseball fast approaching, I feel a few midweek posts coming on.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
turtle stomping day
I felt like yesterday's game deserved not to wait til Monday for a reaction, then I wondered why. Trash thrown on the floor, cheers and obscenities hurled at injured players, and whiny Duke-like bitching about the referees that put the home team in the bonus less than three minutes into the second half - in short, there was nothing out of the ordinary for a basketball game night in College Park.
-- Don't forget that there's soccer this weekend. The kind of football UVA is good at. The women are on ESPNU, Friday at 5, and the men on Saturday at 1, on the Georgetown free video site.
ESPN, the ACC, and the Big Ten conspired to slap UVA in the face with a trip to the most poisonous atmosphere in hoops (although, since my contention is that that decision was made right about the time Maryland announced their departure, they probably did so before UVA was a conference champ) and the Hoos responded like you want a top-ten team to do. In a game that wasn't as close as the double-digit margin of victory indicated, the Hoos kept their composure perfectly and walked out of the Terrible Customer Service Center with a very big win.
"Composure" truly is the word of the day. It's a testament either to Justin Anderson's class or good sense that he doesn't stare down the Maryland student section (which is known for never cheering for football or basketball players who decommit from elsewhere in favor of Maryland, because that sort of thing is uncouth) and crotch-grab every time he scores. It's a testament to Tony Bennett's Zen-like calmness that he didn't pile up eight technicals after watching the Big Ten refs compete to see who could call the ticky-tackest foul. And it's a testament to Tony's style and the whole team's buy-in that the game might as well have been played in a church for all the team seemed to outwardly care about the environment.
I am, by the way, not interested in hearing about Dez Wells or Evan Smotrycz, the Terps' walking wounded who missed the game. Neither is at all indispensible on the defensive end - particularly Smotrycz - and UVA turned in their second-best offensive performance of the season, after only the Tennessee State game. The Hoos dominated the interior scoring game; in fact, other than Devon Hall and Isaiah Wilkins, who took a shot each and missed it (as well as those who never attempted one) every single UVA player shot .500 or better from two.
There's every reason to believe this team will go places. (Not that there wasn't before, but it's still nice to have confirmation.) While I don't really believe in the "defense travels" meme, there's still likely to be something to the idea that good defensive teams are also good at consistency - or maybe more specifically, Tony Bennett's team are really good at consistency, because it's a necessary condition of being this damn good at a defensive system. The ACC is shaping up to have three main contenders. Being one of them right now is all you can ask for.
********************************************
-- A butterfly flaps its wings in New York and in College Park, a foul is called. Possibly the best coaching job of the night was Tony Bennett orchestrating the rotation so that nobody fouled out - even while missing Darion Atkins most of the game and Justin Anderson for a big chunk of it.
-- Not only did Justin Anderson not travel after that rebound (he did in fact dribble a couple times), he was fouled on the play. The refs just decided that one time to let Jake Layman go over the back without a whistle. This by the way was after Layman managed to make it from the top of the key to the low block without a single dribble, this in the first half.
-- Which is a better conference - one with three probably-elite teams at the top, an assortment of good to very good ones, and a horrible bottom half? Or one with one possibly-elite team and a whole huge pack of very good ones? The results say the latter, I guess - but the way things tend to be defined in the end, which all comes down to tournament performance, the ACC is likely to nose out the Big Ten. It's worth noting that the B1G has six ranked teams and all but one lost in the Challenge.
-- This is fun:
Running offense against Kentucky or Louisville is like driving through a tornado — it’s complete chaos, things are flying at you from all angles, and you’re probably crapping your pants as it’s happening. But if you keep your cool and get a little lucky, you can survive. Meanwhile, running offense against Virginia is like driving into a brick wall — you can stay where you are and be perfectly safe, but there’s only one way to get where you want, and that wall isn’t going anywhere.And the whole rest of it also happens to be exactly the kind of positive press that attracts attention of the best kind.
-- Don't forget that there's soccer this weekend. The kind of football UVA is good at. The women are on ESPNU, Friday at 5, and the men on Saturday at 1, on the Georgetown free video site.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
2014 hoops preview: players, part 1
yeeessssssssss it's that time
you know my name now.
What a difference a really ridiculously good year makes. Last season we kicked this off by taking note of some of the various preseason projections for UVA, and I added about ten exclamation points to the one that had UVA 11th in the season. Now you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone putting the Hoos that low. About the only thing that's the same is that UVA is still predicted fourth in the conference by the preseason media poll, but the rest of the contenders had to rise a lot higher in the rankings for that not to look silly.
There's not a lot of roster turnover from the team that won the completely undisputed and unshared ACC championship. Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell have graduated, sent on their way in perfect style and now trying to carve out a niche in the NBA. Mike Scott's done it, so you'd be a fool to bet against them. Teven Jones transferred out; initially he was headed to Appalachian State, but would've lost a year of eligibility, so he resurfaced at Tarleton State, out in East Bum, Texas. He'll be thirty miles past the middle of nowhere, but Tarleton State has a really highly-ranked D-II program, and probably will be even better for his arrival.
Replacing them on the roster are four freshmen and a transfer, finally filling out the quota of 13 scholarship players. Darius Thompson, who played a year for Cuonzo Martin at Tennessee and then transferred up our way when Martin left, is taking his mandatory redshirt year, which leaves 12 eligible guys. This means some hard decisions; Tony prefers a rotation of about nine or ten, and that tenth guy tends to get squeezed out as the season goes on. He also prefers to put off redshirt decisions (or at least, put off telling us about them) to the last minute, so this preview is going to speak of all four freshman as if they'll play, but with the understanding that maybe two of them actually will.
And as always, you're going to have to wait til later to get the whole thing. First half today.
#0 - Devon Hall - rFr. PG
One newcomer we know for sure about though: Devon Hall will be on the court. This is the kinda cool thing about establishing a pattern of redshirting incoming freshmen, which by the way is awfully rare in basketball. You get your new wave of freshmen, but you also get an infusion of brand-new talent who knows the ropes a little bit.
This team is quickly becoming the property of London Perrantes, who came in as the surprise second point guard after Hall looked like the handpicked one. Perrantes made himself damn well indispensible last year while Hall sat. But there's an obvious role for Hall now, and interestingly it's mainly to do with losing Harris.
Ever since Malcolm Brogdon set foot on the court, the deal with him has been, "ok, he can run the point, but how can we find a way for him not to?" With Harris gone, Brogdon has to shoulder the lead scorer's role. Simply put, Brogdon is going to be the go-to guy, a role which he started to ease into last year (how about that shot at Pitt?) and which he'll be better at if he's not concerned with playing backup point. While Bennett doesn't make it a point to have a dedicated, rigidly-defined point guard, the ideal situation is if Hall's and Perrantes's minutes percentages add up to just about 100.
The scouting report on Hall was that he was very much a pass-first point guard. I wonder how well that's stood up over time. Hall will basically be backing up Perrantes, which means he'll see a lot of time playing with and against second units. It's one thing to look to set up your teammates if you're looking inside to Anthony Gill or outside to Brogdon. It might be different if you have less of a scoring contingent on the floor and are facing off against other second-stringers. I don't know that I have a lot of concrete reason to say this, but I think Hall will be encouraged to find his shot. He's going to have a big size advantage against most other 1's that defend him, and he won't give up much in the quickness department. It's always interesting when you put the offense in the hands of someone new, but if Hall can be a scoring punch off the bench, UVA's depth would be really scary. Doesn't have to be much. A steady four, five points a game would do it. UVA's backcourt is fairly young this year, so a good-sized contribution from Hall is more important than it might seem.
#1 - Justin Anderson - Jr. SF
Winning makes UVA basketball fun to watch. Justin Anderson makes it entertaining. Anderson is always described as wildly athletic, and he can definitely jump.... but, truth is, he's not jumping out of the gym nor flying out of his shoes. Anderson is blessed with incredible body control that lets him pull off ridiculous moves that you swear he ripped off of Cirque du Soleil, resulting in highlight-reel blocks, saves, steals, passes, and dunks. And he plays with an infectious enthusiasm and a Cheshire cat grin.
Anderson basically does everything pretty well. Even his shot-blocking, while flashy, isn't all the way up the stat charts. He's simply not always in position to do it, because he's not usually a post defender, and most of his blocks come on breakaways or when he or a teammate is otherwise beat. Besides that body control, Anderson has an impeccable sense of timing, and a wily ability to bait the opponent into thinking he has a free 'n' clear layup.
He also is a very good passer, a more than adequate and very versatile halfcourt defender, and his two-point shooting percentage was third-best on the team last year (among players who shot enough for a reasonable sample size), largely because he dunks the ball a hell of a lot. Tremendously efficient shot, the slam dunk. He rebounds some, shoots a respectable free throw, and generally does a little bit of everything.
Thing is though - now that he's an upperclassman, more is going to be expected than simply doing most things pretty well. He still could stand to improve his three-point shot, which was at best streaky last year and not too reliable. He's got to take some part of his game - any part of his game, it really doesn't even matter - up a level or two. Lockdown defender, star rebounder, improved scoring touch - whatever it is, it'll help. Basketball teams are fluid things that need a little time to find an identity, and this one can morph its roles to match what Anderson does, as long as he brings something new. Nobody's quite sure if Anderson is ready for a full-time starting role - he looked awfully good coming off the bench, to the extent of being named the media's choice for ACC 6th-man of the year. But if he doesn't move into the starting lineup, we're even less sure who would.
#2 - B.J. Stith - Fr. SG
Over three years ago - that's how long ago B.J. Stith committed to UVA. Remember the Peach Bowl, how long ago that seems? Now go back almost four more months. The hoops team featured Sammy Zeglinski and Assane Sene. And Malcolm Brogdon as a freshman, and jeez he's only a junior now with all his best basketball in front of him and now you know why his teammates like to call him an old-ass man.
So it'd be the apex of cruel irony to make UVA fans wait another year to see a Stith suit up again for the Hoos. I think Stith is among the more likely freshmen to have a role, though. When Brogdon comes off the court, there isn't really a backup two guard. Used to be you could have Harris do that; he could flex easily between the two and three. I don't think you have that kind of player this year, at least, not one that's easily evident; Anderson's not enough of a shooter. Playing Stith would give us a great shot at having a four-man rotation in the backcourt that can score with whatever combo is on the floor.
That's the rationale for playing him. For redshirting him? Defense. Nobody ever really knows until the tipoff exactly what Tony is thinking in terms of defense, but Stith's main competition for playing time is Marial Shayok, who by most accounts is the superior defender, and good enough to earn his way onto the court. If I were handicapping things, I'd tip things ever so slightly in favor of Shayok, which pushes Stith into a redshirt role if he's OK with it. Tony won't redshirt someone who doesn't want to, but won't go out of his way to put him into games, either. Stith has a good head on his shoulders and a dad who won't let him screw himself up, so I'll put in a SWAG here and say Stith redshirts.
#4 - Marial Shayok - Fr. SG
Marquette's loss was the state of Virginia's gain; when Buzz Williams bolted for VT, he took a fair amount of his recruiting class with him, but one of his charges found his way to Charlottesville instead. Shayok definitely adds to the diversity of the team - he's a Sudanese-Canadian, and comes from a basketball family.
He's listed at almost the exact same size as Stith - 6'5", 207 vs. 205 - but there's a clear positional difference. Stith is a shooting guard, full stop. Shayok has more versatility, having played everything from the 1 through the 5 in high school. Despite the size similarities, Shayok is basically more of a three who might grow into a four... but could play some two right now. He has a chance to be that guy who can flex between positions. That, along with his reported quick study on defense, has him in line to get on the court early.
That's a lot to ask for a freshman, true. But when's the last time you saw Tony put an unprepared player on the court? (Hint: No.) Shayok's calling card when he came in was his versatility; I think if he's in the rotation more than a few minutes here and there, that in itself is proof of his ability to guard multiple positions.
#5 - Darion Atkins - Sr. PF
Only one senior on the team this year, and here he is. I don't want to say Atkins had a disappointing season last year, but he did end up in the back end of the rotation. (I do not think it's an attitude problem, as some do suggest; Atkins projects that image with his facial expressions, but - that's just sort of how he looks, all the time.) His peak so far has been the beginning of his sophomore year when he and Mitchell were forming an eye-opening combo of tremendously athletic power forwards that gave teams absolute fits trying to score on them.
Unfortunately, Atkins developed shin splints, which, even when he did play, robbed him of that bounciness, and he looked crushingly average the rest of the way. Last year, he got overtaken, mostly by Anthony Gill, who proved the far superior scorer and a good enough defender.
Now, though, there's no Mitchell. He'll be the hardest player to replace too, no offense to Harris. Mitchell quarterbacked the defense and was never out of position. Atkins probably won't start many games, if at all, and isn't a huge scoring threat. He probably trusts his hook shot a little too much. All the same, helping to replace Mitchell is exactly what he needs to do. Atkins has it in him to be a very good shotblocker, and his offensive rebounding didn't get enough credit last year. If he can carry that over to consistent double-digit minutes every game, he'll be giving us exactly what we need out of him.
#10 - Mike Tobey - Jr. C
Speaking of guys who need to step up. This is a big, big year for Tobey. It would be really unfair to say he's underperformed, but he's also been quite a tease. His game isn't inconsistent. It's just that when he's scoring, he looks smooth and skilled for a big man; when he's not, the same game looks soft and unassertive. It's easy to forget - he's young for his age, to coin a Yogi Berra-ism, and his development is pretty much exactly how it should be. In many respects he's been the victim of his own expectations.
Doesn't let him off the hook to keep on developing, though. 10 points a game is not too much to ask, and it'd be great news for our offense: a consistent scoring source that wasn't there last year. Malcolm Brogdon told ESPN's Andy Katz that the team is going to look inside more, and that's basically code for getting more out of Tobey than 6.4 ppg.
This is doable. Not only does Tobey have very good range for a big, and isn't a hopeless mess at the line like many bigs, his offensive rebounding last year was just shy of elite. He takes care of the ball well, and is also the team's best shot-blocker. He was a starter last year, but was only seventh in minutes; I don't at all expect that to be the case this year. Just getting him on the court for eight more minutes a game will boost his numbers and his impact. Keep him on the development curve at the same time and he's got a chance to open a lot of eyes in the ACC this year.
**********************************************
Game preview as normal tomorrow, and then special weekend-ish continuations of the hoops season preview. Touch not the dial.
you know my name now.
What a difference a really ridiculously good year makes. Last season we kicked this off by taking note of some of the various preseason projections for UVA, and I added about ten exclamation points to the one that had UVA 11th in the season. Now you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone putting the Hoos that low. About the only thing that's the same is that UVA is still predicted fourth in the conference by the preseason media poll, but the rest of the contenders had to rise a lot higher in the rankings for that not to look silly.
There's not a lot of roster turnover from the team that won the completely undisputed and unshared ACC championship. Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell have graduated, sent on their way in perfect style and now trying to carve out a niche in the NBA. Mike Scott's done it, so you'd be a fool to bet against them. Teven Jones transferred out; initially he was headed to Appalachian State, but would've lost a year of eligibility, so he resurfaced at Tarleton State, out in East Bum, Texas. He'll be thirty miles past the middle of nowhere, but Tarleton State has a really highly-ranked D-II program, and probably will be even better for his arrival.
Replacing them on the roster are four freshmen and a transfer, finally filling out the quota of 13 scholarship players. Darius Thompson, who played a year for Cuonzo Martin at Tennessee and then transferred up our way when Martin left, is taking his mandatory redshirt year, which leaves 12 eligible guys. This means some hard decisions; Tony prefers a rotation of about nine or ten, and that tenth guy tends to get squeezed out as the season goes on. He also prefers to put off redshirt decisions (or at least, put off telling us about them) to the last minute, so this preview is going to speak of all four freshman as if they'll play, but with the understanding that maybe two of them actually will.
And as always, you're going to have to wait til later to get the whole thing. First half today.
#0 - Devon Hall - rFr. PG
One newcomer we know for sure about though: Devon Hall will be on the court. This is the kinda cool thing about establishing a pattern of redshirting incoming freshmen, which by the way is awfully rare in basketball. You get your new wave of freshmen, but you also get an infusion of brand-new talent who knows the ropes a little bit.
This team is quickly becoming the property of London Perrantes, who came in as the surprise second point guard after Hall looked like the handpicked one. Perrantes made himself damn well indispensible last year while Hall sat. But there's an obvious role for Hall now, and interestingly it's mainly to do with losing Harris.
Ever since Malcolm Brogdon set foot on the court, the deal with him has been, "ok, he can run the point, but how can we find a way for him not to?" With Harris gone, Brogdon has to shoulder the lead scorer's role. Simply put, Brogdon is going to be the go-to guy, a role which he started to ease into last year (how about that shot at Pitt?) and which he'll be better at if he's not concerned with playing backup point. While Bennett doesn't make it a point to have a dedicated, rigidly-defined point guard, the ideal situation is if Hall's and Perrantes's minutes percentages add up to just about 100.
The scouting report on Hall was that he was very much a pass-first point guard. I wonder how well that's stood up over time. Hall will basically be backing up Perrantes, which means he'll see a lot of time playing with and against second units. It's one thing to look to set up your teammates if you're looking inside to Anthony Gill or outside to Brogdon. It might be different if you have less of a scoring contingent on the floor and are facing off against other second-stringers. I don't know that I have a lot of concrete reason to say this, but I think Hall will be encouraged to find his shot. He's going to have a big size advantage against most other 1's that defend him, and he won't give up much in the quickness department. It's always interesting when you put the offense in the hands of someone new, but if Hall can be a scoring punch off the bench, UVA's depth would be really scary. Doesn't have to be much. A steady four, five points a game would do it. UVA's backcourt is fairly young this year, so a good-sized contribution from Hall is more important than it might seem.
#1 - Justin Anderson - Jr. SF
Winning makes UVA basketball fun to watch. Justin Anderson makes it entertaining. Anderson is always described as wildly athletic, and he can definitely jump.... but, truth is, he's not jumping out of the gym nor flying out of his shoes. Anderson is blessed with incredible body control that lets him pull off ridiculous moves that you swear he ripped off of Cirque du Soleil, resulting in highlight-reel blocks, saves, steals, passes, and dunks. And he plays with an infectious enthusiasm and a Cheshire cat grin.
Anderson basically does everything pretty well. Even his shot-blocking, while flashy, isn't all the way up the stat charts. He's simply not always in position to do it, because he's not usually a post defender, and most of his blocks come on breakaways or when he or a teammate is otherwise beat. Besides that body control, Anderson has an impeccable sense of timing, and a wily ability to bait the opponent into thinking he has a free 'n' clear layup.
He also is a very good passer, a more than adequate and very versatile halfcourt defender, and his two-point shooting percentage was third-best on the team last year (among players who shot enough for a reasonable sample size), largely because he dunks the ball a hell of a lot. Tremendously efficient shot, the slam dunk. He rebounds some, shoots a respectable free throw, and generally does a little bit of everything.
Thing is though - now that he's an upperclassman, more is going to be expected than simply doing most things pretty well. He still could stand to improve his three-point shot, which was at best streaky last year and not too reliable. He's got to take some part of his game - any part of his game, it really doesn't even matter - up a level or two. Lockdown defender, star rebounder, improved scoring touch - whatever it is, it'll help. Basketball teams are fluid things that need a little time to find an identity, and this one can morph its roles to match what Anderson does, as long as he brings something new. Nobody's quite sure if Anderson is ready for a full-time starting role - he looked awfully good coming off the bench, to the extent of being named the media's choice for ACC 6th-man of the year. But if he doesn't move into the starting lineup, we're even less sure who would.
#2 - B.J. Stith - Fr. SG
Over three years ago - that's how long ago B.J. Stith committed to UVA. Remember the Peach Bowl, how long ago that seems? Now go back almost four more months. The hoops team featured Sammy Zeglinski and Assane Sene. And Malcolm Brogdon as a freshman, and jeez he's only a junior now with all his best basketball in front of him and now you know why his teammates like to call him an old-ass man.
So it'd be the apex of cruel irony to make UVA fans wait another year to see a Stith suit up again for the Hoos. I think Stith is among the more likely freshmen to have a role, though. When Brogdon comes off the court, there isn't really a backup two guard. Used to be you could have Harris do that; he could flex easily between the two and three. I don't think you have that kind of player this year, at least, not one that's easily evident; Anderson's not enough of a shooter. Playing Stith would give us a great shot at having a four-man rotation in the backcourt that can score with whatever combo is on the floor.
That's the rationale for playing him. For redshirting him? Defense. Nobody ever really knows until the tipoff exactly what Tony is thinking in terms of defense, but Stith's main competition for playing time is Marial Shayok, who by most accounts is the superior defender, and good enough to earn his way onto the court. If I were handicapping things, I'd tip things ever so slightly in favor of Shayok, which pushes Stith into a redshirt role if he's OK with it. Tony won't redshirt someone who doesn't want to, but won't go out of his way to put him into games, either. Stith has a good head on his shoulders and a dad who won't let him screw himself up, so I'll put in a SWAG here and say Stith redshirts.
#4 - Marial Shayok - Fr. SG
Marquette's loss was the state of Virginia's gain; when Buzz Williams bolted for VT, he took a fair amount of his recruiting class with him, but one of his charges found his way to Charlottesville instead. Shayok definitely adds to the diversity of the team - he's a Sudanese-Canadian, and comes from a basketball family.
He's listed at almost the exact same size as Stith - 6'5", 207 vs. 205 - but there's a clear positional difference. Stith is a shooting guard, full stop. Shayok has more versatility, having played everything from the 1 through the 5 in high school. Despite the size similarities, Shayok is basically more of a three who might grow into a four... but could play some two right now. He has a chance to be that guy who can flex between positions. That, along with his reported quick study on defense, has him in line to get on the court early.
That's a lot to ask for a freshman, true. But when's the last time you saw Tony put an unprepared player on the court? (Hint: No.) Shayok's calling card when he came in was his versatility; I think if he's in the rotation more than a few minutes here and there, that in itself is proof of his ability to guard multiple positions.
#5 - Darion Atkins - Sr. PF
Only one senior on the team this year, and here he is. I don't want to say Atkins had a disappointing season last year, but he did end up in the back end of the rotation. (I do not think it's an attitude problem, as some do suggest; Atkins projects that image with his facial expressions, but - that's just sort of how he looks, all the time.) His peak so far has been the beginning of his sophomore year when he and Mitchell were forming an eye-opening combo of tremendously athletic power forwards that gave teams absolute fits trying to score on them.
Unfortunately, Atkins developed shin splints, which, even when he did play, robbed him of that bounciness, and he looked crushingly average the rest of the way. Last year, he got overtaken, mostly by Anthony Gill, who proved the far superior scorer and a good enough defender.
Now, though, there's no Mitchell. He'll be the hardest player to replace too, no offense to Harris. Mitchell quarterbacked the defense and was never out of position. Atkins probably won't start many games, if at all, and isn't a huge scoring threat. He probably trusts his hook shot a little too much. All the same, helping to replace Mitchell is exactly what he needs to do. Atkins has it in him to be a very good shotblocker, and his offensive rebounding didn't get enough credit last year. If he can carry that over to consistent double-digit minutes every game, he'll be giving us exactly what we need out of him.
#10 - Mike Tobey - Jr. C
Speaking of guys who need to step up. This is a big, big year for Tobey. It would be really unfair to say he's underperformed, but he's also been quite a tease. His game isn't inconsistent. It's just that when he's scoring, he looks smooth and skilled for a big man; when he's not, the same game looks soft and unassertive. It's easy to forget - he's young for his age, to coin a Yogi Berra-ism, and his development is pretty much exactly how it should be. In many respects he's been the victim of his own expectations.
Doesn't let him off the hook to keep on developing, though. 10 points a game is not too much to ask, and it'd be great news for our offense: a consistent scoring source that wasn't there last year. Malcolm Brogdon told ESPN's Andy Katz that the team is going to look inside more, and that's basically code for getting more out of Tobey than 6.4 ppg.
This is doable. Not only does Tobey have very good range for a big, and isn't a hopeless mess at the line like many bigs, his offensive rebounding last year was just shy of elite. He takes care of the ball well, and is also the team's best shot-blocker. He was a starter last year, but was only seventh in minutes; I don't at all expect that to be the case this year. Just getting him on the court for eight more minutes a game will boost his numbers and his impact. Keep him on the development curve at the same time and he's got a chance to open a lot of eyes in the ACC this year.
**********************************************
Game preview as normal tomorrow, and then special weekend-ish continuations of the hoops season preview. Touch not the dial.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
basketball season in review, 2
Continuing the series begun last week.
#12 - Joe Harris - Sr. SF
This season: As predicted, Harris's raw numbers went down this year. He scored less and rebounded less, and played fewer minutes too. And as predicted, this was a good sign; it meant more reliance on a larger number of teammates. Spread things out and it can only be a good thing.
Harris's shooting percentages were down across the board, too, though in the case of his three-point percentage, nobody would ever complain about a 40% success rate there. People did wonder what happened to his free-throw shooting, as a normally extremely reliable shooter from the stripe suddenly seemed to brick way more than his share. Despite that, his KenPom O-rating actually went up - most likely the result of reaching a career high for assist rate and a career low for turnover rate. (Besides, if he'd shot .740 instead of .640 from the line, it would've meant less than one more make every three games.)
Even though Harris passed the end-of-game heroics torch, I think it's clear whose team this was. Every year a basketball team finds a new identity; this year, it was easy to see Harris's fingerprints. His ability to do just about anything well, nothing notably spectacular, and score in whatever way was necessary and expedient, that was essentially the whole offense in a nutshell, and the versatility Tony wants out of his guards. He was just as likely to be setting a screen as running off of one, and you get the impression it never occurred to him to think it wasn't his job to screen for someone else.
We would also be remiss if we failed to remember that it was Harris's visit to Tony Bennett that instigated the famous turnaround. Would Tony have made the changes on offense that he did, if Harris hadn't done that? Who knows. It's not worth the speculation. Tony got the leadership he wanted out of his senior class, responded positively, and the rest is banners.
For his career, Harris finished with 1,698 points, good for 11th on UVA's all-time list, below Curtis Staples and above J.R. Reynolds. Tremendous company. No doubt exists in anyone's mind that between that and the trophies he brought home, the pantheon of UVA all-time greats added a new name this year, and his name is Joey Hoops.
Next season: Obviously, we will follow his professional career with great interest, though the NBA is a fringe possibility at best. Chad Ford has him 99th out of 100 on that board of his. UVA will definitely miss his scoring and leadership, but if the culture that we think exists, actually exists, someone will fill the void. As long as we can find someone to shoot threes as good as he does.
#13 - Anthony Gill - So. PF
This season: We were promised that Tony had really dug up a gem in the South Carolina transfer, and I for one am not disappointed. Gill brought a powerful scoring punch to the frontcourt, and coming off the bench, often found himself guarded by someone who was totally incapable of the task.
His favorite weapon was the face-up drive from the elbow; probably three-quarters of the guys guarding him couldn't stop that move. Gill drew a ton of fouls this way; despite playing fewer than half the available minutes, he led the team in free-throw attempts, and with a .627 percentage from the line, wasn't stellar in converting them but was good enough to make it work. (And he hit two of the year's absolutely hugest free throws, calmly knocking down both ends of a 1-and-1 against Pitt to turn a 1-point lead into a 3-point lead. Justin Anderson's block finished off the win, but Gill's shooting set the scene.)
Gill was also a feisty offensive rebounder, and got more comfortable (and aggressive) on defense as the season went on. He was credited with 20 blocks this season, 16 of which came after the Tennessee game and fully half of which came in ACC and NCAA tournament play plus the season-ending Maryland game.
Next season: Chances are very good that Gill makes the move to the starting lineup next year, and how he handles that transition is one of the biggest questions to be answered. That's a twofold issue; the first part is, how will his offensive game evolve and will it continue to be as effective when always going against the other team's best? The second is on defense, and how well he continues to absorb Tony's system. That's still a work in progress, as there were occasions this year where you could catch him out of place. In only his second year learning the ropes, that's not exactly a strike against him, but there'll be an expectation that he continues to eliminate those mistakes. As already pointed out, that progress was on display even as the season continued, so there's no reason at all for pessimism.
And by the way, as Gill shot 39% on the occasional three-pointer while at South Carolina, it just might be that we should be on the lookout for Tony to let him incorporate that into his game too. We'll see.
#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - So. SG
This season: Coming off a redshirt year induced by a stubborn foot injury, I fretted that that kind of injury could turn into a chronic thing, and I don't think anyone really knew for sure if his foot would hold up to a full season of 30-minute-a-game pounding. At least, anyone outside the team. Brogdon didn't play like he was exactly worried and Tony didn't play him like he was, either.
Obviously, it held up and nobody even thought about it after December. After a freshman year as a complementary scorer, taking a backseat role to Jontel Evans and Sammy Zeglinski - one in which he frankly turned the ball over too much - Brogdon burst back onto the scene as a new man and the Hoos' leading scorer.
Thanks to London Perrantes, Brogdon wasn't asked to be the primary ballhandler (though he did still continue to act as point guard at times), and could focus his efforts on the basket. In ACC play and beyond he averaged 14.5 points a game, drilled any number of huge shots, and even occasionally put in an appearance on KenPom's top ten players in the country, showing up as high as #8. He was an indispensable end-game player, as a near-automatic free-throw shooter, and his size and UVA's penchant for forcing outside shots allowed him to become a prolific rebounder for a guard. Combine that with a flip-flopping of his assists and turnovers, and you have the profile of a new Top Dog for this team going forward.
Next season: There'll be only one senior, and he's almost certain to come off the bench, which means this is Brogdon's team now, and all that entails. Doesn't get any simpler, or more complex, than that.
#23 - London Perrantes - Fr. PG
This season: On one of the message boards early this year, I don't even remember which one, someone posted that they loved that Perrantes had #23 because it meant he had guts and swag, picking Michael Jordan's number and all. I wasn't particularly big on that idea, and still am not. It's his play that earned the Cali Swag label.
Actually, "swag" is not how I'd describe it; Perrantes was simply cool and unflappable and brought a surprising innate basketball sense to the court. So often with point guards, what they're doing right isn't really quantifiable, but you know it when you see it. With Perrantes, it didn't take long to become clear that he was doing things right.
Perrantes started most games in the non-conference, but not the Tennessee game; he was put back in the starting lineup for the ACC slate, and a couple weeks later when he delivered a season-high 9 assists against UNC (and only one turnover) we were all wondering why he'd ever been out of the starting five. But the real turning point of his season might've been the Virginia Tech game in Cassell Coliseum. There, with UVA in real danger of being upset, Perrantes hit more three pointers (three) than he'd hit in the past seven games combined, and all at crucial junctures. The rest of the season, that game inclusive, he was an incredible 24-for-39 from beyond the arc. That's 61.5%.
With actual scoring - 8.7 ppg during that stretch - coming from the point guard position, UVA's offense was suddenly extremely hard to stop, and the O-rating started taking leaps and bounds every time out. The offense was KenPom's 50th in the country going into that VT game, and 20th going into the final game of the year. By that time, people were having second thoughts about whether Tyler Ennis really was the conference's best freshman point guard.
Next season: Perrantes has grabbed the starting PG job with a vengeance and probably won't let go til those pesky NCAA eligibility rules make him. Expect him to be more assertive for his own shot next year, and expect that not to hurt his distributive skills one bit.
#25 - Akil Mitchell - Sr. PF
This season: Mitchell did a lot of things for the team. He rebounded at a near-elite level, midseason he rediscovered his baby hook that worked so well for him last year, and he brought a fiery attitude to the court that was second only to Justin Anderson's. (We won't mention the sometimes facepalm-inducing free-throws.)
Mitchell's real value, though: his picture-perfect understanding of Tony Bennett's defense. It's so damn hard sometimes to find someone with such a combination of athleticism and court sense. Mitchell was never, and I mean never, out of position. He hedged on ball screens higher and harder than anyone and never fouled in the process. He could take a ballhander practically over and back doing that and still recover to the paint in time. He could double-team and recover in a flash, because while some guys have their shooting stroke committed to muscle memory, Mitchell had his defensive positioning there instead.
Not bad for a guy who was considered the biggest project of the whole six-man class. Arguably, the defensive contributions Mitchell brought will be much harder to replace than Joe Harris. Scoring is something a lot of people can do; exquisite defense is rarer. It's also less memorable in the mind of the public at large, but if you named an all-defensive team from the annals of all UVA history, it's not complete without Mitchell.
Next season: Same as Harris, we wish only the very best in a possible (and almost certainly overseas) pro career.
#30 - Thomas Rogers - Sr. SG
This season: So I don't usually include the walk-ons in the picture, but Thomas Rogers provided the single best moment of the season by nailing a three to put the perfect cap on the Syracuse game. This team won two different ACC titles and earned a #1 seed and was on the winning end of more than one big nailbiter and they were never so excited as when that three found the bottom without even stopping for the rim. It proved that when they talked in interviews about winning for each other, there wasn't a fiber of canned cliche to it.
Next season: Has a UVA degree, and therefore is set for life.
#32 - Darion Atkins - Jr. PF
This season: Coming off of severe shin splints which derailed his sophomore year, Atkins unfortunately found himself in a no-man's land. Not as good a defender as Mitchell nor as good a scorer as Gill, nor as big as Mike Tobey, Atkins appeared in every game but got pushed to the back of the rotation. When in the game, at times there were flashes of the Atkins that started last season and was a terrifying force when paired with Mitchell. But only flashes.
Next season: Mitchell leaves behind 26 minutes a game that need to be filled, and I don't picture Tobey and Gill picking up more than six each. Even with two frontcourt freshmen coming into the picture, it'd be awfully surprising to see Atkins not add to the 10 minutes a game he got this year. Some consider him a ripe candidate to transfer and play one season elsewhere, but he hasn't graduated (to my knowledge) and it would be somewhat surprising to see him sit for a year to play for a year. (Part of the reason people think "transfer" is because Atkins never looks all that into the game, but his bored facial expression is just... that's just how he looks all the time. When he goes flying to block a shot, which he does often enough, questioning his into-it-ness is a lot harder.) Besides, the fact that Teven Jones announced his transfer means Tony has already had the "honest talk" with his team over their seasons and their anticipated roles.
So Atkins probably boosts his minutes to the 13-16 range. Substantially more scoring out of him is not likely, but he'll be asked to haul in more rebounds, maybe even double his per-game total there. He may have to fight off the newcomers Wilkins and Salt to be the first big off the bench, but he's got an obvious head start in the defensive system, which makes a big difference.
*******************************************
This concludes our look at the team itself. Once the early entries to the NBA draft are all sorted out, then I can write something semi-coherent about an early look at next year's ACC.
#12 - Joe Harris - Sr. SF
This season: As predicted, Harris's raw numbers went down this year. He scored less and rebounded less, and played fewer minutes too. And as predicted, this was a good sign; it meant more reliance on a larger number of teammates. Spread things out and it can only be a good thing.
Harris's shooting percentages were down across the board, too, though in the case of his three-point percentage, nobody would ever complain about a 40% success rate there. People did wonder what happened to his free-throw shooting, as a normally extremely reliable shooter from the stripe suddenly seemed to brick way more than his share. Despite that, his KenPom O-rating actually went up - most likely the result of reaching a career high for assist rate and a career low for turnover rate. (Besides, if he'd shot .740 instead of .640 from the line, it would've meant less than one more make every three games.)
Even though Harris passed the end-of-game heroics torch, I think it's clear whose team this was. Every year a basketball team finds a new identity; this year, it was easy to see Harris's fingerprints. His ability to do just about anything well, nothing notably spectacular, and score in whatever way was necessary and expedient, that was essentially the whole offense in a nutshell, and the versatility Tony wants out of his guards. He was just as likely to be setting a screen as running off of one, and you get the impression it never occurred to him to think it wasn't his job to screen for someone else.
We would also be remiss if we failed to remember that it was Harris's visit to Tony Bennett that instigated the famous turnaround. Would Tony have made the changes on offense that he did, if Harris hadn't done that? Who knows. It's not worth the speculation. Tony got the leadership he wanted out of his senior class, responded positively, and the rest is banners.
For his career, Harris finished with 1,698 points, good for 11th on UVA's all-time list, below Curtis Staples and above J.R. Reynolds. Tremendous company. No doubt exists in anyone's mind that between that and the trophies he brought home, the pantheon of UVA all-time greats added a new name this year, and his name is Joey Hoops.
Next season: Obviously, we will follow his professional career with great interest, though the NBA is a fringe possibility at best. Chad Ford has him 99th out of 100 on that board of his. UVA will definitely miss his scoring and leadership, but if the culture that we think exists, actually exists, someone will fill the void. As long as we can find someone to shoot threes as good as he does.
#13 - Anthony Gill - So. PF
This season: We were promised that Tony had really dug up a gem in the South Carolina transfer, and I for one am not disappointed. Gill brought a powerful scoring punch to the frontcourt, and coming off the bench, often found himself guarded by someone who was totally incapable of the task.
His favorite weapon was the face-up drive from the elbow; probably three-quarters of the guys guarding him couldn't stop that move. Gill drew a ton of fouls this way; despite playing fewer than half the available minutes, he led the team in free-throw attempts, and with a .627 percentage from the line, wasn't stellar in converting them but was good enough to make it work. (And he hit two of the year's absolutely hugest free throws, calmly knocking down both ends of a 1-and-1 against Pitt to turn a 1-point lead into a 3-point lead. Justin Anderson's block finished off the win, but Gill's shooting set the scene.)
Gill was also a feisty offensive rebounder, and got more comfortable (and aggressive) on defense as the season went on. He was credited with 20 blocks this season, 16 of which came after the Tennessee game and fully half of which came in ACC and NCAA tournament play plus the season-ending Maryland game.
Next season: Chances are very good that Gill makes the move to the starting lineup next year, and how he handles that transition is one of the biggest questions to be answered. That's a twofold issue; the first part is, how will his offensive game evolve and will it continue to be as effective when always going against the other team's best? The second is on defense, and how well he continues to absorb Tony's system. That's still a work in progress, as there were occasions this year where you could catch him out of place. In only his second year learning the ropes, that's not exactly a strike against him, but there'll be an expectation that he continues to eliminate those mistakes. As already pointed out, that progress was on display even as the season continued, so there's no reason at all for pessimism.
And by the way, as Gill shot 39% on the occasional three-pointer while at South Carolina, it just might be that we should be on the lookout for Tony to let him incorporate that into his game too. We'll see.
#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - So. SG
This season: Coming off a redshirt year induced by a stubborn foot injury, I fretted that that kind of injury could turn into a chronic thing, and I don't think anyone really knew for sure if his foot would hold up to a full season of 30-minute-a-game pounding. At least, anyone outside the team. Brogdon didn't play like he was exactly worried and Tony didn't play him like he was, either.
Obviously, it held up and nobody even thought about it after December. After a freshman year as a complementary scorer, taking a backseat role to Jontel Evans and Sammy Zeglinski - one in which he frankly turned the ball over too much - Brogdon burst back onto the scene as a new man and the Hoos' leading scorer.
Thanks to London Perrantes, Brogdon wasn't asked to be the primary ballhandler (though he did still continue to act as point guard at times), and could focus his efforts on the basket. In ACC play and beyond he averaged 14.5 points a game, drilled any number of huge shots, and even occasionally put in an appearance on KenPom's top ten players in the country, showing up as high as #8. He was an indispensable end-game player, as a near-automatic free-throw shooter, and his size and UVA's penchant for forcing outside shots allowed him to become a prolific rebounder for a guard. Combine that with a flip-flopping of his assists and turnovers, and you have the profile of a new Top Dog for this team going forward.
Next season: There'll be only one senior, and he's almost certain to come off the bench, which means this is Brogdon's team now, and all that entails. Doesn't get any simpler, or more complex, than that.
#23 - London Perrantes - Fr. PG
This season: On one of the message boards early this year, I don't even remember which one, someone posted that they loved that Perrantes had #23 because it meant he had guts and swag, picking Michael Jordan's number and all. I wasn't particularly big on that idea, and still am not. It's his play that earned the Cali Swag label.
Actually, "swag" is not how I'd describe it; Perrantes was simply cool and unflappable and brought a surprising innate basketball sense to the court. So often with point guards, what they're doing right isn't really quantifiable, but you know it when you see it. With Perrantes, it didn't take long to become clear that he was doing things right.
Perrantes started most games in the non-conference, but not the Tennessee game; he was put back in the starting lineup for the ACC slate, and a couple weeks later when he delivered a season-high 9 assists against UNC (and only one turnover) we were all wondering why he'd ever been out of the starting five. But the real turning point of his season might've been the Virginia Tech game in Cassell Coliseum. There, with UVA in real danger of being upset, Perrantes hit more three pointers (three) than he'd hit in the past seven games combined, and all at crucial junctures. The rest of the season, that game inclusive, he was an incredible 24-for-39 from beyond the arc. That's 61.5%.
With actual scoring - 8.7 ppg during that stretch - coming from the point guard position, UVA's offense was suddenly extremely hard to stop, and the O-rating started taking leaps and bounds every time out. The offense was KenPom's 50th in the country going into that VT game, and 20th going into the final game of the year. By that time, people were having second thoughts about whether Tyler Ennis really was the conference's best freshman point guard.
Next season: Perrantes has grabbed the starting PG job with a vengeance and probably won't let go til those pesky NCAA eligibility rules make him. Expect him to be more assertive for his own shot next year, and expect that not to hurt his distributive skills one bit.
#25 - Akil Mitchell - Sr. PF
This season: Mitchell did a lot of things for the team. He rebounded at a near-elite level, midseason he rediscovered his baby hook that worked so well for him last year, and he brought a fiery attitude to the court that was second only to Justin Anderson's. (We won't mention the sometimes facepalm-inducing free-throws.)
Mitchell's real value, though: his picture-perfect understanding of Tony Bennett's defense. It's so damn hard sometimes to find someone with such a combination of athleticism and court sense. Mitchell was never, and I mean never, out of position. He hedged on ball screens higher and harder than anyone and never fouled in the process. He could take a ballhander practically over and back doing that and still recover to the paint in time. He could double-team and recover in a flash, because while some guys have their shooting stroke committed to muscle memory, Mitchell had his defensive positioning there instead.
Not bad for a guy who was considered the biggest project of the whole six-man class. Arguably, the defensive contributions Mitchell brought will be much harder to replace than Joe Harris. Scoring is something a lot of people can do; exquisite defense is rarer. It's also less memorable in the mind of the public at large, but if you named an all-defensive team from the annals of all UVA history, it's not complete without Mitchell.
Next season: Same as Harris, we wish only the very best in a possible (and almost certainly overseas) pro career.
#30 - Thomas Rogers - Sr. SG
This season: So I don't usually include the walk-ons in the picture, but Thomas Rogers provided the single best moment of the season by nailing a three to put the perfect cap on the Syracuse game. This team won two different ACC titles and earned a #1 seed and was on the winning end of more than one big nailbiter and they were never so excited as when that three found the bottom without even stopping for the rim. It proved that when they talked in interviews about winning for each other, there wasn't a fiber of canned cliche to it.
Next season: Has a UVA degree, and therefore is set for life.
#32 - Darion Atkins - Jr. PF
This season: Coming off of severe shin splints which derailed his sophomore year, Atkins unfortunately found himself in a no-man's land. Not as good a defender as Mitchell nor as good a scorer as Gill, nor as big as Mike Tobey, Atkins appeared in every game but got pushed to the back of the rotation. When in the game, at times there were flashes of the Atkins that started last season and was a terrifying force when paired with Mitchell. But only flashes.
Next season: Mitchell leaves behind 26 minutes a game that need to be filled, and I don't picture Tobey and Gill picking up more than six each. Even with two frontcourt freshmen coming into the picture, it'd be awfully surprising to see Atkins not add to the 10 minutes a game he got this year. Some consider him a ripe candidate to transfer and play one season elsewhere, but he hasn't graduated (to my knowledge) and it would be somewhat surprising to see him sit for a year to play for a year. (Part of the reason people think "transfer" is because Atkins never looks all that into the game, but his bored facial expression is just... that's just how he looks all the time. When he goes flying to block a shot, which he does often enough, questioning his into-it-ness is a lot harder.) Besides, the fact that Teven Jones announced his transfer means Tony has already had the "honest talk" with his team over their seasons and their anticipated roles.
So Atkins probably boosts his minutes to the 13-16 range. Substantially more scoring out of him is not likely, but he'll be asked to haul in more rebounds, maybe even double his per-game total there. He may have to fight off the newcomers Wilkins and Salt to be the first big off the bench, but he's got an obvious head start in the defensive system, which makes a big difference.
*******************************************
This concludes our look at the team itself. Once the early entries to the NBA draft are all sorted out, then I can write something semi-coherent about an early look at next year's ACC.
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