game preview: Syracuse

Date/Time: Sunday, March 27; 6:09

TV: TBS

Record against the Orange: 4-3

Last meeting: UVA 73, SU 65; 1/24/16, Charlottesville

Last game: UVA 84, ISU 71 (3/25); SU 63, GU 60 (3/25)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.6 (#351)
SU: 65.3 (#324)

Offense:
UVA: 119.2 (#8)
SU: 110.7 (#53)

Defense:
UVA: 91.5 (#4)
SU: 94.8 (#19)

Pythag:
UVA: .9544 (#1)
SU: .8560 (#28)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (10.8 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 4.5 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (18.4 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 3.0 apg)
SG: Devon Hall (4.4 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.9 apg)
SF: Isaiah Wilkins (4.8 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.9 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Syracuse:

PG: Trevor Cooney (12.8 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 2.3 apg)
SG: Malachi Richardson (13.0 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 2.2 apg)
SF: Michael Gbinije (17.8 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 4.3 apg)
SF: Tyler Lydon (10.2 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 1.2 apg)
PF: Tyler Roberson (9.0 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 1.4 apg)

The first five S16 games went by with minimum suspense.  That included UVA, which toyed with the idea of blowing the Iowa State game on a couple occasions but dismissed the idea each time.  UNC was always going to roll Indiana, so that left ND-Wiscy and SU-GU to try and inject a little drama into the proceedings.  They didn't disappoint.  Syracuse spent most of their game looking destined to fall a little short, until the fact that Gonzaga only played six guys caught up to them, and the Cuse snatched up the trip to the E8.  ND did the same thing to Wisconsin, and now the ACC is guaranteed two slots in the Final Four - no more, and no fewer.

For UVA, it means a familiar opponent in a game for the right to put up a banner.  Syracuse's inclusion in the tournament elicited a "WUT" from a CBS talkinghead during the Selection Show upon announcement, and now they're halfway to the big prize.  They've taken a slightly nontraditional route.  Having been the direct beneficiary of possibly the biggest upset in tourney history is lucky but irrelevant - it still means they took care of business when other teams didn't.

The last time these two teams played, it was a closer UVA win than the score indicated, but UVA was scratching its way out of an early-season hole and the chemistry experiment was only just falling into place.  Syracuse ended the year on a 1-5 low note, but three straight wins have erased those memories.  This time of year, everyone who's left is riding high.

-- UVA on offense

All about that 2-3 zone.  Probably no defensive scheme is so well-associated with one team as the Syracuse 2-3 zone.  It can be tough to attack because it's so packed-in, but UVA's familiarity with it can only help.

Like Iowa State, Syracuse is a thin team.  Five starters who play 30+ minutes, and two bench guys, and that's it.  And like Iowa State, this necessitates a minimum of fouling, though the zone and a slow tempo help in that regard.  Syracuse is good at keeping out of foul trouble, with heavy assistance of the above two factors.  They're also "good at free throw defense" - because it's so hard to drive against the zone, most of their fouls are committed on big men.

There are two primary ways to attack the zone: Shoot over top of it, or try to catch them over-rotating and get to the middle near the free-throw line.  UVA used both to good effect in their last win, with 44.4% three-point shooting and 7-for-11 shooting from Anthony Gill.  Gill is a tremendous weapon against the 2-3 because he's at his best when he can face the bucket with a little room, and bull-rush the hoop.  When he gets the ball just under the free-throw line, he's one dribble from the bucket and almost unstoppable.  This is easy to do against the 2-3 because of where the defenders are positioned, especially if the center has been caught on one side of the lane.

Another defining characteristic of the zone is its propensity to give up offensive rebounds.  Players in a zone aren't tracking a particular player, so boxing out is complicated.  Getting in position to do so usually means abandoning your zone.  Over the years, Syracuse's defensive rebounding has ranged from kind of bad to completely horrible.  It's at the latter end of the spectrum this year.  UVA only got four offensive boards in the regular-season game against Cuse, but Mike Tobey has been on a mission lately and recently destroyed ISU, Butler, and Miami on the offensive glass.

And there will be a role for Tobey.  A very big one.  Neither Tyler Roberson or DaJuan Coleman range far from the rim, so Tony will feel free to use Tobey without a concern for matchup problems.  Syracuse doesn't fast-break much and they need to collapse hard on the glass to rebound, so the new Rampage version of Mike Tobey we've seen in postseason play could be in for yet another big game, mucking it up on the offensive glass.  Even in the loss, Gonzaga's Domantas Sabonis was a complete wrecking ball, with 19 points and 17 boards.  Using Tobey to bludgeon Cuse into submission will go a long way.

-- UVA on defense

Last time we met, on the JPJ hardwood, Cuse kept things close because Michael Gbinije and Malachi Richardson went absolutely nuts from three, combining to shoot 11-for-19 from deep.  It's really been only since then that Malcolm Brogdon went ham on the defensive end, and his work on Gbinije this time around will be critical.

I think it's safe to guess that'll be the matchup.  Trevor Cooney is nominally the point guard, but Gbinije has taken over the primary ballhandling role as more of a point forward.  He'll take any shot on the court, and is a tremendously adept passer.  He'll also play almost every minute and make his defender work hard for all of them, so it won't be 100% Malcolm, but still.

Syracuse has a bit of a love affair with shooting the three - 42.5% of their shots are from deep.  That said, only four of their seven guys will ever shoot one.  Gbinije and Tyler Lydon are reasonably dangerous 40% shooters; Cooney and Richardson can get hot but are about average overall.  (Cooney in particular has never been the least bit shy to let them fly, and can look alternately like J.J. Redick or a no-thought brickheaver at any given moment.)

Inside the arc, though, Syracuse is a below-average team.  Cooney and Richardson are both sub-40% shooters from two, and Cuse doesn't have anyone above 60%.  The last time UVA faced a team without a guy shooting 60% from two was the NC State game.  They shot more threes than twos in our last game and kept it close only because of those threes from Richardson and Gbinije.

There's plenty of talent on this team, and they go six deep with high-quality basketball players.  (Franklin Howard is the seventh rotation guy, and he scares nobody.)  And Cuse put up a hell of a fight against Gonzaga and saw their efforts pay off.  They scrapped impressively hard.  But - and you knew this paragraph would have a But - neither do they have anyone who UVA hasn't already figured out how to stop.  There's no Georges Niang running around.  There might not even be an Andrew Chrabascz.  Syracuse's game plan will be to fling away from three and hope they go down.  They might, and that would be a fairly big problem.  But there isn't much other alternative.

-- Outlook

I hate what I'm about to do.  Getting too cocky at this time of year has a way of making you look like an ass, and yes I know I'm not the one on the court but that makes it worse because all I can do is flap my gums and hope someone else makes me look smart.

But here's the deal.  Syracuse is a razor-thin team, and laid it all on the court just to beat an even thinner team that used exactly one sub.  I was nervous to potentially face Gonzaga, because of Wiltjer and Sabonis, but even had they gotten through, Syracuse made them look pretty average.  But they looked pretty average in doing so themselves.

Meanwhile, UVA is locked in, and completely in tune with Tony Bennett.  Tony told them, "Don't tiptoe through this game" before they faced Iowa State, and before the Cyclones could get their wits about them they were down 17-3.

If Syracuse wins, the story will inevitably be about what an incredibly scrappy bunch the Orange are, playing with a chip on their shoulder after being told they didn't belong, and taking it out on the Big Bad in the bracket.  And that could happen.  It's happened before.  But Syracuse feels much more like a team with the needle on E.

Final score: UVA 72, SU 54

game preview: Iowa State

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

TV: CBS

Record against the Cyclones: 1-2

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

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

KenPom:

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

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

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

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

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

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

Iowa State:

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

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

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

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

-- UVA on offense

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

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

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

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

-- UVA on defense

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

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

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

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

-- Outlook

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

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

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

Final score: UVA 83, ISU 73

sweet ain't easy

The Sweet 16 is so easy and so hard at the same time.  All you have to do is win two games in one weekend.  How hard can that be?  Hard enough that 48 teams can't do it, though; following the play-in games, the cruelties of the tournament eliminate three-quarters of the participants in four days.  You get a lot of unhappy press conferences.

Sweet 16s are interesting partly for who's not in them.  The 1 and 2 seeds are viewed as these bracket titans, nigh-impossible to stop on the first weekend.  And why not?  These are teams that lost, like, twice a month at most.  And yet, since the expansion of the tournament to 64 teams, only three tourney fields have failed to knock out at least one 1 or 2 seed in the first weekend.  Those would be 1989, 1995, and 2009.  (And '09 was a really chalky tournament, notable for featuring all four 1, 2, and 3 seeds in the Sweet 16, but the 1/2 seed carnage in 1989's S16 was something to behold.)  This year didn't disappoint in the surprises department, punching out half of its 3 seeds, keeping the 12/5 faith alive, and delivering the 8th-ever 15/2 upset.  The list of teams-not-here is long and distinguished, even if you don't count the names that didn't even make the tourney (UCLA, Georgetown, Marquette).  Kentucky, Michigan State, Arizona - there's a lot of Final Fours represented there.  (30, if you were wondering.)

This is to say that even though UVA was "supposed" to make the Sweet 16, nothing is actually supposed to happen.  Ten of last year's 16 aren't here this year.  And so on and so forth.  It's minor compared to what could still happen, but the last senior class of the First Book of Tony does have something to hang its hat on.

-- Voters for the Wooden Award may or may not have turned in their ballots before the Butler game.  If they waited, what Malcolm Brogdon did to that game might just sway them.  Buddy Hield is a better scorer than Brogdon, so he's the front-runner, but goodness, how many teams in the nation possess a defensive weapon like what UVA unleashed on an unsuspecting Andrew Chrabascz?  24 points for Chrabascz before Brogdon started sitting on him, and zero field goals after.

-- Which itself is only half of the Malcolm Brogdon story.  Last year, right around this time, I was positing that Brogdon could take over games if he wanted to, but didn't because he didn't know he could.  I quote from my own season review: "He has it in him to be that clutch scorer who's there when you absolutely, positively need a bucket, and he's flashed that ability. If he figures that out, UVA might not lose a close game all year."  Well, UVA did lose close games - all of their losses are close - but the contrast between then and now couldn't be plainer.  UVA lost last year in this very same round because 1) they couldn't buy a three and 2) they didn't have anyone to say "eff it I'm goin' deep."  Brogdon has discovered his Eff-It Mode.  This is a guy who plays 39 out of 40 minutes, rarely fouls, destroys your best scorer, and can't be fouled, left any room to shoot a jumper, or successfully guarded by anyone either smaller or bigger than him.

-- This comes to attention partly because the sideline reporter for the Butler game actually asked Tony an intelligent question that elicited an insightful answer (about the Brogdon-on-Chrabascz matchup), which is a huge step up from the usual "tell me how you feel" nonsense.  Combined with the fact that Mike Kryz-that-guy actually gave his own sideline interview, I suspect something in the Official Powerade.

-- Putting Louisville in the bracket would've shuffled the whole thing, changed all the matchups, etc., so it'd be wrong to say, "just think how well the ACC would be doing if Louisville were here too."  But it is legitimate to be impressed that the ACC is 6 of 16 without even giving a chance to one of the top ten KenPom teams in the country.

-- I got my first look at the disappointing lacrosse team this past weekend.  It was not the disaster I expected, obviously, and two incredibly close losses to the top two teams in the ACC are a bummer, but also a clue that there's still a flicker of brilliance, somewhere.  One thing I didn't see was the goaltending that has been the #1 gripe on the boardz.  Matt Barrett was excellent, which you don't even need to have watched any lacrosse to know is a 180 from his previous outings.  It offered slight hope that a tourney berth can be salvaged, but UVA would have to win - oh, probably every game from here on out to make that happen.

game preview: Butler

Date/Time: Saturday, March 19; 7:10

TV: TBS

Record against the Bulldogs: 0-0

Last meeting: Never

Last game: UVA 81, HU 45 (3/17); Butler 71, TT 61 (3/17)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 61.2 (#351)
Butler: 68.9 (#169)

Offense:
UVA: 118.6 (#9)
Butler: 115.5 (#19)

Defense:
UVA: 91.7 (#4)
Butler: 101.1 (#116)

Pythag:
UVA: .9505 (#1)
Butler: .8233 (#37)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (11.0 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 4.4 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (18.5 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 2.9 apg)
SG: Devon Hall (4.4 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.8 apg)
SF: Isaiah Wilkins (4.6 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 1.4 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (13.4 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 0.7 apg)

Butler:

PG: Roosevelt Jones (13.7 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 4.8 apg)
SG: Kellen Dunham (16.5 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 1.5 apg)
SF: Kelan Martin (16.0 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 1.1 apg)
PF: Andrew Chrabascz (10.2 ppg, 4.2 rpg, 2.0 apg)
PF: Tyler Wideman (7.9 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 0.8 apg)

"Survive and advance" doesn't seem like the right phrase for a 31-point stompening, when a 1 seed treats a 16 seed like they're expected to.  But then you look at what happened to Sparty - which you can just bet that I'm completely sick about.  Torn up inside.**  Nothing is granted you at the Dance macabre.

To drive that point home, this reminder: It's nothing but good teams from here on out.  Even if UVA wins and draws Arkansas-Little Rock in the next round, those Trojans will have beaten both the 4 and 5 seeds.

UVA has never played Butler.  Playing them right after Hampton sounds like the most 1% path through the tournament ever; it's too bad there aren't certain other teams in the tourney we could play next.  We could drive our La Salle to our Citadel in the Hamptons and have the Butler waiting for us.

Matchups matter, team attributes matter, and these preview posts exist to discuss them, but the tao of the tournament is always this: the last game never matters.  Two years ago UVA made it to the Sweet 16 by curb-stomping Memphis, which ran counter to all the expectations after they had big trouble with 15-seed Coastal Carolina.  To get back to those heights this year, UVA has to play a whole new game.

-- UVA on offense

The interesting thing about Butler's defense is that there's absolutely nothing interesting about it.  Most of the time, you have some thing or another that the opponent is good at or bad at.  Butler is slightly good at rebounding and slightly good at getting steals, but there's no crazy good rebounder or ball thief driving those numbers.  Kelan Martin is the top board guy, and he's good, not great - and his likely defensive assignment will be Ike Wilkins, so UVA gets a small advantage by pulling him away from the rim a little on that end.  (It should also be noted that point guard Roosevelt Jones crashes the board much harder than any point guard we've seen, which throws off your blocking-out calculus quite a bit because your own point guard isn't going to do that on the offensive end.)

Butler is much bigger than Hampton, which you'd expect from a comparison between Big East and MEAC teams.  They have good size in the backcourt that can match UVA's; where Malcolm Brogdon went down in the post quite a bit on Thursday and even went back-to-the-basket, he probably won't do that Saturday.  They have enough size in the frontcourt, but not a lot of depth; Andrew Chrabascz and Tyler Wideman are the only players over 6'6".  Neither are great rebounders (Wideman is decent, but not great) and a lineup of Gill and Tobey at the same time will likely dominate the boards and get plenty of second chances.

We go back to those interestingly uninteresting stats, though.  The Bulldogs are the biggest "is what they is" team in college basketball.  They were rarely upset (one very tight loss to Marquette on the road) and rarely upset anyone (beat Seton Hall on the road and Purdue at a "neutral site" a few miles from their home court.)  Both those teams are already out of the tournament, and neither of those wins, nor that loss, really made anyone bat more than one eyelash.  Not only that, but Butler rarely allowed more than a point per possession to worse teams, or fewer than a point per to better teams.  It's hard to figure that UVA won't get its share of points as well.

-- UVA on defense

This side of the ball, Butler has a few things to talk about.  Starting with their 3-point shooting, which is just a shade under 40% as a team.  We all know that's the approved way to beat UVA, although it's also worth pointing out that shooting well from three doesn't guarantee you the win; ask Syracuse.

Kellen Dunham and Jordan Gathers are the top distance shooters by percentage, and Butler has one or the other on the floor at all times - though, rarely both.  (If the name Gathers rings an old bell, it should.  Jordan Gathers is the nephew of Loyola Marymount legend Hank Gathers.)  Almost everyone Butler trots out will attempt a three at some point, except for Tyler Wideman and, oddly, point guard Roosevelt Jones.  The only one who's something less than a threat to hit is Tyler Lewis (and if that name rings an old bell, it should too; Lewis is an NC State transfer, playing tournament games in his old home arena.)

Just because Jones doesn't shoot threes doesn't mean he's a pass-first (or pass-only) point guard; he loves to work off the dribble and has shot more twos than anyone on the team by far, including bigs Wideman and Chrabascz - combined.  (Well, almost - they've taken 342 two-pointers, Jones, 338.)  This is where the game will be won or lost.  Everyone knows you beat the pack-line by collapsing it into its natural tendency to try and cut off drives, then kicking to an open three shooter and knocking it down.  But if the pack-line is at its best, you won't even start that drive.  That's what UVA needs to do, because if Jones isn't driving, the threes dry up quite a bit.  I would guess that the game willl start with Brogdon on Dunham, but Tony will put him on Jones to break up Butler's rhythm on offense.

-- Outlook

Butler is solid.  They were 3-1 against OOC tournament teams, but 2-7 against Big East tourney teams.  They take care of the ball, don't foul much, take good shots, etc. - all the hallmarks of a tough out in the tournament - but also don't play great defense, which sooner or later is going to mean their elimination.  Sooner, it says here.  They didn't succeed in beating anyone you'd consider a national title contender, even an outside one.  What they can do well, UVA can do better.  Never say never to an upset, but now isn't the time to call for one.

Final score: UVA 75, Butler 66

**I am not.

game preview: Hampton

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

TV: truTV

Record against the Pirates: 7-0

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

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

KenPom:

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

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

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

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

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

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

Hampton:

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

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

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

-- UVA on offense

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

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

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

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

-- UVA on defense

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

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

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

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

-- Outlook

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

Final score: UVA 82, HU 63

a look around

We have a slight pause between the regular season and postseason, so it's time to take stock of how things are going in UVA's major sports.

Basketball, obviously, is pretty much the way it's been since Joe Harris knocked on Tony Bennett's front door a couple years ago.  The team could literally take a collective dump at center court on Thursday and then stagger off the court smashed on Wild Turkey, and they'd still be a three seed at the barest of minimums.  Since theydo actually plan on trying to win a basketball game (against either Clemson or Georgia Tech), the only drama left when it comes to tournament seeding is: 1 or 2?

Right now they're Joe Lunardi's third #1.  (And in a bracket that sets them up on a potential crash course with Buddy Hield, which would be excellent theater.)  That said, Michigan State and Xavier are strong candidates to take that 1 seed with strong tourney runs - and let's face it, MSU has to be considered the massive favorite in the B1G tourney just because of Izzo and their evil vampire nature.  (Come to think of it, I would consider them the massive favorite in the NCAA, too, without a powerhouse team in the bracket to apply the stake to the heart.)  UVA would be at risk of dropping to a 2 seed if they didn't make it to the ACC championship game on Saturday - but would be close to a lock for a 1 if they did.

Attention must be paid to Malcolm Brogdon, opening up a new door in ACC history with the never-before-seen feat of winning ACC POY and DPOY in the same year.  The two awards are clearly linked to each other, though, because the conference's two leading scorers are Tobacco Roadies.  In other words, Brogdon isn't POY without being DPOY.  The interesting thing is that the POY vote wasn't all that close, and his defensive stats don't really stand out.  He's not a machine for either blocks or steals, which is usually how you win DPOY.  You have to actually pay attention to UVA games to know Brogdon's value on defense - which is to say, UVA has become must-see TV for ACC journalists.  Quite likely, they noticed how Brandon Ingram stopped lighting up the scoreboard when Brogdon was assigned to him.

The ACC tournament sets up well for UVA.  The other side of the bracket has the conference's top three offenses (UNC, Duke, Notre Dame); the only top team in the conference that UVA didn't beat (Duke) didn't earn a double bye and needs to take their thin lineup through a gauntlet.  That said, it's a shame Louisville isn't involved - it'd be tougher to get through, but man, six teams like the ACC has at the top, plus some danger mice like Clemson and VT, would make for an ACC tourney for the ages.  Or really, just the way things should be every year.

Speaking of Louisville, though - are we liking this new tradition of going out on Senior Day and bombing some highly-ranked but temporarily hapless opponent back to the Stone Age with Dick Vitale in attendance?**  And capping it with a three-pointer from a senior walk-on causing the roof to blow off the place? Senior Days don't get better than that.  And I've been sticking up for Mike Tobey all year - I think he gets slapped with expectations and standards that are different from everyone else's, and unfairly criticized as a result - and it was therefore doubly awesome to see him own every square inch of the interior.  And since Thomas Rogers's cherry-on-top three against Syracuse two years ago is still my favorite UVA basketball moment of all time, watching the rerun starring Caid Kirven was like hearing a favorite song on the radio that the DJ never plays.  I could watch that show over and over.

**Don't underestimate the presence of Vitale.  First of all, I don't give a shit what anyone says, I like the guy, a lot.  And second, on the same day that Duke and Carolina were playing at Cameron, ESPN put UVA in the prime-time slot and sent Dickie V to Charlottesville.  UVA-Louisville trumped Duke-UNC.  How about that?

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March 10 is approaching quickly enough that you might read this afterwards.  It's significant in this context for one thing: six years ago, it was the day that Mike London picked up his first two commitments of his first full recruiting class.  That would be David Dean and Clifton Richardson.  Bronco Mendenhall is unlikely to beat that pace, which, of course, is fine.  Mendenhall has really cranked up the offer cannon, and hardly a day goes by without a new one going out.  He's already held two junior days, both of which were highly attended.

I don't think that all these offers are actually, like, offers.  Bronco's not going to be one to tell you you have an offer when really you don't, but he's got to get out front of the relevance train, and there are ways to let a guy claim an offer while making sure he knows he's got to continue to earn it.  There's a feeling-out process going on.  An offer that goes out might be to see if the interest is mutual, or to keep UVA in the game while Bronco continues to evaluate.  Or a combination of the two.

Meanwhile, the feeling-out process is both ways.  There's clearly interest in what Bronco is putting together, but no prospect could ever be faulted for doing his homework.  Mike London was more familiar to everyone locally.  Nearly all his 2011 class was from Virginia or Maryland, and he was already a somewhat known quantity to the recruits he was talking to.  Now we have guys who either were not hearing from UVA before, or had been but under a totally different regime.  It's encouraging that the combined junior day attendance (between the two that've been held so far) was around 50.  Should we be surprised that the process is taking a little bit of time to ramp up?  Not remotely.

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And finally, our beloved spring sports....are showing the rust something fierce.  The baseball team is already loaded down with long-term injuries just a couple weeks into the season, and the bullpen has blown a few leads.  And the lacrosse team....pfff.

It's interesting, actually, that a lot of the reaction to the loss to High Point was not "Virginia is really losing their dominance" but "The blue bloods are really losing their dominance."  I think that's a little bit of a confirmation bias thing.  Most people want there to be more parity in lacrosse, and many are rooting for the "blue-bloods" to lose their hegemony even if they're a fan of a blue-blood.  They just don't want it to be their blue-blood.  And parity in the game is slowly increasing.

But it's really coming more at the expense of the middle tier than the top.  ACC teams are having a fairly tough time this year, and Hopkins has been vexing their fans for a while now, same way UVA has.  But that's nothing compared to how the older middle-tier teams are looking.  Teams like Georgetown, Delaware, St. John's, UMass - formerly tough wins under any circumstance, and now complete pushovers.  Sure, it's not a good sign for lacrosse royalty that teams like Cornell and UVA are no longer powerhouses, but the real brunt of the power shift has been felt further down.

Which means that UVA's struggles - some bad losses and some ugly wins - are more about UVA than the tide of change.  Because let's face it: If Dom Starsia is gently steered toward retirement, which he probably should be if the season continues the way it started, you're nuts if you think the job would have any trouble attracting qualified candidates.

And if you think a 9-4 baseball team is any reason for panic, you learned nothing last year.

game preview: North Carolina

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

TV: ESPN

Record against the Heels: 52-129

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

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

KenPom:

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

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

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

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

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

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

North Carolina:

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

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

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

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

-- UVA on offense

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

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

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

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

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

-- UVA on defense

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Outlook

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

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

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

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

Final score: UVA 68, UNC 64

road sweet road

This was a rotten weekend to be a Panther.  The Super Bowl did not go their way, the NHL's Florida Panthers lost on Saturday, and so, believe it or not, did most D-I basketball teams of that nickname.

In the case of the Pittsburgh variety, it was cruelly done.  Malcolm Brogdon returned to the building where two years ago he shanked the hopes and dreams of a raucous crowd with a buzzer-beating three, and this time gave them no reason to stay excited for that long.  Brogdon put 21 points on the board and extended his team's winning streak to six.

This is what a top-ten team is supposed to do, repeatedly.  I also did say, a little while ago, that the ACC is supposed to be this minefield of obstacles, and those two statements don't seem to jibe at first glance.  But you're not one of the top teams in the conference if you keep stepping on the mines.  And if and when you do rise to the top, as UVA has been doing the last couple weeks, you become that top-ten team.  I recall, in the days B.T. (Before Tony), even when UVA had a good team, the elite teams (mainly the Tobacco Road ones) would still come in, generate a lot of buzz around Grounds, and then generally bomb us back to the stone age.

Life on the other side of those trenches is pretty good.  For two successive weekends now, an opponent of perfectly good standing in the conference has welcomed UVA to their gym, packed the house and legitimately fired up the crowd, and then skulked out with welts on their backside.  UVA hadn't held an ACC opponent under a point-per-possession all year, until they did so at Louisville, and now rides a three-game streak of doing so.  That's twice, in case you lost count, in someone else's full and very loud gymnasium.  Should they shut up three road crowds in a row, it would be the most satisfying road win of all time.

Actually, this is just the right week to really get the chemistry perfected.  VT visits on Tuesday and then the Hoos are in Durham on Saturday.  Getting it right against Clemson is fine, but not every win is created equal.  A couple months ago I prematurely declared the chemistry experiment finished, and UVA ready to open up with both guns.  They were not.  This time around, with the defense much more locked in, they just might be.

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

-- One reason I have legitimate hope for the chemistry this time around is the play of the bench in the second half.  During a roughly five minute run with all of UVA's stars on the bench (Brogdon, Gill, Perrantes) UVA stretched the lead against most of Pitt's starters.  I was even leery of seeing them subbed back out - sometimes you just roll with what's working - but the starters came back in nice and fresh and picked up right where the subs left off.

-- I don't think I've ever seen UVA be the beneficiary of such a clearly bullshit call as the offensive goaltending the refs (with Jamie Luckie in charge, natch) slapped on Pitt.  Not only was the ball four inches off the rim, it was part way below it.

-- The Louisville game was even worse in the refs department.  The crowd was clearly pissed, and they mostly had a right to be, except that they were getting their fair share of nonsense calls too.

-- I still can't decide whether Ike Wilkins should develop his big-man game or small-man game.  Is he a really big frontcourt player who can post up and guard down low, or is he a smallish stretch power forward?  Where he plays on defense strongly suggests the latter - but then, look at all the jump shots he makes, or that pass to Gill for the dunk on a fast break.  Evan Nolte has at times been used on both sides of that equation, and Wilkins probably will over the next couple years, too.

-- I'm not very wild about the three-game football series with ODU that UVA just announced.  You can put me in the camp that says we have very little to gain and a great deal to lose.  Lose just one of those games and you hand ODU a great reason to keep all those Tidewater players right where they are.  It's not like we should need to play a game in Norfolk to establish a recruiting presence there.  That series doesn't start til Bronco's third season, though, so hopefully the team has a culture change well on the way by then.  And if I still lived five minutes from the ODU campus, which I did, ten years ago, I'd be all about the idea.  As I'm sure 757 Hoos are right now.  It's not all bad, but I think there are better scheduling ideas out there.

terra nova

In calling the Villanova game a potential rock fight, I didn't mean throwing pebbles into the ocean, but that's what you'd guess was happening the way the Hoos and Cats rolled the scoreboard up.  The main surprising thing isn't scoring 86 points.  The main surprising thing is doing it in only 60 possessions, the second-slowest game all year.

When you score 86 points against Morgan State, everyone eyes glaze over and they find a more interesting game to write about.  When you do it against Villanova, people notice - and now Tony Bennett is an offensive mastermind.  These are largely the same players that beat Rutgers 45-26, by the way.

It's all part of a program's metamorphosis into something special.  Mike Krzyzewski isn't known as a great offensive or defensive coach.  He's just known as a great coach.  Even before the Tennessee turnaround, Tony Bennett was getting accolades for his defense, and attention of all varieties for his desire to beat shot clocks into mewling submission.  That's great.  It's an identity, and one I truly enjoy.  I love that the arena gets its loudest for something as mundane as a shot clock violation.  I embrace the pace, and I know for sure Tony won't stop recruiting and selling his defense.

Still, it's one thing to get to the top.  UVA's climbed one Everest already by scrawling its name in the annals of the ACC championship.  Staying there is harder.  Old cliche, but so true.  You have to find and eliminate your weaknesses before the competition does.

That's why that Villanova game was a thing.  If the West Virginia game was proof of the season's chemistry experiment coming together, Villanova is proof the mortar has dried on the program foundations and the walls are ready to go up.  Take one of the really good defensive teams in the country and ruthlessly exploit their weaknesses instead of letting them jump on yours - that's how to keep on winning basketball games.  Not just this year, but in the long term.

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-- The flip side to the offensive volcano is that Nova scored 75 points on those 60 possessions.  That's a lot for a Tony Bennett defense - but then, in the play-by-play I counted 11 points off of quick-change turnovers that the defense had nothing to do with.  Without those..... well, that's still kind of a lot for a Tony Bennett defense, but well within acceptable parameters for a top-20 opponent.  The halfcourt, set-it-up defense looked as good as ever.

-- Nervous nellies will rightly point out that UVA isn't going to shoot 8-for-12 from three very often.  No, they won't, but they will if they create as many open looks as they did.  This wasn't luck, it was the product of really crisp and beautiful ball rotation that resulted in probably half those attempts coming completely uncontested.

-- One of them was kinda contested, but it was my favorite of the day.  Malcolm Brogdon walked upcourt, dribbled the shot clock down to five just because Nova was letting him, then took two steps at the basket, pulled up, and nailed it.  That was pages one through seventeen of the Kobe playbook.  Normally that kind of play why I think the NBA game is much less interesting than college, but we already know Brogdon's character and there isn't a me-me-me strand anywhere in his DNA.  But I've already gone on record saying he can and must be the alpha wolf this year, and a little selfishness on his part will go a long way for his teammates when they start finding themselves unguarded.  Jay Wright's a damn good coach and he was basically throwing up his hands in surrender with his postgame quotes, asking what do you do with a problem like Malcolm?

-- A particular pet peeve of mine is the contingent of Mike Tobey haters the fanbase has.  They have a certain expectation of what Tobey should be, which he isn't, and fail to appreciate what he actually is.  This is a problem nobody else on the team has.  Tobey's lone bucket of the Villanova game, though, came from being what they wish he was.  It won't shut them up, because it's all about consistency and why doesn't he tear someone's head off every possession, you see, but still.

(His first foul was the same.  I don't know how everyone in the arena sees a jump ball and the refs see a foul.  A shooting foul!  That was completely bizarre.)

-- The last time more than one UVA player scored 20 points in a game was three years ago against UWGB, when Akil Mitchell and Joe Harris had 20 apiece.  I bet it happens again this season.

basketball season preview, part 2

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

#13 - Anthony Gill - Sr. PF

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

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

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

#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - Sr. SG

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

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

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

#21 - Isaiah Wilkins - So. PF

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

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

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

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

#31 - Jarred Reuter - Fr. PF

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

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

FOV Cavalier of the Year #5/#6

From Old Virginia celebrates its birthday (a bit late this year) in a unique way: by recognizing one of Virginia's student-athletes as the Cavalier of the Year. What are the criteria for the award? You decide; that's the beauty. I nominate the 12 athletes that I think have been the most outstanding during the latest season of UVA athletics, and provide a short summary of their accomplishments. You choose the winner in a poll that goes up after all 12 have had their moment in the spotlight. The full list of nominees is here.

 Over the next few weeks, two athletes at a time will be profiled, and you'll hear about what they've accomplished while representing Mr. Jefferson's University this year. The athletes are presented in a totally random order so as to hopefully not imply any endorsement one way or another. Athletes from all fields are considered; the point is to emphasize that UVA is about excellence across the entire department and doesn't shortchange its so-called non-revenue sports simply because they don't make headlines. Today's athletes: Malcolm Brogdon and Quin Blanding.

Malcolm Brogdon - Men's basketball - Guard

Team accomplishments:

-- ACC regular season champion

Personal accomplishments:

-- First-team all-ACC (coaches and media)
-- All-ACC defensive team (coaches and media)
-- ACC Defensive Co-Player of the Year (coaches)
-- USBWA second-team all-American and first-team all-district
-- NABC second-team all-American and first-team all-district
-- VaSID first team all-state
-- WINA Award as UVA's top male athlete
-- Allstate NABC Good Works Team

The basketball team did something this year that no other team has ever done: bring back-to-back ACC regular season titles outside the state of North Carolina.  Virginia basketball is arriving on the map the same way Virginia baseball did about six years ago.

The steady leadership hand of Malcolm Brogdon has a hell of a lot to do with it.  Obviously.  Brogdon is a perfect fit for Tony Bennett's style of ball: a level-headed demeanor that belies a bulldog mentality.  For a guard, he's freakish big and strong, and for a freakish big and strong guard, he's incredibly difficult to shake when defending on the ball.  Aided, I'm sure, by his game-sealing steal against Wake Forest, Brogdon hauled down defensive accolades as quickly as he hauled down regular ones.  The coaches and media all agreed, he was one of the top five players in the ACC and top ten in the country, and the ACC coaches made him DPOY along with Syracuse's excellent big man Rakeem Christmas.

That's Tonyball, alright.  Here's another Tony Bennett staple, this from the official site brag articles:

"During his four years at Virginia, Brogdon has volunteered as a reader and mentor to fifth grade students at Broadus Elementary School in Charlottesville and served as a mentor at the Charlottesville Boys and Girls Club. Brogdon, who is a dual-degree student in the Accelerated Bachelor/MPP Program in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at UVa, has made two separate mission trips to South Africa and Malawi, and Ghana. In addition, Brogdon served as a mentor in both the W.E.B. DuBois Society and Norcross Elementary school in Georgia, and was also a counselor at the East Lake YMCA summer camp in his hometown of Atlanta."

That's how you get on the Good Works team, which is populated by only five D-I players out of approximately four thousand.  Who else combines being one of the top ten players in the country with being one of the top five awesome basketball people in the country?  Nobody, obviously.  That kind of rare combination is why being a UVA fan is so much fun these days.

Quin Blanding - Football - Free safety

Team accomplishments:

-- Actually won some games

Personal accomplishments:

-- Second-team all-ACC (coaches and media)
-- ACC Defensive Freshman of the Year (coaches and media)
-- Scout.com National Defensive Freshman of the Year
-- FWAA, ESPN, Scout, and 247Sports freshman all-American
-- Team tackles and interceptions leader

To put it a bit mildly, not everything in the Mike London era has gone as planned.  Most of his big-time recruits have gotten slow starts before rounding into form, or simply not panned out at all.  Quin Blanding is the very explosive exception to the rule.

Blanding was a superstar recruit, one of (if not the) top high school safeties in the country.  But free safety is a tough place for a freshman - it's the last line of defense and requires split second decisions that often mean touchdowns if you guess wrong.  Hardly mattered: Blanding blew past even the most unreasonable expectations.

Wearing #3 - a tall order, as the number is closely associated with a beloved near-legend in Anthony Poindexter - Blanding stood out even on a defense loaded with talent.  Most of the time when a safety leads the team in tackles, that's a bad sign, but the defense in front of Blanding was loaded with extremely smart veterans and some physical freaks, and was legitimately good in nearly all aspects.  And still the tackles competition wasn't even close, as Blanding finished 15 ahead of senior safety Anthony Harris.

The people who notice these things, noticed.  Blanding was a runaway choice as FDPOY, as the only freshman to make any kind of all-ACC team, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and 48 votes ahead of the next-highest freshman in the voting.  He was on every freshman all-America team you can think of.  And of course (though I shouldn't mention it because technically these are 2015-16 accomplishments) he's on every award watch list and preseason all-whatever team in the football universe.  Singlehandedly bringing cachet and respectability to the football program is a pretty titanic accomplishment.

hoops in review, part 2

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

#11 - Evan Nolte - Jr. SF

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

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

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

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

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

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

#13 - Anthony Gill - Jr. PF

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

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

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

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

#15 - Malcolm Brogdon - Jr. SG

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

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

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

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

#21 - Isaiah Wilkins - Fr. PF

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

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

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

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

#32 - London Perrantes - So. PG

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

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

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

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

#33 - Jack Salt - Fr. C

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

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

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

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

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

game preview: Michigan State

Date/Time: Sunday, March 22; 12:10

TV: CBS

Record against the Spartans: 0-4

Last meeting: MSU 61, UVA 59; 3/28/14, New York, NY; NCAA Sweet Sixteen

Last game: UVA 79, Belmont 67 (3/20); MSU 70, UGA 63 (3/20)

KenPom:

Tempo:
UVA: 58.5 (#349)
MSU: 64.0 (#216)

Offense:
UVA: 112.1 (#24)
MSU: 113.7 (#16)

Defense:
UVA: 86.1 (#2)
MSU: 95.6 (#48)

Pythag:
UVA: .9544 (#5)
MSU: .8799 (#17)

Projected lineups:

Virginia:

PG: London Perrantes (6.5 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 4.7 apg)
SG: Malcolm Brogdon (14.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 2.4 apg)
SF: Evan Nolte (3.1 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Darion Atkins (7.6 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 0.7 apg)
PF: Anthony Gill (11.6 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 0.8 apg)

Michigan State:

PG: Travis Trice (14.8 ppg, 3.2 rpg, 5.2 apg)
SG: Lourawls Nairn (2.3 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 2.5 apg)
SF: Denzel Valentine (14.5 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 4.4 apg)
PF: Branden Dawson (12.0 ppg, 9.0 rpg, 1.8 apg)
C: Gavin Schilling (5.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 0.4 apg)

The selection committee insists they don't take storylines into account when they fill out the bracket, and maybe they don't - they certainly have plenty to worry about without looking for transfer players who might get the chance to play against their old team.  But the opening rounds for UVA have certainly not been lacking for interest.

UVA gets another shot at the team that bounced them from the Sweet Sixteen last year.  On paper, Michigan State isn't as good as they were last year.  In real life, MSU has a reputation as a tough out for a reason.  And just going by KenPom rankings, they're more a high 5-seed than a 7-seed.  They clamped down on Georgia in round 1; the Bulldogs only made one shot in three.  Your reward for a top-2 seed is to open the tourney against some scrappy little upstart that you can probably fry like an egg; the real tourney begins now.

-- UVA on offense

Despite the great work against UGA, in almost all of their losses, MSU topped the point-per-possession mark.  Their problem was occasionally letting bad teams score a bunch.  Minnesota, Nebraska, even Texas Southern early in the season; MSU usually doesn't have much trouble scoring, but their defense can occasionally buckle on them.  They generate good numbers, they just get a little inconsistent - a strange thing for a Tom Izzo team.

MSU is a little undersized.  Matt Costello and Gavin Schilling play as traditional centers, and rarely (if ever) appear on the court at the same time; both are 6'9", though, giving up a few inches to Mike Tobey.  That said, they're also heavy and solidly built, and can hold their ground just fine.  Other than the very lightly-used Colby Wollenman (who checks in at 6'7") nobody else on the MSU depth chart is over 6'6".  Branden Dawson is athletic and was a potential NBA draft entrant last year, but is only a 6'6" power forward.  So is his second-string, freshman Marvin Clark.  Finally, you've got 5'10", 170-pound shooting guard Lourawls Nairn, who'll draw 6'5" strong-as-an-ox Malcolm Brogdon, unless it's 6'0" Travis Trice instead.

So hopefully UVA will be able to put their size advantage to good use.  MSU is tough to score on when they're playing good fundamental ball; Izzo, though, has bemoaned his team's inconsistency all year, including after the Georgia game when he called his team "interesting."  MSU sometimes puts itself in foul trouble.  Costello and Schilling are strong, but not all that quick, and are prone to fouling players driving to the hoop.  They'll go for the block, and they get it pretty often, but they also sometimes miss and get a hack instead.  The guy to watch out for is Dawson; he's got some leaps and an ability to get those blocks without fouling.  He's a good answer to Justin Anderson in that regard.

Despite the inconsistency, you have to expect a grind.  MSU is also capable of excellent defensive performances; Indiana is one team that found that out, as did Georgia.  There are matchups where UVA will have the upper hand; failure to take advantage would be killer.

-- UVA on defense

The size advantage UVA has is different than what they had against Belmont, for one big reason: UVA was forced to go smallish against Belmont, because the whole team played outside the arc.  Mike Tobey only played five minutes.  MSU's bigs are never shooting threes (Marvin Clark being a possible exception, if you want to call him a big) and so Tobey and the rest of UVA's bigs can do what they're comfortable doing.

Clark will hoist them some, but there's really only three Spartans to care about from long range: Denzel Valentine, Travis Trice, and Bryn Forbes.  All of them will fire away and all of them can hit with regularity.  Limiting the three-bombing to the players that can actually hit them has helped make MSU a really efficient offensive team.

They're also really good inside the arc.  Costello and Schilling kind of look like galoots, but they're strong players and know how to establish a presence.  They do a lot of cleanup work, scoring on putbacks quite a bit.  Schilling usually starts, but it's Costello, often going against opponent's second strings, who does the best work in most facets of the game.

Dawson uses his athleticism very well in getting to the rim, and off the bench, Bryn Forbes is a very versatile scorer.  The most dangerous guy on the court, though, is Valentine.  Valentine has always played with a little bit of an attitude, sometimes not a productive one.  Now a junior, though, he's reined it in a bit and has a great deal more consistency in his game as a result.  Valentine can score from anywhere.  He prefers jump shots and doesn't go to the rim as much, but he's very comfortable shooting from wherever he is on the court.

The one big weakness of the Spartans: Foul shooting.  Valentine is outstanding from the stripe, and Forbes is dependable.  Trice, though, misses more than a guard should.  Lourawls Nairn is a lousy shooter, especially for a guard; Costello is OK for a big, but Dawson is horrendous and Schilling is worse.  This would be a great game to have really whistle-happy refs who call it as tight as possible; if it's a parade to the line, UVA's chances improve tremendously.

-- Outlook

UVA has the advantage here.  The Hoos play better defense and don't have an ugly, glaring weakness the way MSU does with the free throws.  That said, games like this have a way of defying the on-paper analysis. Both teams are comfortable in close games, and this one probably will be.  If there's one intangible on the side of UVA, it's this: Like Memphis last year, MSU won't have had much time to focus on scouting the pack-line defense, needing to worry about their first-round opponent a great deal more.  But I'll frankly be damn good and surprised if this game is a blowout ilke that Memphis one.

Since I did such a damn good job predicting the Belmont score, let's hope this one's just as accurate.

Final score: UVA 61, MSU 59