Defense playing well is a cause for excitement. Calling card!
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We’re going to be really good by January. I can’t wait
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If Jaime Kaiser is the source of information on the “secret” scrimmage, probably good he didn’t come to UVA, because that would not keep him in the circle of trust with Tony
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I’m taking that report with a grain of salt. First, according to Kaiser’s father, the Terps only dressed eight. Second, it was stated that their frosh guards were have trouble with the pack line defense, but I question that. I imagine that they were having trouble with the ball pressure being applied by Virginia’s guards. That may be a component of the pack line, but I am a bit skeptical that the “bigs”, aside from Dunn, are executing it that well. You have to wonder which was which? Was Virginia’s defense that good, or was Maryland’s offense kinda bad? I could be wrong, but I don’t expect the defense to begin gelling until after the Christmas holidays.
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Obviously Tony lit a fire under their asses this week and they guarded the **** out of them.
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And yet we only won by 3, so our offense must have been abysmal.
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I heard that we were up by 25 at one point, and then Tony put in the green team with 10 minutes left. Willard took a page out of Leonard Hamilton’s book and decided to full court press our walk-ons until they tied it up, then some random dude we’re apparently RSing this year (I think his name is Eli or something?) hit a three from the logo to win it for us.
It hurts our Kenpom rating but overall a win is a win.
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Did win by 3 - were down by 7 at the half. Seems to be good optimism around how good the team can be.
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Was there a similar story last week? Scrapped from behind to tie it and force OT? Hard to keep track of these scattered details.
(Even when we all see a game, we disagree on stuff, so it’s interesting to try to and interpret details coming from a small handful of people)
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The guys that were out according to the MD board aren’t expected to play a ton. Their A team played. Granted less depth hurts them but not sure it changes the outcome. They have a really good starting 5 so a W is encouraging.
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If Kaiser had 11, depending how they came, against Virginia D that sounds pretty legit
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Yeah MD is 22 is preseason KenPom so this is a pretty encouraging performance
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Coaches don’t play scrimmages to win. They play to see certain things and try certain things. Not that they don’t care about winning, just that it’s not their prime motivation. So if you beat a team by 20 points – yeah, maybe you can make some assumptions about how good you are (or how bad they are). Anything else, I think the only takeaway is that you’re good enough to be competitive with another good team.
So, close games against two Top 25 opponents. For this team, at this point: I’m happy with that.
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At minimum, my takeaway is we are going to exceed the current Bart torvik ranking of 63 and 18-12 record 
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This is absolutely true BUT players best be playing to win if score being kept
I would think they do situational things as well. Like TB saying to Hurley: Can you guys throw a zone at us for 10 minutes or so. Then when Danny asks for the same TB laughs and says “good try man”
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This!
BTW, this is something innate in us. When my kids were playing T-ball, we were not supposed to keep score.
But the kids always did!
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We had similar results last year against UCONN and Maryland.
I think it’s a good indicator that we will be competitive early on in our P5 non-con games. Given the turnover it’s a good sign.
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Especially given this team’s upside.
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My son’s college baseball team played a scrimmage last week. They fell behind early, but were rallying – three runs across, bases loaded, one out – when the inning was prematurely ended. Something about the opponent’s pitcher hitting a pitch limit, and wanting to bring the next pitcher to start an inning rather than have to deal with a high-leverage situation. No one objected.
Players are always going to play their hardest, but the rules and game-management strategies are different.
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Ha thats like growing up and a kid about to lose says his mom told him to be home NOW!
Thats what high level scrimmages are for though
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