I’m as excited for McKneely as anyone but it would be nice if he we can get an actual wing to start next Reece and Armaan next year. They will cause absolute havoc if they can matchup against similar sized players instead of having to play up a position defensively.
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I actually would like a wing to start next to Reece and McKneely.
Let Franklin come off the bench as 6th man if Gardner is starting.
Milicic would be the best fit as his size at the 3 would help offset Gardner’s lack thereof at the 4.
That rotation would be very good rebounding group…
Reece, Isaac, Igor, Gardner, Sheds
That would also allow us to get out and run because we won’t fear so many opponent offensive boards.
I think the Isaacs will make a contribution next year. Even a significant contribution. But they’re still going to be first-years. There will be struggles.
Best comparison to me is Ty and Kyle – good players, important minutes, not saviors as freshmen. The difference is that we’ve get a better core next year than we had in 2016, so we don’t need the incoming players to be stars. They can be complementary, giving us what we lack this year, namely some outside shooting and more size at the wing. It’s a good combination – especially if the returners take their game up a level, which I expect at least some of them will.
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I’m starting to get the feeling your favorite football player is Jay Woofolk…
In all seriousness I wouldn’t have a problem with that either if McKneely is ready right away. Just think it’s important we get away from being so undersized like you’ve been saying. Don’t know if we can fix the shooting right away but we’ll definitely have the bodies to play bigger next year.
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Football???
What is this football you speak of?
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Responding to this here.
My odds of starting, in order (say by ACC play or so, or stretch run) are, in order:
McKneely > Traudt > Dunn > Bond > London.
But Dunn, Bond, London are all 5% chance or less. McKneely has a very solid shot of starting (greater than 10%, less than … I don’t know … 60%?). Folks are having a tough time placing Traudt, thinking true frosh bigs have trouble getting PT here, but I can’t remember too many we’ve had with his pedigree and skillset. Tobey is the closest, and he started as a true frosh (albeit on an NIT team).
My odds of being in the rotation are more or less the same order, except I think the odds get a lot flatter (meant to say – the odds get closer to each other). I’d even put the odds of one of Dunn or Bond as roughly the same as Traudt. We need their skillset in our rotation defensively. Bond is a bit below Dunn if it’s correct that he is headed more for the post (though, and I will make up for this HGN defiance later, I am skeptical that he’s headed for the post, or at least the post as we traditionally understand it).
As far as London, this is where I take HGN at his word. If he comes next year, it’s probably more of a break glass in case of emergency situation. Seems to fit the only reclasses I can think of – Devon Hall and Carson. HAve there been others?
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Yeah, I honestly have no idea. I think he has a great skillset, and I’m not worried about him on the offensive end, but I have no idea what to think on the defensive end. His high school team spent like half of their season playing zone, which wasn’t asking a lot of him defensively. Then they also delved into some trapping stuff that obviously we don’t do, and while in general man-to-man he seemed fine against random Nebraska high school teams, I don’t know how long it’ll take for him to pick up the packline.
And yes, I know the “bigs take a long time to learn the packline” is another horse that’s been beaten to death over the years on our message boards, but it is kind of true. Looking at first year playing time, pretty much all bigs lag the guards significantly. So… who knows? It’ll be fascinating to watch.
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If we get Johnson, he will play! CTB loves ball handlers on the court together!
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I just read through the last 100 posts in this thread, and it’s surprising that people are forgetting how playing time for freshmen is often contingent on defense first.
I know we’re all eager to see what McKneely can do to spark our outside shooting, but people are absolutely sleeping on Bond getting playing time at the big wing spot.
I think that’s because in this thread we’re talking more about what we’d like to see happen versus what Tony will actually do
Mamadi reclassified and redshirted. Tevin Jones enrolled a semester early and redshirted (unfortunately for him as it turned out). Juzang would’ve played, maybe a lot given our complete lack of outside shooting in 19-20.
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Well, I think part of it too is that McKneely is one of the few recruits who’ve played in a packline system in high school before coming in. Now who knows exactly how well that’ll transfer over, but it’s something.
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Random thought I just had:
I think it’s fairly important that Reece and Kadin don’t improve too much next year.
I obviously hope they both makes strides (Reece - 3 ball, increased aggressiveness, Kadin - offensive bag, limiting fouls) but they need to stay in the fringe 2nd round pick area if we’re looking to make another run at a final four or a title. They’ve both got the talent to get drafted, we’ve just got to hope it’s not too early. I’ve said it before but I think the next chance we have to be really really good is in 23-24 when we could potentially run with a team of
Reece (Senior)
Mckneely (Sophomore)
Bond (Sophomore)
Traudt (Sophomore)
Kadin (Super senior)
Dunn (Sophomore)
Braxton-esque transfer
Johnson (Freshman)
Igor/Taine/Carson/etc if they stay
2023 big man (Freshman)
I think we’ll be pretty good next year but I see us probably ending up in the 3-6 seed range and not really having a great chance to go to a final four/title. Unless a couple of the Freshmen are immediately very impactful but I think history has shown that’s pretty rare for us.
Essentially, we need to hope we avoid what happened with Trey Murphy where a guy leaves (justifiably so) but it leaves us kinda stranded trying to patch the hole. If you put him on this years team, we are in a completely different world.
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That’s why I am so frustrated right now. If Igor and Taine had both gotten 12-14 min a game this year - we could be soooo much better next year.
Oh and by the way we’d be a tournament team this year too.
That being said - If Reece and Shedrick blow up to being that good in 2023 - then we could very well be a top 10 team next year. But for that to happen we cannot be the slowest team in America and expect to get 3 or 4 wins in the madness.
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Except for the time when we were the slowest team in America and won 3 or 4 games in madness
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If I recall we won 4
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Sure - let me know the next time we’ll have a top 4 draft pick on our team that can get his own shot at the end of clocks. Or a top 25 draft pick that could get his own shot at the end of clocks. Or a shooter that could elevate and match anyone in clutch 3 point shooting. All on the same team.
Checking … and shot 50%, 43% and 45% from the 3 point line in ACC games.
While also having 2 centers that shot 33% and 53% from 3 in ACC games.
All of whom are currently in the NBA.
And still needed a stupid play by Auburn - fouling Jerome in the back court to stop the clock at 1.5 secs left. A terrible shooting game by a previously hot Oregon team. Down by 3 with 5:30 to play and then Oregon missed 4 open threes by their 2 best shooters. - UVA made 3 shots in 11:20 of play down the stretch. Our offensive rebounding saved us in that game as were outplayed by Oregon in all the other facets.
An all time tip out and make play by Diakite. An all time 6 points in the final 9 seconds by Guy vs Auburn.
We didn’t play another team with as many as 2 NBA guys and one could say our pace kept all those lesser talented teams close in games we could have won more comfortably?
Or we play those games quicker and we lose one of them and instead of second guessing a national title run we’re wondering why we pushed the pace against Oregon and lost in the sweet 16
The only main takeaway is that you have to have lottery/first round talent to win a national title. Which isn’t really isn’t Virginia specific. Baylor had a lottery guy and another first round caliber guy in Butler. The last national title team that didn’t have a guy go in the first round was the 2011 Butler team, which was coached by Brad Stevens
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Has anyone done an actual study on pace vs NCAAT performance? If so does the intuitive idea that slow teams both get upset more as a higher seed and pull off more upsets as a lower seed hold true?
It was kinda crazy how our bracket set up and seemed to avoid the best teams in the tourney. whatever best may mean. Look at Guns Up bracket. wow they played real teams from round 2 on
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