Depends on how you measure talent. Murray was No. 89 in the 247 composite a few years ago. Rohde was No. 316.
Perhaps Murray’s potential has just been untapped to this point in part because of a lack of PT at a high D1 program, whereas Rohde went to a low D1 and had the chance to play 30 minutes a game and show his skillset.
Fair enough. Agree that it would be a sign of something not so great with the other new additions (Rohde, Groves, Minor, etc.)
I have high hopes for Buchanan at UVA but for the last 10 years or so our bigs have redshirted and then been foul prone once they got on the floor. A pure 1st year big being able to stay out of foul trouble to play 15-20 minutes a game seems unlikely.
There’s an irony to Bennett being respected as a great “development “ coach, but we as fans, me included, want to see the shiny new toy rather than the one who has been waiting and working in the background.
I think that’s the same for pundits and why many of them prefer to talk up new potential at places like Duke and Kentucky.
Minor is going to be asked to do less than he did at Merrimack, and I get the impression he’s going to be okay with that. 80% of his focus needs to be on becoming a plus man-defense defender, whereas at Merrimack he anchored a matchup zone. If he can get the responsibilities down, he’ll be a Darion Atkins type defender, maybe a little stronger (though Darion had elite instincts and control; I doubt Minor gets there in just one season).
Offensively Minor’s best usage is as a Blocker I think and then working the offensive glass and being open for pocket passes with strong finishing through contact. He’s not going to be someone who we run offense through, but that can be okay with more offensively oriented guys around him like iMac, Rohde, Groves, and hopefully Dunn taking a next step (and maybe a fully unleashed Reece). He can be kind of Salt-like on offense, which I know is a dirty word but we won a sh*t-ton of games with efficient offenses (varying degrees the three seasons Salt started and obviously the systems run varied over those three seasons as well).
I’d like for Buchanan to do well this year, if only to have a reset on that conventional wisdom. It’s generally true that a big needs to develop, but we’ve started taking it as gospel that we can’t have an impact big right away. I’m fine with him learning on the fly too, just get him out there.
My hope is that we spam pick n roll. Reece has been noted as possibly the best pg in pick n roll situations and Minor’s strength is his productiveness in pick n roll situations.
Buchanan could be like Mike Tobey first year impact
Fair point. But guys who have “developed” under TB have often played early in their career. Salt would be an exception but you play your talent
Mike Tobey is probably the best comp for Blake in terms of usage as a freshman. Mike had a similar roster situation where there wasn’t a ton of veteran presence in the post after Sene’s graduation, and Darion had shin splints that year necessitating additional usage of Mike. Even then, Mike only played 14 mpg that year.
I’ve similarly got Blake somewhere between 10 and 15 mpg this year. Minor’s playing 20+ mpg, and Blake will get some of the rest, with the last bit going to small lineups with Dunn/Bond and Groves.
I worry Minor is too small and not vertical enough to be a great PnR finisher in the ACC the way Kadin could be for us, or the way Minor could be at Merrimack. Keep in mind Minor only faced ONE player in the Northeast Conference taller than him. There are bigger defenders in the ACC who aren’t going to let Minor roll to the rim uncontested like he could in years past.
Thats fair. He does have experience playing power 5 schools in non conference where he has been productive.
Also I feel like regardless of competition Minor’s speed and athleticism will translate regardless (even if the skill and instinct is behind)
(Cooks TJ Power at one point in this clip)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CtP16VRJOEm/
I don’t think this is ironic at all. It’s all about who you want to see developed and where you think the ceiling is.
Also, where you land on the question of play all the young dudes or not, probably depends on your view of whether we went from 59 to 25 in defensive efficiency from 22 to 23 because guys got better with multiple years in Bennet’s system, or because we played RD about 10 mpg and we were a dominant defense in those minutes. One of these views has magical thinking to support it, and the other has stats to support it.
D-Eff in RD minutes: 90.1 (#1 in the nation)
D-Eff in other minutes: 96.9 (#44 in the nation)
So there you go, development took us from 59 to 44, and RD took us from 44 to 1.
(fairly significant caveat – hoop explorer is very close to KenPom, but not totally on point. Explorer has our adj D-Eff at 94.1 and Ken has it at 94.5, which is a difference of ~5 spots in Ken’s rankings)
I think minor was the transfer I was initially most excited about. But the peeps from practice have tempered that quite a bit
This is why I’m very optimistic about our defense this season.
Other caveat is that opponents shot 30.1% from 3 in RD minutes, 35.8% in non-RD minutes; I believe that some of that is attributable to RD/how the defense can play with RD on the floor, but some of that is surely variance.
The on-off split for 2pt defense is incredible though: opponents shot 40.5% from 2 with RD on, 49% with him off.
Yup. RD’s defense is somehow underrated. But to defend Bennett against jerks like me, I do think the numbers will not look nearly so good if he becomes a starter…
Probably, but I’d still bet on him being ACC All-Defense worthy.
I think Hoop Explorer’s preseason projections pass the smell test (for us at least):
39th overall, 60th on offense, 14th on defense. The player-specific projections are OK; they have Harris and Murray out of the rotation, and by necessity have standard projections for the guys who haven’t had any college minutes based on recruit ranking, but otherwise the plus-minus forecast is decent.
Edit: Had to manually add Dante in there, can’t figure out how to add Taine in. No big shifts to the projections, besides projecting Dante at 9 mpg.
I have heard from someone that should know that we should expect A LOT of Reece pick and roll this year.
