Meh
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Now do this for 2014-2019 when we were awesome but slow please.
Of course the teams in the top 25 on average have high scoring averages. Theyâre the top 25 teams and scoring is half the battle.
The only thing that matters is scoring lots more points per possession than you give up. You can do that with elite D or O or ideally both. Pace is irrelevant.
To be clear, Iâm not arguing against the next coach playing faster, just statistics that I donât think show anything in particular.
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I really feel that pace is a pointless stat, much like time of possession in football. We want to be looking at efficiency stats to figure out what a good offense looks like.
Just taking a quick look at the top-25, Purdue and UConn are 314 and 319 in adjusted tempo, both with about 65 possessions per game compared to our 61. The difference is those schools are 8th and 4th in Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and weâre like 192.
I donât care how fast you play, I care how well you play.
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Can someone else please argue with the âpace is irrelevantâ folks today? Iâm busy/tired. I nominate every single top 100 guard for the last 10 years. But they wonât argue⌠theyâll just laugh⌠or do what they always do to uva - ignore us
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Youâre objectively right. Pace isnât correlated with success. It simply isnât.
Around the margins itâs fine to argue - should we push 2-3 times more per game or whatever. But I think youâre narrowly responding to the argument that you need to play a faster tempo to be top 25. You donât.
Recruiting is another story. We seemed to pull guys in fine playing slow and being good. Also no one talked about us being slow 2017-2019 ⌠thereâs a reason. Itâs because we were good and fun to watch.
I have a hard time believing weâll get in with any meaningful recruits if we play a bit faster and are just as inefficient and bad on offense.
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True knowers of ball were always on Sharma.
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Every single recruit interview: âI really admire X schools pace of play. They get up and down the court and it seems like a great system where I could showcase my skills.â
This board: âI have no idea how playing at a faster pace could help this team recruit better.â
I would love to know what people like @zh00s think we should do to improve the program lol
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I posted a whole long thing yesterday. So just scroll up.
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Yep, changes are definitely needed. But âplaying fasterâ isnât necessarily one of them.
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Yeah I remember reading that and Iâm genuinely confused how âletting the team play faster and freerâ isnât aligned with âwe need to change our philosophy around how we view players make mistakes.â To me theyâre very much a part of the same issue
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It can be, but not necessarily. Which is sort to the point. There is a relationship, but itâs not 1:1.
I think Bennett was less risk averse and more trusting most of 2013-2019. his bar was just as high throughout his tenure but we had guys around the program during that window who had put in work long enough to earn his trust. We also had a collection of personalities that were more willing to push the envelope with him - Perrantes, Anderson, Jerome. I donât think you can have that high of a bar for trust anymore given the portal and retention realities.
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Well playing at an incredibly slow pace doesnât hurt recruiting for Purdue or UConn or Houston.
We donât have a pace problem. We have a perception problem. If we hired a new coach that played 1-2 whole possessions faster than Tony, but the media stopped touting that we play at a snailâs pace, pace wouldnât be a problem with recruiting.
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Why do all of you âI pretend not to care about pace as long as we are the last or second to last in paceâ folks think Tony did his PR spiel on changing up our pace?
Is he bad at math, too? What do you pace absolutists know that Tony doesnât?
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To be specific, weâve had an âour offense is dog shitâ problem, and it dates to the natty. (Please please someone tell me about 2021 - Iâd love to argue about that abomination of an offense)
And if you want to change it, you have to change it
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There 2 things with the pace stuff. The first is resultsâŚyou can play as slow as you want as long as youâre really good offensively. People hardly notice. And secondly, itâs more about how assertive you are than how many literal possessions there are. Basketball people really couldnât care less about the possession count, thatâs what they mean when they talk about pace. Are you attempting to score when you have the ball or not. Too often it appears UVA teams are not.
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Yeah well Iâd argue that âour offense is dog shitâ problem was more about poor roster management (in terms of pure talent and strategic roster management in terms of trying to modernize talent without modernizing the system). Iâm really not a fan of sides but it can be successful with excellent combo guards and athletic post playersâŚ.even in todays game.
The media has crushed us to the point that âaggressiveâ scoring guards donât want to come here even if it means they will get up 1 shot/game less than going to UConn or Purdue. But we have a stigma. And Tony got it horribly wrong recruiting defense first guards and shooting forwards while running sides.
Iâd love to change the offense and ensure it better aligns with the talent strategy. But I could care less if itâs faster.
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Another aspect of this is easy buckets. @zvillehoo brought up Houston. They are beasts on the o-boards.
In recent years, Tony had a commitment to no easy buckets on offense (good philosophy on defense, bad on defense). And Ron has continued that. No transition. No runouts. No offensive rebounding. Combine that with guards who canât touch paint, and youâre pre-dooming yourself to a not very good offense
And thereâs an absolute commitment to these principles that donât lead to winning. E.g., go slow
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Why? Do you think they had a grudge against us?
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Well in some cases (metcalf, bilas, etc) abso-f*ckimg-lutely. And Iâm sure there were grass roots types that piled on because we didnât play the pay to play game.
Heres the thing with revenue sports at uva - we canât play their game. We canât play the same system at the same pace and go out recruit better than blue bloods. See exhibit Tony Elliott.
Iâd rather go really slow and out execute in scheme. Or really fast and hope to win via chaos. Or go average in pace with a really unique offensive scheme. Or air raid, go go offense, or the ilk in football. When others zig, UVA must zag. And itâll always be a developmental program in those 2 sports.
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Are you guys really that dense or are you just typing to hear yourself talk?
Letâs take a look at the possessions last game that ended in a bucket or a trip to the FT line.
How many of them happened with double digit seconds left on the shot clock?
How many misses and turnovers happened when it was under 10?