An aircraft carrier is an offensive weapon. A cruiser is probably the analogy you were looking for. They are able to engage multiple air targets simutaneously…cruise missiles, aircraft, ballistic missiles…macht nicht. Their job is air defense for the Carrier Task Force.
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Also, on the Bond front, Matt Norlander made a point to shout him out on their ACC preview podcast. Usually pay attention to what he says about UVA as he’s one of the national media members that is actually friends with Tony. Sounds like today was more evidence Leon is ready to go
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Please, no.
Case in point. Just saw iMac was 0/5 … so …
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Never gonna hit a 3 again. Washed. Shot rebroken. Car being towed with parking break on
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Fair enough, I was just thinking about how an aircraft carrier is one of the most important assets for the Department of Defense lol
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Speaking of which, his shot did look different to me. Can anyone else corroborate? Seemed like he wasn’t jumping as high and it was more of a “flick” motion
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Was the hit mic issue discussed? The last 10 min or so, you could hear yelling from a coach (anyone know who it was?). Weird.
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I saw that in the 3pt shooting conest (wasnt paying that close in scrimmage). Its a weird compact motion where he lets it go as he begins riding, right?
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They announced before the 3rd quarter that Chase Coleman would be mic’d up on the sidelines. You could hear him coaching the blue team.
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Pretty sure it was Chase.
The thing I didn’t get in both scrimmages…who thought it was a good idea to play background music during game play? Pretty distracting.
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My brief takeaways:
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First, the clear top 7 rotation guys in terms of usage appeared to be Reece, Imac, Dunn, Rohde, Groves, Blake, and Bond. That’s essentially in order. There was basically no effort to work Harris in with the starters (even when Bliss was running the point for Blue) and very little effort to get Minor in with the starters. I’d still expect Harris and Minor to play, but I’m downgrading expectations significantly for their usage.
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Dunn is clearly going to be used as the center on defense pretty often this year, while playing the 3 on offense occasionally. He was blocking shots, grabbing rebounds, then bringing the ball up the court himself. This is a great way to leverage his skillset. If he can get Groves’ shooting on the floor while covering up for the defensive hit, that would be phenomenal.
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All the off-ball guards were were extremely quiet. Imac barely tried to do anything. He was mostly feeding the big men as soon as he touched the ball. I’m guessing that he just wasn’t taking the scrimmage super seriously. It could also be that he hasn’t made a leap though. Rohde was more aggressive and got some daylight occasionally. But he was mostly swallowed up once he got to the rim by Dunn, Bond, Buchanan, and A-Rob. It’s likely that he’ll have to find other ways to score outside of slashing against super athletic frontlines like he saw today. Taine was entirely quiet—not seeing it with him at the moment unfortunately.
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You can see what the idea is with Harris. He has some useful isolation dribble-drive skills and brings a unique defensive skillset. But I can also see why they brought in the point guard of the future (in Bliss) even after Harris’ commitment. The vision/decision making just isn’t there for Harris to play the point efficiently. He tends to put his head down too often and can be loose with the dribble. I’m hopeful after this scrimmage that he’ll play the role that Kihei should have played (microwave scorer and defensive pest off the bench). He’s not very additive next to Reece at the moment.
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The Reece p&r sets were the second best offense of the day. He generated open threes basically whenever he wanted for Imac, Rohde, Groves, and Dunn out of those sets. No one hit though.
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The best offense of the day was the Dunn and Bond 2-man-game. They have real chemistry on the floor together. Many of Dunn’s assists came with Bond (Dunn’s passing was also good period. That’s a real weapon for him). Anything Leon was involved in went great really. He hit from deep, scored off midrange pull-ups, slashed out of the mid-post, and finished in the lane.
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Groves was better defensively than I expected. He looked like a giraffe on ice skates on his one drive though, but as long as the shooting is there, the slashing won’t matter. He’s clearly in the rotation.
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BB has the rare traits of being 6’10’, strong, athletic, fluid and actually being able to catch the ball. A-Rob has all of the above too (with even more athleticism) but can’t catch the ball and needs to add strength. Both guys move much better than Kadin ever did.
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I don’t see it with Minor yet. Dunn was clearly the alpha big man and was controlling the interior completely. Minor not being able to get his against a frontline of Dunn and Groves, including not winning many rebounds, was concerning. His strength and experience should allow him to be effective there.
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Elijah got to the rim more easily that anyone. He didn’t have enough touch on his layups, but that will come. I truly hope he has a ton of success here, but it will be tough sledding this year. Huge defensive potential though.
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Bliss is a UVA guard. That’s the highest compliment I could possibly give him. Dude will be stud, probably by as early as next year.
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Based on today’s performance alone, my preferred starting lineup would be Reece, Imac, Rohde, Bond, and Dunn with Groves being the 6th man, Harris the backup point guard, and one of Blake or Minor (or both) as the true big off the bench. There’s room there for one of Taine or Elijah to earn minutes backing up the two off-ball guards too.
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Definitely appreciate the thoughtfulness of these observations. But cant help feel like it puts way too much stock in a scrimmage as the main indicator of in season usage and performance… in the past it just hasn’t been a great indicator for what happens during the season.
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On one hand, yeah, but on the other hand, it’s all we got. (And for me, so far, reading takeaways is really all I got)
This same thing happens after game 1. “It’s just one game”. I mean, you’re talking to a guy who is happy to hash and rehash mistakes from 2014 but most people lose interest once we have all the data.
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I think you’re overthinking point 1.
Bennett likes playing two PGs. And in scrimmages, that means splitting them up.
Consider last year:
1st Quarter: Clark played with Franklin and Gardner. Beekman played with Shedrick
2Q: Clark with Gardner and Franklin (bench), Beekman with Shedrick.
3Q: Clark with no starters. Beekman with Franklin, Gardner and Shedrick.
4Q: Clark with no starters, Beekman with Franklin, Gardner, and Shedrick.
Vander Plas was with Beekman first two quarters and Clark second two.
Beekman and Clark never played together.
Harris played with potential starter Minor in the first quarter, for example.
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You may be right. I think I’m more noticing that Reece, Imac, and Dunn are the clear shoo-in starters and none of them went over to blue with Harris (unless I missed it). I would expect that if Harris were to have Beekman’s role this year, RD and Imac would have worked in with him just like Franklin and Gardner did with Reece last year.
I think there is an interpretation of the scrimmage today where you see Harris and Minor as for-sure starters and think that they divided up the teams with two starters on blue and three on white while rotating everyone else between the three teams. That could be true, but it would be out-of-line with past blue and white scrimmages where the starters generally played with each other at some point.
This whole thing is an exercise in signal extraction though with a very high noise-to-signal ratio. My takeaways were the signals that that I pulled out of today’s scrimmage to the best of my ability.
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Whereas Bliss did play with Blue, right?
Video from 247 here:
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Yeah, Bliss was only on Blue. Rohde went over to Blue some too.
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