Not brief. Thanks for your discussions over the season, LRA community!
“Meanwhile, with teams increasingly modelling after an NBA that’s entire goal is to spread you out and increase the pace/shot opportunities, we’re playing a defense designed to concede outside shots and an offense and offensive style that is the antithesis of what players feel that they need to showcase their abilities.”
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Great, great stuff. Even if it is not the most rosey assessment, it is the most realistic and should set appropriate expectations for next season.
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Thank you. Incredibly thorough. The Eli lineup metrics are staggering and were so obvious to those of us watching the games. What / why was Tony so stubborn to not play him more? 2 turnovers at Memphis? come on. just roster malpractice by Tony.
All we had to do was play Reece, Ryan, iMac and Eli with anyone at the 5 and we would have been a legit contender. We could have run more, spaced the floor more, played better D, rebounded better, etc etc.
All of us could see Eli for Rohde was the right move, why couldn’t Tony? That is the biggest question mark for me. Has Tony lost “it”? Why didn’t the asst coaches push for more Eli playing time? Echo chamber managements are the worst, perhaps we have one?
The fact that we force / dare teams to shoot 3s is insane when that is what they WANT to do based on the metrics. Saw that Nate Oates has had a statistician working with him the whole tournament - thus they shoot a crazy amount of 3s.
Our offense is packed around the lane creating curling, pull-up mid-range 2s…statistically the WORST shot in basketball.
If all of us can see this, why can’t Tony?
I love the man, and love that he brought us a championship, but am hoping that he will bring in an Offensive coordinator and give that person the AUTHORITY to make changes and run the offense, even if the results are rough at first.
Will go crazy if Eli isn’t starting (and playing 30mins) in 2024-25 and we are still running sides.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” - Albert Einstein
Go HOOS.
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I’m impressed you guys have gotten through it already! Thank you for your time and thoughts!
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I will say that maybe it’s a slight underestimation of what Donovan Clingan is as a player. Like we could do all the same things UConn did but you also do have to strike gold with recruiting. Otherwise solid synopsis.
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I was about to make the same point @Hooandtrue did.
Oh, by the way, they still play good defense and didn’t have to sacrifice that to be this good on offense.
Pre-2022-23, they were a solid but not elite defensive team with a better offense, but getting Clingan raised their defensive ceiling to elite, letting them have their cake and eat it too. If you look at the on-offs for the past two seasons, Clingan is the guy where there are consistent and significant differences in their defense with him on vs off. Castle too this season, he’s been very impactful as a wing defender.
But I think it is interesting to consider whether it’s better to establish a higher floor on offense or defense with what your prioritize, leaving the other side of the ball as your “stars align” side for being elite. I’m glad you dug into predicting the tradeoffs that would come with emphasizing offense more. I think there’s also the personnel tradeoffs related to this (i.e. how more focus on offense would affect the types of players you recruit, who gets playing time, etc) that’s worth considering.
(Of course there’s a middle ground of trying to be kinda good at both sides)
Overall, great stuff, and I appreciate you giving so much for us all to chew on and react to all season!
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I mean, they were still good without him this year, if not what they are, and he played like 1/4th of most of the tournament games last year and they were dominant through Sanogo.
He’s great but the system also helps players be great AND you also get great players when the system is so appealing/utilizes them so well.
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For sure. But no matter the scheme you need talent. And some of their guys (like Newton in the portal and Clingan were recruited prior to offensive changes being implemented.
It’s easier to run more complex offenses with better players. And Im sure we would have seen different looks if we had any capable front court players of setting good screens making plays. Buchanan was deer headlight central and Dunn also looked panicked. Minor was okay at screens but at times had an open 3 pt shooter to kick out to and instead went up into 3 guys. Having that veteran big would have opened the playbook more in motion offenses and what not.
If we had an Akil Mitchell defensively in the front court and a guard who thrives in that read react role (a la Brogdon or Jerome) we wouldn’t be talking about schemes.
Of course I do think schemes should adapt to the roster, but I think pushing the pace more and having established talent (guard who can shoot, big who can set screens defend and rebound) has been the bigger issue.
My grips with Tony are more about the roster construction, personnel decisions, and lack of true player development recently rather than the scheme but both could be improved on.
Side note: Death to the Hard Hedge
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The problem is the scheme (which has been run through the mud by the media and dirty recruiting for years and we have recently reinforced with our performance) may be inhibiting our ability to build strong rosters.
In other words, the scheme can work (it has before) but may need to change in order to attract the talent we need.
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I do wonder how true this is in the “UVA embraces NIL” era.
I do want to preface this by saying the death to mover blocker wouldn’t make me lose too much sleep.
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Can you get the right talent if you don’t have an appealing system? Perhaps. But then is its upside capped by the system anyway? I’d argue yes.
IMO, the talent conversation obscures some of the program issues. We can always use more talent and that will always help regardless of the systems we employ - but if there are significant issues with the system, how we’re utilizing players within it, etc. those are things that require significant intention and planning to change (and also can help with talent acquisition when you change them).
I worry that the perception within the program right now is that if we improve the talent, that’s enough. While it would definitely help, I don’t think it should be the final solve.
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Definitely agree with you here.
I think if we change nothing but the talent we can win the ACC and be a 4-5 seed every 2 years kinda of team. I do think a systemic change may be what’s needed to win a national title again.
Just think with this specific roster the talent was HORRENDOUS (imo) and the lack of adaptability and versatility from the staff highlighted those flaws.
What I love so much about Jay Wright and Tom Izzo is their versatility on both ends. And I do agree that having a defense that gives way to 3pt shots in the Curry era is a major flaw. Something Ive harped on for a while
from 3 years ago
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This is my biggest concern. How to convince a skilled player with offensive upside with many other quality options to jump into the slowest system this side of T-ball.
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The scheme CAN work. It has worked (at least prior to the three-point line moving).
But I think the question should be more: is it the most effective thing (or one of) we can/should be doing on offense? And to that I think the answer is “no” even outside of the talent acquisition aspect (which I agree with).
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Hey, as a favor, if anyone comes across a link to this article on a site other than this one or Twitter, do you mind shooting it my way? I’m seeing other places linking to my site where I haven’t posted this, but the links out just go to generic sites, not where it’s actually linked itself.
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I’m worried that Tony is going to spend even more practice time on defense next season without Dunn and Reece there to patch all the holes, execution of the system will have to be perfect.
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Cues music BY GOD THAT’S MALIQ BROWN and JAEDEN ZACKARY’S MUSIC
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There’s really two different questions to answer:
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Why aren’t we maxing out performance in our current scheme? Which as you’ve said it possible.
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What can we try that’s different to get even better than the best performance in our current scheme?
imo trying out number 2 without solving the questions under number 1 might land us in a similar place to where we are now.
Obviously this is a bit reductive and you can try both at once, but I think it’s worth coaches interrogating the stuff under number 1 more closely as top priority (@Hooandtrue was pointing to a few things).
Curious to hear more of your thoughts on this. Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but, to me, the answer to #1 is a lack of continuity and personnel whose strengths aren’t great matches for our system. TB seems to prefer to have players adjust to the system rather than adjusting the system to the personnel.
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