✂ Cuts From The Corner - @B.C

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Curious as to what Blake offers at this point over Minor. Felt like BB was abysmal defensively (esp. on the glass) for most of this one. Was lucky to not be burned a couple other times where he was caught well out of position,

Offensively, you could see it in your clips but Reece just not trusting getting him the ball even when posted on the smaller Zackery. Think there was another fast break that had BB wide open but Reece preferred to take the contact.

I’m all for giving BB his minutes but I don’t get the 50/50 split.

Blake is a significantly better rim protector than Minor, to the point that it more than makes up for his defensive rebounding shortcomings and the defense is better in his minutes than Minor’s. I see him just contesting more drives than Minor, who is more of an on-ball defender against bigs. And then Blake’s footspeed helps the defense play the way TB likes them to play in terms of defending ball screens.

The offense is an issue in Blake’s minutes, for sure, but I’ve been quite pleased with his defensive impact. I don’t think a TB big has been this good in his first year on defense since Zay.

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Yeah agreed. Blake gets behind or occasionally lost (he is still a first year) but his foot speed and size allows him to hedge a little harder and show more. When I think about the bigs who have done well/played as much as he has this early on they’re all kind of household names and truthfully I think of the bunch he’s got the best offensive game starting point. Except maybe Zay, crazy to think his first year he was slender and shooting 3’s. Could’ve been an all ACC defensive end his senior year :joy:

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I looked at a few advanced stats and it seems like they’re pretty equal in defensive metrics. Block rate is exactly the same.

Minor’s rebounding percentage is much better (does that factor into defensive rating?) as is the offense.

I’m not questioning Blake’s future, just don’t think there should be an even split of playing time right now based on win now.

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The difference is mostly in on-offs:

https://hoop-explorer.com/TeamReport?baseQuery=&filter=&gender=Men&incRapm=true&incRepOnOff=false&maxRank=400&minRank=0&showOnOff=true&sortBy=desc%3Aoff_poss%3Aon&team=Virginia&year=2023%2F24&

Minor comes out better, the default should probably be more minutes for him, but I think there are some matchup considerations that are reasonable to factor in.

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