Defending a physical, score-first PG, and improvements from some players:
Great stuff, as usual.
anything jump out at you on offense in terms of breaking out of this mini-slump, especially from 3?
Just curious. Do you think the double team by Ugo was a coaching strategic thing during a timeout, a situational thing taught in practice (however, we do it very seldomly), or Ugo just seeing the opportunity and going for it?
Well said!
I’m finishing this up just as OSU put a pretty bad hurting on a Wisconsin team that just put a bad hurting on Michigan State. FSU has since gone into Blacksburg and destroyed the Hokies. I think there’s a lot of merit in taking these punches from desperate teams away from home and still coming out on top! I know that we aren’t firing on all cylinders yet like we were during the mid-stretch of the ACC season – but the improvement on defense as well as the ability we’ve shown recently to shift our defensive strategy to adjust to the moment IS encouraging.
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The one with Hall on the sideline? We’ve double teamed with both of our bigs in that spot pretty frequently all season. We don’t usually do it in the middle of the floor (nor do we normally hedge, which was an adjustment) - but that wing trap has been something they’ve used off and on all year. They definitely used it here/not a freelance.
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Thanks.
The biggest thing is just going to have to be mental/taking shots in rhythm. It appears to me that guys are over thinking it and passing up looks to drive the space sometimes where really the look is what we should be taking without hesitation. A lot of our guys, especially Thomas and Hall, shoot it a lot better when they’re not thinking about it. The thing I wrote about is that I don’t think the guys being static around the arc when we touch the paint is doing them any favors. They aren’t putting any pressure on the help defenders to stay aware of them. That one Lewis/Tillis clip, for example, Tillis should have been repositioning away from Thornton prior to Lewis getting clearly stuck. We’ve seen times where we’ve done this in recent games, like Chance playing off of De Ridder, where the shot has been really clean.
A good rule of thumb is not to spot up when your defender is directly between you and the ball. We’re getting caught ball-watching a lot.
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I agree on needing to have put Lewis on Thornton more. In the staff’s defense Royal was coming off of some good games (including 8-for-8 from 2 against USC), so it’s reasonable to see him as a threat you want to keep contained.
Also this is a hard hedge cultural victory.
Glad you highlighted Tillis. It was a peak Tillis game, just doing winning basketball plays with some bonus individual scoring. Hoop Explorer has a new “Net Pts” table on their game reports, and it has Tillis as the 2nd most offensively impactful UVa player in that game (3rd most impactful overall behind Chance and Johann): hoop-explorer.com/MatchupAnalyzer?adjImpactStats=false&factorMins=true&gender=Men&impactPerGame=true&showImpactBreakdown=true&team=Virginia&year=2025%2F26&
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I agree the defense on Royal made sense early… but given how Lewis played Thornton and how well he was playing (and how poorly Royal was shooting), I think you need to make that switch. If Royal starts getting hot then, so be it, but make him prove it because Thornton was.
I laughed re: cultural victory. In seriousness, I don’t actually agree. I think it was a “be able to call any defense that makes sense for the situation” cultural victory… and Odom is all about that.
Yeah - that’s exactly how I want us to use Tillis and how I want him to play. In small doses and not trying to back someone down - but making smart plays cutting off of the ball, keeping it moving, and converting clear opportunities.
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hell yeah
Anyone else annoyed that we don’t really run any BLOB plays? Mainly just have a guard coming off a screen to get a shot in the corner that teams now know to expect OR lob it up to a big man for a hand-off to a guard
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