This is the issue with just looking at rankings.
3 of those 4 are bugs we admittedly haven’t replaced yet - but let’s break that down further.
1 is Blake Buchanan - having him ranked there is asinine - I think we can all agree.
Another is ARob - would’ve loved to keep him, but is he some irreplaceable commodity? Absolutely not.
Cofie is the biggest talent we’ll have a hard time replacing - but I’m absolutely not ready to say we can’t given how successful/stealthy we’ve been so far
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An example that sticks out to me is Miles Kelly
His Georgia tech year
And his Auburn year this year
It also seems hard to separate individual analytics from team performance. So if we have a good team, everyone we add will have good analytics lol.
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Yep, this is kinda the whole thing. I think the Miya portal rankings attempt this, as guys with a lower predicted 2026 BPR than their 2025 BPR tend to come from good teams (and vice versa). But even then it’s imperfect, as these kind of metrics are best conceptualized as trying to divide up credit for team success (or failure) among the players on the team, but sometimes that doesn’t carry over from one team to another. No one has a team context-free metric, mostly because that seems impossible to construct.
This is still better than just looking at someone’s per-game stats without adjusting for minutes, team strength, opponent strength, etc.
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No rankings are a panacea. But they do tell us something as long as you know what goes into the formula.
Unfortunately for 247, they don’t have a formula. They appear to purely be winging it as far as I can tell. Which is so not helpful when there are so many people to rank. Ignore them.
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Thomas at 29 feels wild. He’s one of the best guards in the country.
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Just shows how crazy the portal is with so many talented dudes in it
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I am stunned at the high ratings of some of our former players. Some of them lacked all 3 of speed, athleticism, and couldn’t finish at the rim. Both back court and front court players. They had decent minutes played and some stats as someone had to play on our team. But I think we are in better shape for next year with the majority of our new transfers in then the transfers out that they will be replacing. Not all. But a clear majority.
So many of them getting high ratings doesn’t make sense to me considering our record in the worst power 4 conference.
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There’s maybe 3 guys on last year’s team I’d take over who we’ve brought in so far?
Assuming we get a decent big or two at least 
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Both hope and hyoe spring eternal in off-season message boards!
It’s not really hope lol - most people seem to think this except you (including people who aren’t fans)
I’ve been following Virginia basketball for over half a century. I’ve seen it time and again. For the most part, I’ve seen the same things said about most newcomers prior to their donning a UVa uniform. Sometimes they live up to the hype, and as often they don’t. At least, not immediately. There isn’t much to separate this incoming group from those that preceded them.
I think that some of the reasons for optimism this time have to do with the ample amount of video on 3 players that have proven themselves at a P4 level. The numbers don’t lie either even if our eyes might.
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Thats a really pessimistic view on the talents of the incoming players to put it mildly, but you do you
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Would Malik Thomas change your feelings on this?
Eh I think it’s clear the team the last two years didn’t fit together into a cohesive unit. Most of them are landing at the power conference level, there was talent last year. It just didn’t gel together to form a complete team
Hope is based off the guards we’ve landed appearing to form a more well rounded group than the last couple of years. Remains to be seen how strong their chemistry is and what we do in the front court. But the optimism around the guards, especially when you look at the group as a whole, is justified imo
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I think that this is a bit accurate. I also think that the primary reason those squads didn’t gel should be considered. There was talent. I don’t believe that there were any “head” cases in the lockerroom. At least, I don’t remember any reports of such. However, there was little or no continuity on those teams. There were few players who had been in the program more than two years. That said, the probability that we will see similar issues in the coming year is high. And, even if the incoming players are as good as some here claim, at least two of them will be gone after next year. I remain a bit skeptical that Virginia will thrive in the era of the transfer portal as it is now. I believe that Coach Bennett showed that the way for Virginia to succeed was to build stability. I doubt that UVa will be competitive recruiting against the Dukes, UNCs, Kentuckys, etc., of the world with either high schoolers or transfers. It hasn’t been so in the past. I don’t see a reason to believe that that will change in the future. Any stability the program might enjoy is still two or three years away. I hope that I am wrong about this incoming group, but I suspect that I am not.
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Don’t totally disagree, but I think the way towards being “good” stable instead of “mediocre” stable involves trying to be as good as you can right away, so you have something to sell HS recruits and younger transfers.
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I’m not sure of this. I think both Coach Holland and Coach Bennett filled the rosters in their early years with the promise of early playing time. At the moment, Coach Ryan has a lot of that to sell, and the team needs warm bodies. I also recognize that the transfer portal is the most convenient source, at the moment. I believe the long term viability of Virginia basketball will depend on how well Coach Odom does identifying and recruiting the right prep playes during the next two cycles. Going forward in this brave new world, retention will become as important, if not more so, as recruitment.
Edit to add: For that matter, Coach Gillen used early playing time as a selling point for his best recruiting class.
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