This is a specific kind of eye test. It’s the firehose of acid into the eye test.
4 Likes
We used to have a well-earned reputation as a player development staff. Is it fair to wonder if that’s still true?
I have had questions about our development of bigs for a long time. It is a chicken and egg thing though too. Because of our system … we have a hard time landing skilled bigs coming in so we have to take flyers who are riskier bets … we require Bigs to hard hedge outside the 3 point line, run back to recover on the pick and roll, and rinse and repeat … then on offense, we just tell them to set picks and make passes. We don’t run any offense through our post. Easy to recruit against that.
7 Likes
It is fair to say the transfer portal has saved the program the past few seasons.
The transfer portal has allowed the staff to paper over the lack of quality HS recruiting/development. “Saved” is a subjective term. In 2019-20, as in years prior, it gave us some complementary talent to plug and play with a largely home-grown roster. In 2020-21, it absolutely saved the season. Last year, it prevented things from being worse, I guess, but not sure I’d consider the NIT as “saved.”
5 Likes
There are enough counter-examples that this doesn’t seem like a major hindrance on the recruiting trail. We have fed the low post with Gardner, Gill, and Hauser. And we allow our post players to shoot from outside when they have those skills – Huff being a salient example.
As for hedging, nearly any low post player with NBA aspirations can see that they need to be able to defend on the perimeter. Hedging skills can translate in that regard.
3 Likes
That’s all we need our bigs to do though. And Kadin does have some post moves. But he doesn’t get the ingame reps or confidence and gets waived off which leads to him being less confident when he get the ball in those positions and then the cycle continues.
This is going to be ironic given that I actually love what we are doing in theory, even if we don’t have the pieces to run it, but Maybe… just maybe… we should go back to mover blocker being our default offense
@hooandtrue proceeds to violently throw up in a trash can
We have decent catch and shoot 3 shooters now with Armaan and McKneely. And it would allow us to work Kadin back into the lineup if he doesn’t fit the new offense/build his confidence to where he is taking jumpers again like Baylor/Duke last year. Also more roll opportunities for Dunn to dunk it as opposed to standing a corner with the triangle stuff.
5 Likes
I always need someone else to tell me the offense we are running, but as I think others have pointed out (@lodger96 maybe?), we were running some Sides / Blocker-Moverish type stuff when Kadin was in for a few possessions…
2 Likes
Let’s not forget Frankie the piano player in 2017 (miss)
4 Likes
I don’t know how to assemble all the grand narratives here, but we have at least these:
- recruiting downturn until class of 2022
- No sit-out transfer rule (or one-time universal waiver, to be specific)
- NIL / NIL affect on transfers (h/t @dave92 )
- Covid 5th year
- UVa getting hit by some early NBA departures that we had mostly avoided until after the natty (Justin Anderson being the lone exception, now with lots of company)
Some are UVa-specific, some are college hoops in general. But they have sort of interacted to bring us a more topsy-turvy 20-23 period than we had in 14-19.
6 Likes
Two more that sometimes get raised: (1) lack of in-person evals due to covid (maybe more impt to Tony than some of his competition); (2) NIL.
1 Like
Yup, NIL for sure. No in-person evals arguable a subset (or reason for) of the recruiting downturn continuing a year or so longer.
1 Like
It’s pretty clear that we don’t have a great hit rate with HS recruits in recent years (until this year). The question is why. Is it because:
- We wanted these guys from the start and it was just a bad evaluation
- We swung for guys that we should have known we’d never get, then had to settle
- We went after guys that would have worked out, and we had a great chance to get them, but it didn’t pan out and so we settled
I felt like there was a period where we overshot (the second bullet), and then a period where we took more reasonable shots and still came up empty (the third). Related: What did we do differently to get our current freshman class?
A number of these factors interact. I’ll cite the example of Casey Morsell.
If Kyle Guy stays for a fourth year, then Morsell has a relatively comfortable transition into college ball as a freshman, probably playing 7-8 minutes and contributing good defense and maybe a couple of shots per game.
Instead, Morsell has to play big minutes that he wasn’t ready for, and seemingly his confidence tanks as a result.
His eventual transfer to NCSU, meanwhile, was facilitated by the new instant eligibility transfer rules.
2 Likes
I mean, honestly my feelings on those topics (what went wrong in recruiting? And then, what went right in recruiting?) have mostly come from reading stuff that @StLouHoo and @HoozGotNext have written over the years, and I’m just a guy trying to avoid his day job… 
(aren’t we all, except for the lucky few retirees amongst us).
But yeah, those are the right questions!
5 Likes
Yup. I’ve written this exact same thing numerous times. I truly do think that the issues we’re having come down to the high school recruiting hit rate plummeting. And if Shedrick doesn’t give us more, it’s hard to argue it wasn’t a near disastrous stretch of recruiting for a program at our level. That’d be two hits (Kihei and Reece) in five years of recruiting, which is terrible.
Not only that, even the hits aren’t exactly what they were before. Kihei is great and a warrior, but I’d still probably pick him only above Jontel Evans at PG if I were creating a new team from scratch from major contributors during Tony’s UVA tenure. Reece has shown flashes, but we’re in year three and the performances are still extremely uneven. Compare to Ty, Malcom, or even London in year three and it’s not particularly encouraging.
Tony is a magician for getting us the win totals we’ve had since our title run with the high school recruiting stretch we’ve seen. He probably deserves even more credit for that than he gets, although the flip side is that the recruiting probably deserves more scrutiny.
Regardless, we still have a ton of wins this year and hopefully the light comes back on. It’s not doom and gloom, particularly with the dudes we got in 2022 and are pulling in in the next classes. It’s just confusing how poorly things went for a stretch there.
4 Likes
Go Hoos!
6 Likes
Guys, am I remembering the 2021 early recruiting correctly. We thought we were loaded so we decided to shoot for the stars with Keels and Reid who wouldn’t be threatened by the players we already had. And if we missed we still had a bunch of good players so no big deal. So when that didn’t happen and some of our guys didn’t develop or transferred and we were scrambling for foreign guys who TB probably hadn’t scouted because the were foreign or because of Covid it didn’t quite work out as hoped. Oops.
1 Like
Keep in mind the 2021 class was the class that didn’t get a summer AAU season because of COVID. Tony never really went after Reid for, well, reasons, but really only Keels and Jalen Warley were pursued.
4 Likes
Cmon Dave there is a difference between actual discussion and you being a contrarian even in moments where it’s not needed. The whole “Everyone was bashing me back then for saying the same thing” mentality is as equally annoying as the “Oh you are being critical? You dont know more than Tony” quips. LOL
Revisiting some of my old takes
Still agree with everything here
And here too
Here I still agree with the first half, and the later part of the 2nd half, especially if Reece was himself the entire season. But Kihei actually blows McNeil out the water; McNeil is hot garbage LOL. Dead wrong on that take/would rather Kihei play over McNeil 12 times out of 10.
4 Likes