I saw them trip one of our players in the open court. Nothing was called, of course.
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In the moment, it looked to me like Odom was intentionally trying to get teed up. That was an extreme and extended reaction. But I donât know Odomâs style well enough yet, maybe he just flies off the handle?
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If we get our offense operating more coherently, I even think its possible to play Eli more and live with his offensive deficiencies. Eli+Ugo should be able to eke out respectable defensive minutes.
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I saw that too - Thomas was tripped at midcourt by an illegal screen with no call. All game they got away with setting screens with their feet way past shoulder width and also leaning into the UVA defenders as they went by. On the play where Butler hit their first 3, Chance was essentially hip checked by #21 with no call. Ball screen defense needs work but itâs very difficult to defend when the offense is allowed to do that constantly.
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Struck me as a gambit that didnât necessarily work, but was worth trying
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Hereâs the illegal screen I mentioned. Butler defender leaned into this but alsoâŚthis is absurdly illegal even if he wasnât moving. You canât have your feet that far apart. A few seconds later, Butler hit a 3 to end an 11-4 UVA run.
E: Hereâs a gif!
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imo the refs sucked but it wasnât obviously to benefit one team. We got bailed out by a ton of questionable foul calls in 2nd half.
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Yeah thereâs merit to that. I actually think Johann has been better defensively than Ugo, especially at controlling the space in drop coverage. Ugo has a little bit of Shedrick-itis, where his rim protection efforts can compromise our defensive rebounding at times (opponent offensive rebounding % is 40% in his minutes, 25% in Johannâs minutes).
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Difference is that the fouls on Butler werenât shooting fouls. UVA shot half the free throws on a similar foul count. Heck there was one that clearly should have been a continuation call for Thomas under the new rule and they called it on the floor.
Still, the team should have been able to win this game anyway. Missed way too many FTs and open 3s (and 4 3pt attempts from Gertrude, Ugo and GrĂźnloh is too manyâŚI know at least one of those Ugo attempts led to a Butler runout too). Also, too many open court turnovers that led to easy baskets in transition (4 points off GrĂźnloh outlet passes alone).
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Thatâs a good note. I was disappointed with GrĂźnloh this weekend. Looked a little overmatched. Not panicked about him or anything, I just think he still needs a bit more time to get used to power conference level bigs.
Meanwhile I thought Ugo was one of our better players this weekend.
Will be interested to see more metrics on that though, this is purely my eye test diagnosis which is probably overrating that Ugo block party against Butler.
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Am I enough of a contrarian to suggest that the refs were fine?
A: Yes, yes I am
The refs were fine. Each team played a style that put a lot of pressure on the refs, and each coach tried to work the refs to their advantage. They played very physical on the perimeter. We tried to get into the paint and score / draw fouls.
Those guys werenât awesome, but theyâre all long timers who call a lot of P5 games and at least one of them (Desai) has gotten pretty deep into the tourney.
Clougherty is one of those guys whoâs been around forever and heâs rarely struck me as being particularly good or bad or egregious.
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There were countless times Chance got mauled with no calls and other times they called touch fouls 30 feet from the basket. I have no idea why but Chance gets a really lousy whistle.
But the play where Ajayi straight lowered his shoulder and trucked De Ridder I think it was and got an and 1 out of it was the most frustrating call of the game to me.
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Are you referring to the play where Thomas was guarding Ayaji and Ajayi dropped his shoulder, lost his footing, and threw up a prayer that went in and they called a foul on Thomas even though he moved out of the way, or are you thinking of yet another play where Ajayi got away with one?
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After six games (1/5th of the season is over!), hereâs who we are:
- Averaging 86 points per game
- Four players shooting better than 40% from deep
- De Ridder averaging 18 points and 6 rebounds
- Fourth in the nation in offensive rebounds per game
- Fifth in the nation in blocks per game
Even considering quality of competition, thatâs a lot to build on. Right now, they look like they belong at the Butler/Northwestern level: decent but outside the bubble. Given that Virginia is not going to be a good defensive team, how do you right the ship?
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Letâs not leave out Thomas shooting 12-32 (37.5%) and Hall shooting 8-21 (38.1%)! And I think Tillis should be a 37%+ shooter too once he gets back into the flow of things.
Also this is somewhat in the same vein as blocks per game ranking, but 14th in the country in 2 pt% defense is big.
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Could you imagine Cameron Boozer getting his eye socket gouged with an elbow and not even getting a common foul called? The foul may not have been intentional but #13 for Butler just jumped into a pile of players trying to rebound the ball. Thatâs still a foul with a lot of contact. No call.
These refs were distracted and missed a lot of things. Itâs very possible that the venue had something to do with this or the refs had a bad game. I think there were similar issues during the Northwestern game as well. There were a number of times players stepped out of bounds without calls being made. The moving screens were plentiful. I donât think Butler got called for traveling despite there being many obvious calls.
I thought DeRidder was on the way to a 20+ scoring night when he had that nice dunk on Ayaji. The eye injury came after that. That injury affected DeRidder a lot. The lack of AND1s on our side were plentiful for Ayaji at the basket.
I just hope this is the last time we play in the Greenbrier Classic. Itâs a beautiful place but not a good basketball event and venue. Unfortunately, we are going to get these refs quite a bit this year, I believe (Tim Clougherty, Tim Comer, and A.J. Desai).
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On the other hand, itâs not a good thing that we have 19 three point attempts from GrĂźnloh and Ugo. At some point, you need to make them to earn the right to take them. Even worse, their misses are leading to points on the other end because they arenât there to rebound.
It was understandable to try it against the cupcakes. If one or both of them could be a threat from deep, that would be great. But at this point, you know what youâve got. And having them continue to hoist up prayers is bad coaching.
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I think? haha but hard to remember because he got away with that move a few times
Yes, I can imagine that.
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Spend more time practicing/teaching defense. I used to criticize CTB for spending too much time on defense, but maybe he knew what he was doing.
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