Italy Trip

Don’t know about this. Certainly haven’t matched our regular season level but someone posted a graphic of results from the last 10 tournaments and we are 13th in wins. Still pretty damn good in a vacuum. It just seems bad when we are top 5 in the regular season.

I’m just glad Tony is sharing minutes equally at this point in the process and sticking with the plan to sit three tomorrow. I’m sure it’s frustrating for him given his ultra-competitiveness but good for the long term development.

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So through 3 games if one wanted basketball takeaways from this trip there seem to be two glaring negatives (that really we already knew) and one glaring positive we all cautiously expected:

-Negatives: defensive rebounding and guard scoring. The two things that held us back the most last year still might hold us back this year.

-Positive: Kadin Shedrick is growing. Past trajectory of TB bigs showed this should be expected but you never know until you see it.

So all in all not sure this trip is teaching us much we didn’t already know. I think if someone didn’t read a post until now and came in and guessed how things are going they could’ve named all 3 of those points.

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Yeah most disappointing so far is that we’re not seeing a different Franklin yet.

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Not so bold prediction: Franklin is what he is. Sophomore year was the anomaly.

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If we are +15 today, I’d take the points.

I agree that during this trip I have “learned” very little. It did give me a much better idea of what to expect from Isaacs, Bond, and Dunn for next year though. That was probably the biggest thing, but I think most people were pretty correct on those predictions too, so in that sense, again, we haven’t learned much.

When I ran a massive survey of hundreds of fans a few months ago, about 80% thought McKneely would be in the rotation, 45% for Traudt, and the other two were below London Johnson (who I haven’t seen anywhere on this trip!)

I’d say the number for McKneely is right. Traudt is close to right, though I think less than 45% because of the logjam at the 4-5 and Tony’s love of small rotations, and the other two I don’t see a realistic path to the rotation this year.

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Yeah his career 3P% is 32.3%. I am expecting him somewhere in that range next year. People point a little too much to his sophomore year and his last two games last season, and a little too little to that 328 shot sample.

I tend to think the veteran guards (and Jayden) have given some deference to new guys scoring so not sure if guard scoring is a true reflection of the season. At least I hope so. Guards probably could have put up 20 a piece against earlier competition. Biggest question marks for me are defense and which of the new guys seems most comfortable, getting right rotations and reads, etc. That’ll be huge come season

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Well, as Tony said postgame, today we are going to see a lot of the first years and Murray against a really good team, so we will get some decent evidence regarding who’s likely to contribute this upcoming season, at least at this point in the preseason preparation process. Is the game at the same time today?

Dunno game time. The Serbian article pre-trip said both at 7:30. Some article I saw today (uva?) said game was at 6. UVA twitter hasn’t said yet or I can’t load the tweet because of spotty data. For now I’m planning on 6 (noon et) and hoping for it, but that would make conditions hotter in the gym. (By the end of last game it had cooled down a lot at least where I was sitting.)

Game is at noon per uva Twitter

Thanks, better get one more quick dip in before strolling to Portofino and then Santa Margherita Ligure for the game.

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Kadin’s interview was really impressive. Sounded like a leader

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Alright, enough from the negative Nancies, Mr Positive here with some thoughts as to why the deficit will be less than yesterday, or maybe even a win:

  • Normal variation: they probably will not make as many threes as yesterday, and we won’t miss as many (and hopefully will take more)
  • Length/athleticism on the wing: my under informed read on their roster and how we played is that they have length at the guards/wings and we countered with SGs at both spots. Today we have our athletic and/or tall wing defenders back available.
  • Better offensive spacing from our bigs: Traudt sat, and BVP took the struggle bus to Santa Maria Ligure, yesterday. Having both available gives us room to operate.
  • motivation: yes, the point of the trip is to luxuriate at Villas and learn a little history and eat some pasta and look cool in Fendi over the shoulder bags, yada yada yada, but presumably our guys didn’t like losing by so much

And two reasons why the negative Nancies may be right:

  • Shed: he’s out, and seemed to be the one spot where we had an advantage
  • less experience in the pack: (but how much did this help yesterday - the packline in modern and euro hoops needs length and athleticism at the wings, and yesterday we had none)
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We will make the NCAA tournament this season barring some injury to a key player.

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Sorry to rain on your parade Haney but I’m back to be negative. So of our four top-100 freshman: one will play, one may be in the back end of the rotation, and two will either redshirt or play very limited minutes? Yeesh

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Don’t let the negative folks here get to you. That’s their negative spin, and you don’t have to believe it. Let’s stay tuned.

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I don’t think the three who sat are coincidental

Just imagining the takes if we win by double digits today

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