Italy Trip

For me, the key with Dunn is he needs to be available to play, and play some. He said to @Marktykobe that last year was really his first full season playing, and even then he missed a lot of time. I look at a guy with that profile and say “kid needs to play consistently.” I certainly don’t look at a guy like that, who’s what? Almost 20 already? And say, kid needs to sit. But what do I know? I’m just a guy on the internet who likes to belabor things. (Obvious things, that other people disagree with)

To make the point less obliquely – if the Dunn options are:

  1. play 7-10 minutes in the cupcakes and sporadically in non-tourney ACC games, OR
  2. don’t play at all

I really struggle to understand why option 2 is better.

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I just feel like a very athletic 6 foot 7 wing is the type of guy most programs would find some minutes for. Especially because he lets us play big and athletic at the 3 which we have not done for two years. Like if Armaan is getting beat at the 3, put the very athletic hybrid G/F in. And if Armaan isn’t hitting shots, what do we lose by playing a guy who is – at worst – longer Armaan.

And not to belabor this over and over but Armaan or McKneely at the 2 and Dunn at the 3 adds like 10-12 inches of height across the 2-3 from the Kihei at the 2 plus Armaan at the 3 lineup.

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Even Armaan and McKneely only at the 2 adds 9 inches with Taine or Bond or Gardner at the 3.

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One of my hot takes is that height is important in basketball.

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especially when other teams are shooting you out of the gym

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I think this team has a much better chance of being top 25 offensively than top 10 defensively

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Yeah, I just listened to the end, and she said Armaan’s shot looked better which was not really backed up by any of the info that leaked out.

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Definitely a very positive take on just about everything but I appreciate the insights from someone else on the ground.

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It’s a miracle! 13 seconds of actual Italy footage from a normal sideline camera!

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It’s pretty dumb to me that they won’t release it. I legitimately would’ve paid like $20 to watch those 4 games from that camera setup. Just seems like a lost opportunity

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I would’ve paid $20 to watch one game.

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$100 package to watch all the games, give the revenue to the cav futures program

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Yes.

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For an athletic department that needs money, their failure to be creative about ways to monetize is incredible to me.

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Tony doesn’t want it. Gaining a few thousand dollars probably isn’t worth pissing him off. Especially because we’re going to need to be doing everything possible to convince him to stay as college sports heads gets more pro like everyday.

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It’s kind of an innaresting aspect of Tony’s personality. From a competitive standpoint, he wants to be coaching in the ACC. From a privacy standpoint, he’d prefer to be coaching in a random Wisconsin middle school gym.

I think he basically views the publicity aspects of his job as more of an accommodation, than something important/fundamental.

I think for all the praise of Tony as a human being (99.9999999% of which I agree with), I get frustrated because his idiosyncratic approach to program publicity is basically a thumb in the eye to non-rich, child-having and therefore immobile (or any other similar reason that folks can’t easily travel to Italy or Cville for games), and non-Cville area fans like me, who rely on the publicity to follow the team.

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Feels like Tony is going to retire 2025-2026ish anyways/don’t think he’s a lifer even before the rise of all these changes.

Might as well try to see if there is any leniency in actual fan engagement and real content.

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For the record, while I would spend $$ to watch the games, I think the better/smarter move would be to either try to get them aired on a partner (ACC Network, ESPN+, or whatever), or maybe something like FloSports, which aired Arkansas games, or just stream them for free. If for no other reason, than that’s what the competition is doing.

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Think it’s a terrible idea for Virginia to take on airing and streaming the games on their own. Would bet money people would be groaning about the 1 camera angle, low quality and shotty stream. Ans taking on the expense to self air would negate any money earned from selling it.

Then the option becomes working a deal with likely ESPN and it’s possible they didn’t see it as value either for the expense to put it on.

I say all that also knowing CTB wasn’t making any efforts to make it work or find solutions.

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Yeah, as far as I could tell from my brief research, I think teams either did it with some care/attention, or didn’t do it all. Maybe 5 years ago (the last time I paid attention) there was more self-streaming. Feels like Nova did something like that.

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