Tony has never been a big oriented player. Outside Mamadi, none of our front court players have been top 50 kids and our best front court defenders were kids who were mostly midmajor but athletic and had defensive versatility. Add the ability to hit an open 3 and that’s all we need in the front court. That pick and pop action, and the ability for a put back slam.
Pick n roll, slide of a blocker screen towards the rim, etc. We had the formula down to a T and instead we waste time recruiting top 40 kids obviously not coming to us, bringing in transfers who necessarily don’t fit what we do or compliment eachother well, and then play those lineups with longer leashes for the guys who don’t have as high ceilings.
Return to our roots. Develop strong guards and small forwards. Get those bouncy glue guy forwards. Get a big personality pg (Perrantes had an attitude to him we had not seen in the last 3 years, even with Cali cool being his persona). And start getting back to UVA standards (those 2014-2019 teams would annihilate the current ACC) and then we can try to find ways to get that “national title talent” we want (and we may already have it on the roster).
No matter the offense, we are always going to be a guard oriented team.
Maybe bolster the NIL more to help out pitch but if we can get back to putting guys in the league, guys we recruited out of HS, that would be a bigger pitch than any NIL for high school kids in that 60-150 ranking range. Since transfers care more about NIL. Get our brand back on track. Get our lockerroom back on track. Get our Jerseys back on track most importantly.
@Dave92 - Agree. If we can’t compete on NIL, then we are choosing not to compete. I watch students pick one job over another for an incremental 5%. If somebody can make 2-10x per year playing at another school, it would be a hard pill to swallow to take that “cut in pay” unless you fundamentally believe that this system is going to take you farther. This is a tremendously significant difference in income. And, oh by the way, if the NIL at Miami comes with little in the way of “work” and at UVA you have to put in a lot of appearances, etc. including the week of an NCAA tournament game (picture of Kihei and Gardner at a charity event) to make money, won’t that be more appealing? What would it take for us to turn down multiples of an annual income?
It’s easy when you have a lot of money and have stability to think that a coach or a school’s brand or the possibility of the future matters more than hundreds of thousands of dollars, but there are no guarantees about the future. And somebody could make the argument that if Creighton - a school that went farther in the tournament than us this year - guarantees you more playing time and has a system you would prefer / showcases you better … and is willing to pay you about $100,000 (I heard that is the going rate for an IT level player), what is the downside?
@Hooandtrue - Love this idea but a question. When we recruit out of high school, then the UVA / CTB brand is stamped on them. Transferring is easy. We will fight that those kids can easily look around for their market value and figure out somebody is willing to pay them more. I’m starting to wonder if we don’t go after transfers after their first year - 3 years of remaining eligibility. Harder to transfer. They have adjusted to college. Reality has sunk in.
Until we get serious about NILs and cut the “holier than thou” attitude about a player’s God-given-right to make money in the free market, then we’ll continue to slip out of elite status into wherever we’re heading.
I remember those Biblical passages about maximizing ROI.
I would imagine the language in the preceding statement partially quoted here seeped into the second. We may need to revisit NIL now that we know everyone is using it as pay for play, but that wasn’t our initial approach. God is likely sitting this debate out, though.
I agree with your views but I don’t think it is a “holier than thou” more so it is them following the printed “rules” that hardly no one else is even looking at…
I think this mischaracterizes the issue. Nothing about UVA’s approach is anti free market or anti player.
Where we get “holier” is that honor and integrity are woven into the fibers of the institution. What other schools are doing amounts to pay for play, and we won’t do it because it’s against the rules. Anybody who expects that to change should probably pick a different school to support. You just have to accept that we start at a structural disadvantage. It’s no different than having higher academic requirements for athletes than most schools, an issue we have contended with forever.
Now all that said, yeah our efforts need to step up considerably. The money is there but no large donor is going to go rogue and run afoul of the administration.
I didn’t mean to attack you or anything. I think this is a serious problem but I just don’t think expecting uva to change its stripes is realistic. Somebody needs to figure out the right structure so we can get players paid. I’m confident the money would be there but I don’t see some donor going rogue like at Miami and Syracuse and just circumventing Tony and buying players.
But we will face a scenario sooner or later where a player we recruit out of high school develops into let’s say as a hypothetical totally made up example accdpoy but maybe doesn’t have the best nba prospects but he could probably get a $500k bid to go play his last year at an SEC school…wtf are we going to do then?
That’s a great realistic post. I was just flying off the handle but you’re totally right. Our approach is broken and we need to fix it but in a way that fits our character. Not sure what that is but at least we agree there’s a problem!
For Kadin, I’m sure part of it was NIL money, but I think it was also the fact that he can’t trust CTB to start him every game next year and give him majority minutes. In that context, the NIL money could be a little bit of an excuse.
Fair enough, I was mostly trying to be clever. I am disappointed that pay for play is presently in vogue, but not in a million years did I think we’d ever win a bball natty. I’m playing with house money moving forward, just not the kind I can pay deserving and thus disgruntled college athletes with. Not how my life journey has gone, though I appreciate those willing to invest.
I kinda think we’d do alright in an above-board regime of players being contracted to work for the university by playing basketball and being paid directly by the university for it. Lots of hurdles to that, of course.
I don’t know if there’s a way to compete from a talent acquisition standpoint (ie bidding for transfers). That might be a tough one to get around.
I’m most concerned with talent retention and I feel like we should be able to address that more easily. Uva has car dealers too. Hell I’m sure there are big donors who would gladly kick in substantial sums for nearly no show jobs (like “hey come to this cocktail party I’m hosting after the game and glad hand my buddies wearing my PE fund’s logo embroidered Patagonia vest and walk away with $25k”) but they need to be told it’s ok.
I really fear a scenario where Reece gets bid away. And I couldn’t blame him if he took the money based on numbers I hear are out there.
This is part of why I’m hoping that the most blatantly pay-for-play schools absolutely dominate on the court, making the problems of the current system impossible to ignore. The sooner we get to the next compensation model, the better.
