@HoozGotNext addressed it in the article a bit. I think the answer is length, athleticism, and experience. Unfortunately, next year, other than Reece and Shed, we are mostly looking at guys who have either or 1 or 2 of the 3. (and to bring it back to the PT convo … there is only one of these factors that Tony can control…)
The starters going 6’2-6’3-(hopefully)6-4+ instead of 5’8-6’2-6’3 at the 1-3 should make an impact with how much our guards are called upon to rebound.
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With regards to Milicic, I haven’t seen this discussed a lot, but I’d imagine Wilkins is helping manage expectations as far as PT. They knew each other in Europe, so I’m sure IW told him before he ever committed about the program culture, and that there would be a learning curve. Especially for someone who didn’t arrive until late Summer.
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Tony recruited all the players. He’s at least partially or mostly responsible for the level of athleticism and length on the team.
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True - I was just saying that in a given year, Tony can take a raw but long/athletic player and give him more experience, but he can’t make an experienced yet undersized player bigger.
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Perrantes played less per game his 4th year than he did in either of his 2nd or 3rd year.
Armaan has played in 84 career games.
He has shot 40% or better in 25 games. - 30% of the time
He has shot 25% or worse in 43 games. – 51% of the time
That’s a lot of data that he is not a shooter at that distance.
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What’s his percentage of games at 33% or better? What about in games with 4+ 3PA attempts? Because that’s the benchmark for being a solid contributor from deep. I don’t think anyone holds illusions of Franklin becoming Kyle Guy or Sam Hauser next year.
Are you saying he is incapable of improving to become a decent shooter from distance? Or are you saying it is unlikely? Given that he was bad his freshman year and then good his second year with more system familiarity, and that he was again bad in learning a new system,… I am open to the idea that comfort in the UVA system and an off-season of work could yield very good results next year.
Justin Anderson made a career off of 2.5 months of great 3-pt shooting after off-season training.
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Couldn’t care less about 33% … creates no spacing or gravity as guys won’t guard him tightly.
He’s taken 4 or more in 42 games.
He’s 40% or better in 17 of those 42.
He was 33% in 2 of those and 40% in 1.
So in 22 0f those 42 higher volume games he is effectively shooting his team out of the game.
He’s taken 3 in a game 11 times and is either 1/3 or 0/3 in 10 of those 11.
This is false unless you are talking about a team like ours where the other people around the shooter can’t shoot either. Which lord help us if that’s the situation we are in again next year. But in a functioning offense 33% is the Mendoza line.
Let’s examine his sophomore year.
He played 22 games.
He shot better than 34% from 3 10 times.
He had 13 games of 1 or 0 makes.
So he’s bad from 3 59% of the time his best year.
If you think 33% is acceptable as a UVA 2 guard for a Sweet 16 caliber team, it would seem you don’t understand Tony’s offense. It may be acceptable elsewhere where they generate a lot more possessions by steals and offensive rebounds. We’ve never done that.
We’ve only ever been good under Tony when we have 2 starters who are knockdown shooters + multiple reserves who have serious gravity opening the floor for slashers and bigs.
Edit … I will caveat by saying I would hope those %'s translate to the madness. Generally lesser shooters shoot worse when the pressure is greater - because they just aren’t good enough.
Eh. There were some low volume attempt games in there too. If a guy is 0-1 in a game, it doesn’t make him a bad shooter. You could also say that he shot 50% or better from 3 in 10 of his 22 games. That sounds pretty great. He had some great games and some stinkers. His results look fairly streaky to me. Still, if we wants to go all Justin Anderson 2014-15, I’m fine with that. He was a career sub 30% until hitting 45% his last year. And it was 55.7% from Nov-Mid Jan before going 23.5% the rest of the way.
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Maybe he can’t shoot as well in front of a crowd. His aberration season was the crowdless one.
Just a wild theory that wouldn’t help anything anyway since we’ll not be playing in empty arenas anytime soon (knock on wood).
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I guess we’ll never know how Anderson would have done in the post season if he hadn’t been hurt.
As it was he was 1/6 from 3 in the tourney. And he was 0/4 vs Mich State.
The team went 2/17 from 3 in that game.
Best way to bow out early in the madness is to shoot poorly from 3. Especially when your offense generates a ton of jumpers. That’s the biggest problem with Tony’s offense is that it generates a higher % of jump shots than almost any other Power 6 team in the nation. It’s designed to get upset and lose in the madness.
7 losses under Tony in the madness. Here is the 3 point shooting in those games:
Florida 3/18
Mich State 6/18
Mich State 2/17
Syracuse 8/21
Florida 1/15
UMBC 4/22
Ohio 8/31
At Washington State …
NIT - St Mary’s 3/15
NCAA - UNC - 2/16
NCAA - Vanderbilt 7/19 in Double OT
So in Tony’s 9 NCAA Tournament Losses, his teams are a combined 23% from 3.
Only if you choose not to follow the actual point I was making (or at least attempting to make) and instead have a discussion against something that wasn’t being said. It seems we largely agree that we need multiple shooters on the floor. And I agree our top shooters need to be closer to 40% with decent volume.
Why I like Armaan’s ability to drive. Hopefully gets his 3-pt shot to a capable level. No surprise that our championship team had 3 guys who could score from deep, mid-range, and on the drive. That’s what we need. But doesn’t everyone.
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I guess we have 2 different expectations of where we want UVA to end up in March.
We’ve had 3 Sweet 16 teams since 1995. That’s what I want at minimum. Sweet 16.
2014 our 3 top shooters were at 44%, 40% and 37%. In ACC play they were 51%, 42%, 42%.
2016 our 4 top guys were at 49%, 44%, 39%, and 39%. In ACC play they were 48%, 47%, 41% and 33%.
In 2019 our 4 top guys were at 45%, 44%, 43% and 40%. In ACC play they were 53%, 50%, 45%, 43% and a 5th at 37%. And it took 4 really tight wins to win it all. Probably one of the reasons is that the 53% 3 point shooter in ACC play when the Hoos were destroying teams barely played in the madness.
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There are exceptions with other programs making it deep without a number of shooters, but Dave’s definitely right that with our system, we need high level shooters. More of any kind of scoring is good- I’d rather have Armaan and Gardner take and make 2’s than just take 3’s- but it’s pretty clear a TB team is at it’s best when our best players are shooters.
Someone more basketball smart than me probably knows why that’s Virginia specific, but my guess at why is that we don’t try to recruit and rely on crazy athletes like some other programs do. FSU can win a lot of games when they don’t have shooters, I’m not sure we can
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