NCAAT First Round - Furman vs Virginia (12:30 PM, TruTV, Thursday, 16 Mar 2023)

Looking back on it, and I said this at the time….

Up 12, 11 minutes to play, McKneely gets a good, but not great, look from three, and misses. Would have been the kill shot — like Anderson tried vs. Duke (2015) up 11 with about 10 to play. That missed, Cook hit a three, and it’s an 8-point game. And Duke had momentum.

In this one, next possession, Slawson drew minimal contact from Dunn but was awarded two shots.

TV timeout.

Slawson hits both, then they go into the 1-3-1 pressure zone and our next possessions are:

Murray turnover
Clark miss from midrange
McKneely miss from three
Franklin miss from three
McKneely layup
Beekman misses layup
Shedrick hits two FTs
Gardner miss from midrange
Clark miss from three
McKneely miss from three

12-point lead to a 3-point deficit.

We’ve been missing the kill shot all year. And this one turned into a 19-4 run by the opposition.

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Yeah, real sliding doors moment. Glad iMac was being aggressive and he was hot in the moment, but it was a bit of heat check moment…

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Imac had 2 shots at that. The missed heat check likely would have shut things down. But he also had an open look when Furman went to the 1-3-1 and missed it. That made 2 misses in a row and he went into a bit of a shell after that. One of those, if the ball bounces the other way you likely have a different outcome. But in a game like yesterday there’s 5-7 of those moments.

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For any sickos like me, do folks remember how to find replays online? I think they wind up on the youtube page, but does it take a few days? (I may have DVR’d it, come to think of it…)

Fwiw, 11 minutes of highlights, here:

That was, what, 11 possessions? Furman scored 1.7 points/possession over that stretch as well as us scoring 0.35. That’s rough.

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Yup, it was a 2-stage collapse. They caught up in a 6 minute stretch to go from roughly 50-38 to 54 all. And then took the lead. Then we righted ourselves and were about to win in winning time like we have for most of the season and then…

Gotta almost analyze both their run to take the lead and then the last moment whiff separately when you do the autopsy.

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We have been missing that go-to scorer and killer instinct all year. Seems like we only really played with a chip on our shoulder during the 2019 season. I realize that “having guys you can lose with” is part of our culture but I would like to see more Ty Jerome types that hate to lose…

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Exactly- Ty Jerome’s class was now 7 years ago? Meanwhile I’m watching players like Tyler Kolek (Marquette), Austin Reaves (Oklahoma/Lakers), and plenty of other players that have similarly been available lead their teams. Guys that are 6’3-6’5 who can play pointguard and score at the one spot, and I just wonder why can’t we replicate what we know worked for our National Championship contending teams.

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We’ve had 2 PG’s on the roster the last 3 years… Nobody wanted to come here and sit.

We’ve had 2 “Kihei’s” on this team the last 3 years (not a Kihei hater), but both he and Reece have been redundant for a long time. They don’t compare to the type of player that Ty Jerome was, right?

If I were looking at our team over the past couple of years I would recognize-especially over the last two years that “they need some shooting”.

We’ve had two PG’s, but they’re nothing alike. Both would have been much better with a legit SG, especially Reece. Reece is not the shooter Ty was, but he may very well be every bit a good running/leading the team. In 3 years, he hasn’t had the opportunity to show if that’s case.

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What I’ll say that is redundant about Reece and Kihei are:

Defensive Pressure
Steals
*Cannot Shoot

Since both Reece and Kihei have the ball in their hands 75% of the time they need to be able to make plays for themselves and the other players.

You mention that we need a legit SG, but they’ve had Armaan and now iMAC this year and when teams switch and take away the players without the ball, the point guard needs to be able to drive, score or shoot it. Neither Reece or Kihei are those players. That is why I mention that getting a Ty Jerome like player who can play alongside either of those two would have been an easy sell. I don’t even think we offered anybody like him? We could right that wrong by offering Ty Davis…

A good “kill shot” in the 2019 run (among many) was Dre’s three against Gardner-Webb with about 11 minutes to go and us up by 8. You could tell after it went in that it was like a huge weight had been lifted from our players and they knew the game was theirs. I kind of felt that way as a fan as well. Was waiting for that yesterday……

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100%! We know what a winning roster looks like and the pieces we need to make a deep run. Credit to Tony for maximizing the potential of this team. However, from a process perspective, we never should be in a position of playing as a shorter / less athletic team. Makes what Hooz Got Next is saying that much more important as our roster construction has been off since the National Championship. Really like how Tony has been stacking recruiting classes in 22 / 23 so I am much more optimistic about roster construction going forward…

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this isn’t exactly fair to Reece. He was what 36% from 3 and can definitely pull up. He isn’t confident in live play from 15ft which sucks because that’s what made Malcolm so good.

Oh I meant his first and second year, this year he has been much better, but still as good as a first year at the ACC level.

You maynot have been a part of the board at the time so this isn’t personal- Regarding Reece, and I mentioned this several times over his first two seasons, he committed to us in 11th grade- so he had his 11th and 12th grade to learn how to shoot; his highschool coaching did him a MAJOR disservice by not cultivating him, and therefore we have had to spend 3 good years re-teaching him how to shoot. We cannot do that anymore and we cannot have our starting backcourt be as small- if they cannot shoot.

I would actually simplify that to say we can’t have a starting backcourt that aren’t both (or all 3-4 if you include other wings) good shooters. Any wing we play heavily should be a plus shooter (unless we are changing to an up tempo fast break offense). We win with defense first, shooting second, and taking care of the ball 3rd. That shooting element has been missing 3 of the last 4 years. Hopefully those are the last years in which we have that issue.

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Tons of current and past players posted this on their instagram. Some of them: Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, Sam Hauser, Braxton, Trey Murphy, Reece, Kadin, Devon, Jack Salt, and on and on.

Love to see it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp5EOhjtGB0/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

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It’s a shame that someone who played a key role on 3 ACC regular season championship teams will always have that last gaffe mentioned as part of the legacy.

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I would guess as time goes on, people will remember 2019 and not a random tourney when we weren’t supposed to go far anyways. For better or worse, only 2016, 18 and 19 stick in my head.

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