His dad is from Stevens Point so they knew about him early. He came on an unofficial like before his soph year when he was unknown. Really looked like a borderline high major, guy you’d take as a project then blew up his final summer. All came together fast. Notre Dame was one of the few that was already on him. UVA threw out an offer with everybody else, UNC included, that July. Got nowhere.
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That’s gonna be an issue all year. Any team w a power big is gonna give us issues. Luckily there aren’t that many in the ACC
Award for “Most Likely to Emerge as Our Glue Guy” goes to Justin McKoy.
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Nah if they only have 1 we are fine. If they have two we are doomed. UNC has 4 bigs that could cause us issues. Hope we see a LOT of Kadin and Huff stays out of foul trouble.
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This was a surprisingly poor night for Huff on D
Is it that UVA bigs are getting beaten when they show-hedge-flash outside…opponents’ bigs just get a free path to the basket, as the pack line doesn’t seem to fill in the hole?
Seemed like he was over helping on multiple occasions. Our other defenders still had their guys in front of them, but Huff went to help/get the block, allowing a pass to a guy under the basket. Maybe didn’t happen a ton, but I certainly noticed it. (Edit - I should also note, he does a ton of good when he comes to help and erases a lot of shots, so you see why he does it, but you can’t do it all the time or guys will take advantage)
The most brutal help decision though was when Hauser came off of Laszewski to double their other big, leaving Laszewski wide open for the three. I know we had made a decision to double the big guy and Hauser was doing what he was told, but as soon as he did it I went “Oh god, don’t do that” haha.
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Hauser had 10 boards, without which UVA probably loses. He shot poorly to be sure. I thought shooting was supposed to be a strength with him. Sigh
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I’ll take 5-13 and 3-8 from 3pt to go along with 10 REB and 4 Assists any day.
He could have shot better, but he always seems to come up with a big shot to calm us down / kill the other team’s momentum. He had a couple like that tonight. That’s something we didn’t have last year.
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Completely agree. Hit multiple big shots late (as he has been doing almost all season) and that offensive rebound with 4 guys around him was big boy basketball at its best. Defense is still a work in progress but on the offensive end everything with him is just so fluid.
He seems to get better as the game goes on, which may be him settling in and getting comfortable. I would presume that will go away as his reps increase
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Two things I liked tonight, outside the obvious. Murphy had a quiet offensive game, but it seemed to me he played really well defensively. He’s probably the biggest key to success on that end and has the most upside for individual improvement. And even though Casey didn’t shoot well, I liked that they stuck with him. Hopefully he’ll gain some confidence if that continues.
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Murphy has the potential to be Trey-mendous
Pun fully intended.
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I also believe Casey’s defense has an impact on the other guys. As a team the defense played better.They still have a long way to go but Casey sets the tone for how hard you play defense. I believe it’s a win- win when we stick with him.
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I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a UVa point guard play a better game than Clark played tonight. If he’s really going to be this good night in and night out, anything is possible!
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Happy to get a win and pleased to see the guys play with a bit more passion and make enough plays late. But in all honesty, other than getting Huff some post touches early in the game I didn’t see much progress in terms of execution at either end of the floor. Lots of standing around on offense against one of the worst defensive P5 teams in the country and our ball screen defense was dreadful once again for most of the game.
Hopefully we get home safe and have a couple of good practices because we’ll lose Saturday with a similar outing.
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Casey had an excellent defensive game but damn he’s got to be better offensively. He had a no brainer fast break he missed and two bunnies in the second
Half he left short.
In what way is that effort resulting in a loss on Saturday? High energy, multiple guys having solid games, holding an opponent under 60…???
Just calling it like I see it. We defended their guards well at times but they also missed some wide open looks. They had two wide open 3s in particular in the last 3-4 minutes that went halfway down and bounced out that would have changed things down the stretch. And I thought our offense looked really stagnant most of the night against what is a horrible defensive team.
Anyway, like I said, I thought we played harder, but I don’t think we played that much better. And Tech is a much better team than Notre Dame. Just my opinion of course.
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