This year's team is better than last year's team AND

its not even close. This article was published on January 16th of last year. Teams that in danger of not making NCAA tournament. I feel much better about this year’s team on January 1 than I did last year’s team at this time. Jay and Sam will have to become better on defensive end while Shedrick and McCoy have time to improve…

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Better talent … but not all the talent plays the minutes based on highest upside in March.
Hard to tell yet since we’ve only played one good team and got creamed.
Next 3 weeks will measure it.

Mamadi and Braxton could cover up a log of others deficiencies on defense with their athleticism. We don’t have that this year.

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I’m curious because you’ve mentioned the talented players not playing a couple of times, how would you split up the 200 minutes amongst our team?

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While partly true, I don’t think it tells the whole story. This year’s team has missed significant amounts of meaningful practice time. The normal summer routines didn’t happen. Fall practices were not conducted in the typical matter. Then, there was the issue of the “pause”, when only Zoom meetings happened. It is not just that Diakite and Key were excellent back-stops. It is that this year’s team is committing more defensive errors due to a variety of reasons, most of which, IMO, have to do with the lack of repetitions the newcomers have had. And, there are a lot of newcomers. Only Huff and Clark have more than one year playing Coach Bennett’s schemes, and there are a lot players getting significant minutes for whom this year is the first time around. (And, if I understand things correctly, redshirts didn’t practice Virginia’s defense so much as they tried to imitate opponents’ defenses in practice.) Since last March, Virginia has had little continuity in player development. It is what it is. Of course, Virginia isn’t alone in this, but UVa is still a very young team, and it is the younger teams which are hurt most by the current situation.

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Five - Huff 28, Shedrick 12
Four - Hauser 15 , McKoy 15, Shedrick 5, Murphy 5
Three - Murphy 25, Hauser 15
Two - TW 14, Clark 14, Morsell 12
One - Beekman 30 Clark 7, TW 3

All the above is their offensive role. Defensively they can cross match as needed based in opponents. I believe that McCorkle is likely a better 2 guard than anyone else right now but he hasn’t gotten a chance. He’s a perfect 2 in Tony’s offense.
Jabri Is the highest rated recruit for CTB and he hasn’t seen much time.
Upside wise I would give all the 2 guard minutes to Carson and Jabri - however many minutes that is per game.

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Of course at this point it may all be moot anyway … this season may end like the last one.
That may mean just playing all the guys that have the highest upside now as many minutes as possible to get them ready for a full normal season next year. In that case I would do this. It would never happen though. :slight_smile:
One: Beekman 30m, Clark 10m
Two: McCorkle 20m, Jabri 10m, Morsell 10m
Three: Murphy 25m, Hauser 8m, Jabri 7m
Four: Hauser 18m, Murphy 5m, McKoy 17m
Five: Shedrick: 20m, Huff 20m

Next year is gonna be crazy at guard … will there be a transfer?
McCorkle, Morsell, Jabri, Murray, Beekman, Clark,