There is a lot of angst among us all right now, however I do not think there is reason for long term concern. This year’s team was always flawed in it’s composition. That was obvious after game 2. Individually talented players who did not necessarily fit well together, at least in the traditional sense, and certainly not in the traditional UVA sense. Tony builds his program a certain way, relying on experience, especially at the guard positions, and athletic, versatile defenders. That was missing this year for a variety of reasons, injuries and illness, the big 3 leaving early, recruits coming in off injuries, etc. I’m not naïve enough to think we probably will not have any transfers out, and I would certainly expect some transfers in, but it is not like the cupboard is bare next year, just unproven. I was as frustrated as anyone with the Kihei/Reece combination in the backcourt, but Tony values defense and taking care of the basketball, and those two were undeniably the best in the backcourt at those traits. I know we all see what we want to see, but if we started the season with Kadin/Papi, Justin/Trey/JAR, Casey/Carson/Taine, Kihei/Reece, I’ll grant you that’s inexperienced, but that’s 5 top 100 ranked players, a guy that reclassed and would have likely been a top 100 if evaluated in his original class, and an almost sure fire first rounder borderline lottery pick. Kadin has been slowed by illness, Justin has showed flashes, Trey is a potential late first rounder this year, JAR was a top 40 recruit, I’m higher than most on Casey – last year he was thrown to the wolves and he has shown flashes this year, Carson and Taine have the reputation as snipers, and two experienced point guards. Do guys need to step up and develop, of course. Do we need depth in the front court, absolutely. Do I think this team looks better in February that December, absolutely. Is it constructed more like a “traditional” UVA team, I sure think so.
Using recruiting rankings on a team basis for college basketball is foolish. Since the national title we have pulled in the following players: Sam Hauser, Reece Beekman, JAR, Carson McCorkle, Trey Murphy, and Taine Murray. Each of these players were either highly coveted recruits or highly coveted transfers. The players we’ve had come in since the title are only comparable in caliber to the national title crew.
Would it have been nice if JAR or McCorkle were ready to see the floor? Sure. But they weren’t and Covid certainly didn’t help. But it was also unreasonable to expect contributions comparable to second or third year Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, and De’Andre Hunter from first year players in the middle of a pandemic.
Everyone played with the same deck of cards. This is routinely a bad argument.
I wasn’t arguing that either. But there are plenty of freshman that contributed this year. It’s reasonable to question.
It’s a starting point. Why is it foolish? There needs to be a standard measuring tool. We have a full season’s worth of stats now. But apparently those also don’t matter because COVID and the fact that our recruits aren’t ready. Which is weird agruement next to the one that we have recruited well and put our recruits in positions to succesd/contribute…
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Everyone did not play with the same deck of cards. Covid protocols varied widely between schools. If it is anything like football, UVa had one of the most stringent.
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Oddly we did have a freshman who contributed this year, which seems to be excluded from the analysis you’ve given.
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It is a terrible metric for a variety of reasons. It places a heavy weight on the number of recruits you bring in, which is fine in football where class sizes do not vary greatly but is terrible for basketball where class sizes can range from 1-5 typically. It also completely ignores transfers, which play a huge role.
I guess I’m just genuinely confused as to the point here. We struggled this year because we had a poor run of recruiting from 2017-2019. So obviously, the issue was the recruiting that’s occurred since the national title?
For reference, here are the recruits and transfers from 2017-2019:
- Marco Anthony
- Francesco Baddochi
- Nigel Johnson
- Braxton Key
- Kihei Clark
- Kody Stattman
- Tomas Woldetensae
- Fransisco Caffaro
- Casey Morsell
- Kadin Shedrick
Here has been who we have signed since 2019:
- Carson McCorkle
- Reece Beekman
- Jabri Abdur-Rahim
- Sam Hauser
- Trey Murphy
- Taine Murray
But yeah the post-national title recruiting is the problem
I’m pretty Nova plays a similar pace, a little faster as they run when they can. They do play a deliberate pace.
Look at the box score of our loss to Ohio and their win vs North Texas. They took less shots and scored 84 points.
This isn’t about pace, it’s about hitting shots.
Starting out at #4 in the country and ending this way is probably at the root of UVA fan angst, along with not knowing what’s going to happen with recruits and transfers going forward. Maybe add in the two first round losses (the only ones since 2012) surrounding the NC in the last four years. Taking the longer view since Tony started rolling in 2014, though, it’s a been a great run. Five of the eight years, we finished higher in the AP poll than we started; five regular season ACC conference championships; two ACC tournament championships (out of six that were not COVID ended for us); made every NCAA tournament; advanced past the 1st round in the NCAAs five out of seven years; Sweet 16 or better in 3 out of 7 years; Elite 8 or better 2 out of 7; and one National Championship. I will definitely concede that not meeting seed expectations in 5 of the 7 years in the NCAA tourney is a mark against UVA"s overall success, but the NC helps.
The post-mortems on LRA will do a better job than I ever could on why this team didn’t live up to preseason expectations. I can list a few under-accounted for issues, though: several key players trying to play the packline for the first time (though the coaches made adjustments and individual players improved somewhat over the season); poor outside shooting by our guards that allowed teams to negate outstanding 3 point shooting by our bigs; no proficient interior scorer (Kadin’s illness wiped away any potential for that); lack of team physicality along with weak interior defense against physical bigs; the negative impact of the loss of a HS senior season and a Covid restricted preseason on Jabri and Carson; and just about the worst timing for a Covid issue at the end of the season, except for VCUs and maybe GaTech losing Moses Wright. You can second–guess the coaches on the adjustments they tried to make to overcome these problems, and many will here, but, hey, we still won the ACC regular season championship, so it wasn’t a total UNC/Duke-like flop. And I will always be optimistic about the future of the program as long as Tony is at the helm.
Covid had a greater effect on teams with more new players (i.e., Sam, Trey, Reece). Veteran lineups who had played a season together were better prepared for the lack of practice time.
and or teams that had their own protocols. Zags
I’ve said this before but I think we need to speed up just enough to not be dead last in pace. If we just got up to 330th in tempo we’d hear way less about it on the recruiting trail. Being dead last in a category jumps out at people.
Deadspin is garbage
Sometimes I wonder if Tony Bennett is too good of a coach in that he gets the team to play at a peak level by January/February, resulting in those gaudy regular season records and high tournament seeds. But maybe that means there’s no extra gear to hit in the NCAAs.
Maybe too good in the ACC?
| Tempo Poss/G(Rank) | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YEAR | 20-'21 | 19-'20 | 18-'19 | 17-'18 | 16-'17 | 15-'16* | 14-'15 | 13-'14 | ||||||||
| POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | POSS | RANK | |
| Nova | 67.8 | 308 | 69.6 | 247 | 67.1 | 321 | 72.3 | 134 | 67 | 328 | 68.8 | 290 | 67.5 | 159 | 70.7 | 96 |
| Uva | 62.4 | 347 | 62.3 | 352 | 62.6 | 353 | 62.1 | 351 | 62.4 | 350 | 62.7 | 351 | 60.2 | 348 | 62.5 | 346 |
| out of 347 | out of 353 | out of 353 | out of 351 | out of 351 | out of 351 | out of 351 | out of 351 | |||||||||
| Rank 300 | 68.1 | 68.4 | 68.2 | 68.8 | 68.6 | 68.6 | 64.4 | 65.6 | ||||||||
| Rank 330 | 66.8 | 67.5 | 67.1 | 67.5 | 66.9 | 67.2 | 63.1 | 64.8 | ||||||||
| *Went from 35 second clock to 30 seconds |
Hope this is readable. Fact is that, despite hearing almost yearly in the pre-season how UVa would pick up the tempo and run a bit, CTB’s teams just don’t. It is a remarkable consistency around 62.5 possessions per year. With Villanova, there is variation from year to year that probably reflects Wright coaching to reflect the talents of his team. With CTB, regardless of PG, we get the same thing. It’s successful, but can it be better? I’ve argued previously that a slightly higher POSS/G (2-4 POSS/G) would pay outsize dividends. Reece’s talents are probably best utilized in an offense that can push the ball 6-8 times a game as I don’t believe he will ever be a particularly effective outside threat (not as bad as Jontel, maybe better than Kihei, no where near Ty, London or Malcolm). At least get the ball into the frontcourt quickly and if Trey or Sam (this year) had a green light from 3 when open even if it’s 2 on 3, TAKE THE SHOT, regardless if there are 26 seconds on the clock! Even if you push it and there isn’t an opportunity, at a minimum you have a few more seconds to run the offense. This is the one area I hope Tony takes a serious look at his coaching philosophy and the strengths/weaknesses of his team - my two cents as I’m talking continual improvement at the margin, not a wholesale change in philosophy. EDIT - more possessions also plays to your strength as that means we have more chances with our defense to assert itself as well.
There is zero doubt in my mind that playing a glacial pace is a great way to compete and win against teams with superior talent. Which is why Tony played that way at Wash St. It is NOT a good way to compete against teams with inferior talent. That is the simplest explanation for the first round disasters
This is a nice table. I do wonder if, when Reece takes over the reigns from Kihei, we see a very slight uptick. Reece is the only PG in the last 4 (London, Ty, Kihei) to show any propensity for picking up the pace/taking fast break chances. Obviously there is a coaching/messaging piece regarding tempo, but I wonder if it has also partially been driven by the guys driving the car…
Creighton doing what we should and could have done. Burying an inferior opponent and moving on
I thought the same would happen when Ty took over for London. London played so slow, sometimes I felt that he didn’t play with urgency even when the situation called for it. Tony even said that he loved London because he was impossible to speed up. But Ty took over and we saw no change in the pace, even with the shorter shot clock.
London seemed to like playing from behind. Was strange for me but most always he delivered
Always thought the 2nd round game is so much easier as the favorite than the 1st round. Teams are often tight in that first game.