I hope that the 3M’s return because I think they all have potential and would be in the running for more playing time next year. I don’t expect that Tony hinted Igor/Taine would get significant playing time in their first year with the program (Int’l guys with significant development needs), but also has to be disappointing to get early PT and then not play at all in the ACC schedule, especially when the players in front of you are struggling.
However, I won’t be too worried even if all 3 choose to leave. There is a chance they all get passed by incoming freshman (McKneely over Taine/Carson, Traudt over Igor) and spend next year on the bench. Tony hasn’t shown an ability to balance playing time for a full roster and next year’s team is full even before finalizing LJ / Kihei.
I’ve mostly lost hope that Carson will be a major contributor here (could happen, it would just be surprising), but if neither Taine nor Igor emerges, that either:
puts more pressure on all or most of the 22 class to “hit”
puts more pressure on Tony to pull another Brax, Hauser, Murph level player our of the portal; OR
lowers the ceiling for the following year(s) (23-24, and beyond)
I agree with all of your points, but I also look at it a little differently. For UVA to get back into title contention, it needs a couple guys to be college superstars and I don’t think any of the 3Ms fall into that category. The pressure for the '22 class to hit doesn’t change to me, because the key is finding a couple All ACC first teamers. Once that is in place, I think that Tony has shown over and over again that he can land a top transfer if we have a role available. The issue this year was that our transfers were immediately our top players, not high level role players.
And I try not to get too tied up in multiple years from now…two years ago, I thought that UVA would be competing for a title this year with Reece, Casey M, Jabri, Trey Murphy, Kadin…way too many moving pieces now a days with transfer movement. Also, if they all leave, Tony has room to add new recruits or transfers that backfill the openings.
I dont know anything about Sochan by my initial guess was that he played ball in the US at some point … am telling yall it makes a difference unless you are a flat out pro at age 15
So having watched a bunch of Orange Academy games, Sochan was always the better athlete and was probably always going to be the better defensive player immediately. But his offensive game was less refined - his jump shot is nowhere near as good as Igor’s, for example - and that seemed to lead to Igor getting more playing time on their German team. But given Baylor’s roster composition, they didn’t need him to kill it offensively to play a significant role - they needed him to defend and score opportunistically, which he’s done really well. But the same drawbacks are still there - he shot 29% from three on 2.6 attempts per game and just over 57% from the free throw line.
I really wanted Sochan because it felt like he’d be a perfect fit for what we generally want from the 4 spot, but, what can you do? When we got Igor, I wasn’t initially impressed, but his film got me more excited. He probably still has a significantly higher offensive ceiling if he can ever get comfortable with the physicality around the hoop in the American game.
What surprised me most though was that I honestly thought he’d pick up the defense quickly and earn Tony’s trust - in his Orange Academy games he was always noticeably locked in defensively. Even if he wasn’t like locking down guys or getting blocks, he was always attentive and active - chasing his man over and under screens at full speed. I think if he’d gotten more playing time he would have made some significant strides and been a perfectly adequate defender by year’s end, but I’m not the coach. In his game time, it seemed a little to easy to back him down, so it might be physicality/toughness aspect they felt was missing. Who knows.
Thanks for the breakdown. I watched a few highlights and a few minutes of full games, but nothing in depth.
You hit on what I think is the most charitable explanation – Igor isn’t nearly physical enough to succeed at the ACC level at this point. It hurts him offensively and especially defensively.
But (and I think you know this part …) given the talent on this team, and its ultimate outcome, Igor’s lack of physicality gets a big “So what?” from me.
This was an NIT team. At the end of the day, it wasn’t even a bubble team. We didn’t even earn an NIT home game! (It was given, not earned ) Everyone on this team had severe issues.
Reece can’t shoot and we still gave him his own thread! Kihei and Jayden were severely undersized for the ACC level. Etc. We all know the rest.
Yeah, I mean, we discussed this all year, but I would have found 5-10 minutes a game for Igor and Taine this year if I were coach. A ton of teams have rotations that go beyond 7 guys, and the way you develop depth is to play the guys next on the depth chart even if there is a drop off, not just play multiple starters 37+ minutes a game and only toss in the reserves for two min when you’re down by 20 plus.
Again, this has been discussed too much already, but I think Tony got stuck in a tough spot. The team obviously was not as good as previous iterations, but he is hardwired to try and squeeze the most wins out of every team in a given season, and he probably felt like there was enough there to get us into the tournament. I think it led to him just piling on the minutes for the starters and only playing guys on the bench who he felt he could fully trust in the defense from the get-go. Probably led to more wins across the whole season than we would have gotten had we played the young guys more, but I’d venture to say probably also reduced the number of wins we could expect in the post-season and next year. By a meaningful amount? I have no idea - but that just seems to be how he approaches the trade off.
Of course, another possibility is just that Tony knows exactly what he sees in practice, the Ms aren’t actually that good, and we wasted an additional recruiting cycle. That’s still an option on the table as well. As is the possibility they just need more adjustment time and will step into bigger roles next year (which there’s not a ton of precedent for, but you never know).
This may be the most accurate and honest assessment I’ve seen of this team on this site all season.
Exactly. We can debate lineups and the mistakes made all day, but even if each of us had our own multiverse and got to see the version of the 2021/22 Cavs we wanted to see, the ceiling for that group of young men and coaches was the Bubble.
Sure if everything breaks right and everyone does exactly what we hope and dream maybe this is a solid tourney team. But that only happens in video games not reality. The reality is, the sum of this team is simply not equal to any of the teams 14-19 and for me the deciding factor is look at the NBA’s in that timeframe and give me an honest assessment of who on the 21/22 team is a NBA/GLeague caliber player?
I fully agree with everything you say, but I do want to quibble with this a bit. Speaking at least personally, I made a conscious decision to limit this discussion a bit down the stretch because it was clear we weren’t going to change and I think changing by late Jan, early Feb. would have killed our small chance to make the tourney.
But, tbh, I think NOW is the time to revisit. Season is still fresh in our minds…
I think another factor is that Tony got himself caught in “oh crap, I need to win now” mode even as early as the Navy game. And that once he leaned into that mode, the script was more or less written. The young guys didn’t get 10+ minutes in any games but the cupcakes, which meant they weren’t ready to contribute come ACC play, which meant they didn’t play. They and Tony got caught in a bad feedback loop… Or maybe they stink! (I don’t discount that possibility either)
Yup, I agree. Best case scenario was probably one of those Dayton play-in games.
This is a point I’d love to explore more. I fully agree I think CTB backed himself into a corner, and honestly I’m not sure if I would have done any different. It’s the perfect storm of a few things, the Navy game happens, and it’s oh sh&t I don’t have what I thought I had, then you double down to right the ship and you realize this thing is further off course than I realize. And by the time you slowly round the corner it’s Jan and then you have a chance so do you chase it? (he did) or do you go the opposite way. Both have massive implications. While I can appreciate wanting to play and train youth. You also have to respect your vets. If they are used to going 30 a game and running the show, and all of a sudden in Jan you pull the plug and say welp this aint working it sends a horrible message to everyone about the program.
The funny thing is, Tony being one of the best coaches in the country probably masks the significant issues with talent on the roster more than would be the case almost anywhere else. For most coaches, this roster is probably like 0.500 level team or slightly above. But because Tony is so good at what he does, he got it into the bubble convo. It’s a credit to Tony, although you’ve got to hope we figure out the talent piece of it quickly.
Yea this season was lost in April not November or December. The minute Tony the GM decided not to add more than one guard from the portal Tony the coach’s hands were tied.
I’ve been guilty of this in the past, so I’ll throw up a poll:
Should this thread be just for transfer news (and speculation) and the postseason (or post-NCAA chances part of the season) evaluation stuff go elsewhere? I’ve been assuming folks wouldn’t be looking for actual transfer news yet, until after our last game, but you never know…
Without further ado:
Keep this thread for just transfer news (incoming/outgoing)
Postseason analysis fine if it may relate to transfers
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this alot. I think Tony does more with less than any coach in the country.
That’s sort of self-inflicted though. His recruiting and evaluation has to be so perfect based on how we fill our rosters and his rigidity in system-ball.
Bad take alert…Tony also does less (or would do less) with top talent than most top coaches. As I was watching Houston play, I thought of all the minutes those guys would spend on the bench and/or bricks they’d put up in blocker-mover…
