UVA Basketball 2022-2023 Post Mortem Thread/Transfer out thread

Men's Basketball
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Credit Hien. I mostly thought he was a scrub watching live but he made a number of smart plays down the stretch. The obvious one, sure, but he was often in the right place at the right time. And he was out front of the 1-3-1 with active hands, feet. He had a key board and put back when Kadin left him to bloack a shot, and nobody stepped in to block him out.

Shoulda switched to 4 guard earlier. Armaan is doing just fine on Slawson.

@AnonymooseHoo dontthink we needed Gardner. Needed to go 4 guard earlier, IM

Yeah, we are scoring every time after we go 4 guard plus Shed. And Richey goes back to man…

Big what if we n the whole season … why so little Shed plus 4 guard? That’s a great look!!

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12

I would go with a 4th option here–we struggle in the postseason because Tony runs a system that allows us to play way above our talent level in the regular season, and that system doesn’t work as well in the postseason. Not so much we’re underachieving in postseason as overachieving in regular season. I think this could change with the 2022/2023 classes though

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I agree and disagree. At this point I weigh NCAAT success far heavier than I did 5 years ago. I would much rather we turn the page to the Mich St model of under achieving in season leading to overachieving post season. I would much rather go 12-8/13-7 in league if that means we improve and peak in March to more consistent S16 and E8 runs. It’s not really close for me anymore either. AND YES, it’s nuts to even make those comments when thinking back over the past 10 years and then the 10 prior. To be fretting over an ACC Reg Season Title, an ACCT Final appreance and a 25 win season, BUT we are because of where we are as a program NOW. We either evolve and improve or we will l continue to tread water (which we have since the Natty) and slowly fade back to a mid tier top 25/30 program. I want to see something change next season, be it:

  1. Playing younger earlier and taking lumps to be improved and peaking latter
  2. Play with more of an edge/attitude (See teams from 2014-2019)
  3. More offensive freedom
  4. Tony improve in game and become more flexible
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This is a great point that I have thought about as well. We have been the high seed a lot but when you look at the “talent” on those rosters is very unique compared to teams with similar seeds. Like you can’t convince me we had more talent (relative at the time out of HS and in college) than those Michigan State teams.

The system allows us to overachieve during a numerous game stretch (the regular season) but allows for the variance in 1 game samples + maybe hinders us in terms of recruiting the type of players we need to get over that hump. So im with you in that excitement for the 2022s/23s as well.

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15

Just looking at the postseason losses, they all feel kind of different to me?

2023: Good defense, offense couldn’t generate many threes and didn’t hit the ones they had. Lost composure in key moments (not just the end of game, I think this applies to attacking the 1-3-1 too).
2021: Good defense, offense generated lots and lots of threes, as it had all season, and shot 11 percentage points below average.
2018: Had a lot of trouble with the small ball and got toasted on 3s. Our best 3pt shooters didn’t hit shots.
2017: Florida was pretty good that season too, we shot poorly on 3s after shooting well on them against UNC-W the game before.
2016: Gave up too many free throws, Malcolm shot horribly.
2015: Not a huge upset, MSU was a super-strong 7-seed. Not sure JA was 100%, only his 4th game back. Gave up approximately 1 million free throws when that was a season-long strength.

2021 was the most variance-y loss in my mind, as that was a ball-didn’t-go-in game. I’d be curious if others see different patterns in those losses.

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Similar point to the one @Jerome made and how @HoozGotNext talked about the Furman game being sorta flukey; we collapsed but we came back. Other teams did the same as well yesterday and the day before (1st round scares are common to other teams too), just that we had another collapse in the dwindling seconds

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This is why I chose the psychological aspect/playing tight answer for the consistent woes. Not one consistent thing on the court but all these issues stemming from tightness

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Can we flesh this out a little more? What about the system do you think leads to overachieving talent level during the regular season but is more prone to 1-game variance?

For me, I think the amount of 3P attempts we allow schematically might be one factor, as that does increase the variance in a single game, but of course this cuts both ways. If you chart performance against seed expectations with defensive 3PA rate, the relationship changes between positive and negative depending on the year. For example, in 2019, 3 of the Final Four teams (UVA, TTU, Auburn) allowed opponents to take 40+% of their shots from 3.

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19

Sure, every game is different. There’s not gonna be easy answers like “Tony forgot to castle his bishops in every game” or whatever.

For me, the commonality is this: we play a low possession game which means there’s a premium on FAST adaptation within the game and we tend to both play slow and adapt slow, which can be fatal.

2023 - Richey hasn’t played or practiced the 1-3-1 in months but pulls it out. We haven’t played or practiced the 4-guard much, but don’t pull it out until they’ve taken the lead.

2021 - We are a great perimeter shooting team but just ice cold. But we don’t really switch to letting Reece attack the hoop and play a 2-man game with TM3 until like 5 minutes left. (Applying the main point - nobody is saying we shouldn’t have tried to use our strength, but we need to adapt quicker when plan A didn’t work)

2019 - focusing on G-W. Bad enough we decide to start Salt on Laster, but slow to switch personnel or coverage. And when we switch personnel we STILL don’t change the coverage. (But we won because our talent was so awesome — so let’s always try to have awesome talent!!)

2018 - big issue was crisis of confidence. Needed senior leadership, but instead our senior leaders were taking off the floor because of some arbitrary rule. We were soooo tight.

Beyond that, it gets fuzzy, tbh. I actually thought we made the right moves v UNC-W. Florida just gave us a whooping. In 2014, we chose to play even Nolte after AG got hurt. Tony even admitted that one.

In general, I think we tend to play a bit tight. Have a little more fun, play a little more loose. In that sense, I do think our error minimization strategy which is sound in the regular season causes us to clench buttholes a little too tightly in the tourney.

(Should also add that I think there three separate things here: (1) our 22-23 strategy to lean into Covid 5th year, (2) some multi-year roster building mistakes, and (3) March underperformance other than awesome natty year. There’s some overlap but I think they are 3 analytically distinct issues)

** addendum on 2018 - we needed to post Ty, and we did out of timeouts, but why didn’t Ty do it on his own? I think there’s a bit of fostered dependence in a way, and I know this is a bit blasphemous

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20

Imagine if we just used timeouts lol

And this year was the one time Tony’s saving timeouts might have helped… but then we know what happened

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21

Not all 3s are created equal. You weren’t getting wide open 3s against that defense in 2019. Also if you have a good offense that gives you sizable leads, the opposition will be shooting a lot of 3s to catch-up.

This year it always felt like a shorter or slower guy was trying to close out on a wing shooter. That didn’t happen with Hunter, mamadi, key. Then on offense, Guy, Hunter and Jerome were building us leads.

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Personally I would say we overachieve in the regular season, but that just means we end up slightly overseeded, not that we are especially prone to variance. It was still super unlikely to lose to 3 double-digit seeds, just a little more likely than your average 1/4/4 seed team. Actually think our play style more than makes up for lack of possessions–less overall variance when you consider we usually don’t foul/get fouled, don’t give up or take open lay-ups, and stay out of transition. That’s why there’s no major upset losses really in all of 2018 and 2019 outside of UMBC.

The “system” to me is we are very solid on defensive positioning, not turning the ball over, not taking bad shots, and keeping teams out of transition. We don’t stop doing these things in the postseason, but the gap closes between us and the Michigan States of the world who have a higher ceiling. We’re closer to our ceiling in the regular season.

Completely agree with @haney on needing to make faster adjustments though.

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23

While I would like to play talented more mistake prone younger guys early to hopefully have them be better later in the season TB will never risk losing a game doing that. He is not built that way. Another thing looking to the future is the influx athletic guys (Dunn, Bond, Gertrude) who bring a lot to the table but at the moment it probably isn’t 3 point shooting. How will we try to take advantage of their offensive skills in ways other that 3 point shooting next year?

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But he is risking losing a game by doing that… a significantly more important game…

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We didn’t have that luxury this year, unfortunately. Pitt got in off the bubble at 14-6. Clemson got left out at 14-6.

Had we been weaker in November, we would likely have gone 0-for-Vegas, and we would have been Clemson

In most years, your premise is solid, but we can’t bank on several ACC teams not shitting the bed early in the season, thereby tanking the conference metrics.

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26

I agree but that is how he coaches.

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27

Don’t have much to add other than we need better players/athletes if we ever want to get back to a final 4 or even 2nd weekend. Kihei/Franklin/Gardner core is relatively weak after watching all these other teams. That’s an undersized and/or unathletic trio that we rely on

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28

Seems we went 4-guard a lot in that game (and in the ACCT), as Dunn and Murray are listed as guards and play a hybrid role, particularly in a sides offense.

Problem is, it’s tough to play four- or five-out motion with Dunn because defenses don’t respect his jumper (Murray, either, for that matter).

Lots of general disrespect for Vander Plas on this board, but he would have helped us vs. Duke, and probably vs. Furman as a guy who wouldn’t hesitate to take a three in the first half.

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29

I think we get through the zone pothole much more smoothly with BVP. We definitely got worse when BVP got hurt.

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30

Also, Beekman’s last second shot wasn’t so far away from going in…

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