Timeline doesn’t add up. Recruiting failures that limited this year’s team were pre-covid. Since covid Tony’s high school recruiting is at his best rate ever
Reality is between the 2017-2020 classes we only landed 3 ACC starter level high school recruits (Kihei, Kadin, and Reece). That’ll leave any developmental program in perpetual catch up mode. Hopefully the performances of McKneely and Dunn are indicators we are breaking that cycle
Miami is the class of ACC Basketball at the moment (WTF, right?), but they weren’t really in a good position from the 18-19 season to the 20-21 seasons. They had three sub-.500 records and it seemed that maybe Larrañaga had entered check-cashing mode.
So what are the things that Virginia could replicate from Miami’s turnaround? Getting a billionaire alum to hand out NIL money seems unlikely. So does adopting Miami’s high-octane offense. Outside of those two (admittedly huge) things, are there aspects of Miami’s program that people on the boards wish were implemented at Virginia?
I’d take that al day everyday.
I’m going to be a little curmudgeonly and say nothing, haha. Even with the tournament wins they’re exactly where we are at this season in T-Rank and KemPom. Their home environment sucks. Their offense is elite but they haven’t had a defense better than #91 in T-rank in the last 5 seasons (including this season). Last season their defense got hot/lucky at the right time and they had their 2nd and 3rd best defensive games of the season in the tournament on the back of some truly miserable shooting by their opponents from 3. I’m being a bit of a hater, but I’m not really sure there’s things there for our program to model.
I’ve been workshopping (in my head) a cross-sport comparison to UVA and I keep coming back to the Tony Dungy-Peyton Manning Colts. They ran a defined system that was predicated on scoring a lot of points on offense and then having speed rushers on defense for when you get a lead. They prioritized executional excellence with limited formations as opposed to being multiple and thoroughly dominated in the regular season for a long stretch of time. (UVA focus is on defense, but you get the idea.)
But when the playoffs came and they faced only teams with top coaches and players, they struggled more than their seeding should imply and had trouble trying to win in a different way. The Patriots always gave them a ton of trouble in particular because Bill Belichick teams could win in many different ways and were excellent at shutting down an opponent’s Plan A.
The Colts won a title when they had one special year on Defense (much credit to Bob Sanders) to supplement their offense. The Hoos won a title when they had a special player (Deandre Hunter) that helped them overcome their system.
I have just a few small quibbles. First, I don’t think the early departures of Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome were anticipated. For that matter, I am unsure when it was assumed that DeAndre Hunter would leave early. If all had been known in time, I imagine the recruiting strategies would have been different for 2020. As it was, Abdur-Rahim and McCorkle were simply misses. Plus, I think when Trey Murphy III was signed, it was thought that he would be here more than one year, and, even, that he would sit a year. Recruiting is a crapshoot. Second, I also believe that Taine Murray and Igo Milicic, Jr. were the result of a closed recruiting summer in 2020. So, along with Reece Beekman and Kadin Shedrick (thanks to his redshirt), Abdur-Rahim, McCorkle, Murray, and Milicic should have been our upperclassmen. And, in Coach Bennett’s schemes, upperclassmen should be the core strength of the team. It didn’t happen that way. Hopefully, beginning with the 2022 class, things are back on track.
Think you can toss the 2021 class onto that list if I’m remembering correctly. Have gotten pretty much nothing out of that class either.
So you agree the roster management/planning issues predate covid and covid is a surface level excuse and not a valid reason?
I understand the rest of it. Managing rosters isn’t easy. We encountered some issues most programs do when they first get talented enough players to leave early. But these problems predate covid and actually seem to be solved since the pandemic hit
I have an idea for CTB…
Change the name of the Packline Defense to something more modern sounding… like the Pop, Lock and Steal Defense… they are using updated terms for other movements like rips, zips, twists and curls… a slide could be a slam slash… make it more modern and players will be jumping in droves to play in the most modern defense out there!
Marketing is the future…
Just didn’t include 2021 because it’s reasonable to have an awesome team without sophomores contributing much. Especially during the bonus year era. Harder to argue you don’t expect players to contribute by their junior year. If Taine doesn’t become a 20+ min a night guy next year then that’s another missed year
Get a super awesome and dynamic SG who’s one of the better guards in college hoops but just always around the cutline for the NBA draft, so he sticks around for 4 years. (Wong)
This is almost not really a joke: finding guys like Malc and Joe and sort of even Dre who need 3 or more years to blossom into NBA guys is a great model!! Just obviously very hard to replicate…
Not exactly. My take is that the problems created by the premature attrition of Guy, Jerome, Hunter, et al., were made nearly impossible to correct by the covid shutdown. Among other things, when elite players leave prematurely in the spring, you don’t successfully replace them that summer. It’s too late then, and when everything shuts down the following spring, it makes matters worse. That Virginia has performed so well since 2019 (and it has performed better than most) is testimony as to how good a staff Virginia has. Even if one sometimes has the sense that everything was held together with duct tape.
Our 2020 class were all committed before covid hit. And we got our top targets in that class.
Covid doesn’t explain anything with that group. We just wanted 2 of the wrong players.
The only way the ‘covid as an explanation’ timeline makes sense is if you blame this year’s limitations on the 2021 and 2022 recruiting classes. Those are our two classes that were both recruited after covid hit and have spent a season in college. 2020 class and earlier were recruited pre-covid
Yup, it’s more of a “yeah, that, too” situation, IMO. Having so much early attrition hurt (even if I disagree about the extent to which it was unforeseen), but I think all these things were contributory:
IMO, it seems like we really only have one recruiting year where we can blame Covid, and the statute of limitations on blaming 2019 early departures for wonky roster management ended a few years ago.
And just to add one thing here – Covid wonkiness sucked for our recruiting; probably worse at UVa than other schools (meaning not having Tony be able to get eyes on guys). But do we get Ryan Dunn if LuHi plays a real season in 20-21? Seems like an open question… Feels like we swooped in quick as he was blowing up in Spring/summer 2021 and were the best school to offer.
These 2 classes were particularly rough:
-Jabri, the top ranked guy, was a complete flop. The only plus to him was he transferred quickly
-Casey, the next highest ranked, was a solid contributor for 2 years but couldn’t figure out his shooting woes and transferred. We would have loved to have him the last 2 years
-Reece, the next highest, is a clear win and with upside ahead (assuming he stays)
-Kadin, ranked next, is a more modest win, although with sizable upside for his 4th playing year (if he stays)
-Carson comes next and was a clear miss who also transferred
-McKoy then next who was a back of the rotation contributor but transferred to the bench at UNC. He would have been a rotation guy for us if he stayed. He also badmouthed the program on the way out.
-Tomas is the final guy and he was a solid rotation player for his 2 years before graduating
That hit rate is tough. We hit 2 starters out of 5 top 100 guys, and the other 3 all left the program. Those results aren’t long-term sustainable unless we bring in a stream of top 100 guys annually. The sub-100 guys were contributors, to be fair, but only for 2 years each.
Things look a lot better more recently in ‘22 and ‘23. Getting those guys to stay and all contribute, plus adding a strong ‘24 class, will be critical to returning the Hoos to our 2014-2020 heights.
man going into last week I just wanted the team to get out of the first game. Not only did we not, we are now the victims featured in one of the most viral march madness videos ever
Not goanna lie… great video. Dan Bonner was shocked and also looked really sad as did SVP.
Miami was good obviously last year too before all the NIL money was being thrown around by the billionaire. Had Charlie Moore who arrived as a 6th year PG and then had McGusty and Wong. I remember they struggled early season but then switched to a lot of full court pressure and it worked. Just think a lot of Larranaga as a Coach. Had some down years but has ship righted again.
Did I see that Cooley supposedly has a $3 million NIL budget? WTF!!! His starters can get NBA minimum with that. At least in the NBA you can lock down guys contractually.
I dont know if it’s all for one year LOL. like for his contract years