That might be a little overstated. Tennessee played 9 guys against Duke. 4 of them were top 75 recruits. 3 of them were top 50 recruits. 2 of them were top 20.
UVa played 8 guys against Furman. Three were top 75. None were top 50.
(Not really sure what the original convo was about – just trying to say that Tennessee had really good talent in general, and as compared to us).
I’ll argue a couple of things here:
Based on how well KG, Ty Jerome and Dre played in our 2017-2018 season (ie: winning the ACC by 4 games and winning the ACC tournament), that there should have been more foresight into planning a contingency if they were to leave. We then followed it up with a championship 2019 season in which they all DID leave. In other words TB and co. had atleast a year and a half of realizing “these guys may not be here for 4 years”, so they should have planned better.
WHY should upperclassmen be the core strength of our team? Shouldn’t we doing something that allows faster development? For example a guy like Ryan Dunn is a pure athlete which allows him to get on the floor immediately because of his defensive presence and yet his a first year. So I think more guys like him can fill in gaps of our team (at both the guards and forwards spots).
This points to one of the hypotheses that to me sounds at least possible: that Tony doesn’t have a March problem, he has a problem with low-major/mid-major teams that play a different style. And it’s especially a problem when that mid-major game comes right after we’ve just spent 2 months playing against nothing but major teams. (But if true, this also points to a lack of adaptiveness and perhaps a lack of raw athletes who will just bully those smaller schools.)
I guess I read through that screenshot too quickly but that DOES sound like the kind of talent that I thought Tennessee had the whole time, but whatever screenshot that was seemed to show something different. If I find it again I’ll post it.
@haney this was the screenshot that I referenced where it shows many of Tennessee’s players ranked really low for their perceived stature. For example:
Vescovi- 189
Nkamhoua- 167
Plavsic- 187
Zakai- 274.
After watching a bit of Tennessee over the years I think we could use ANY of these guys and ALL of them on our team, so we just need to find the right players for our system, not undersized players which compromise what we are trying to do.
Yeah, makes sense. Maybe Dunn isn’t the best example, because he was top 100 in some services, but he’s the type of non-top 100 guy who is ideal. Someone who (1) fits our scheme well, and/or (2) has some sort of athletic advantage that can let him cook at this level. Same with Nkamhoua and Plavsic. I’m never terribly impressed with Vescovi, but he’s getting it done.
It’s a good model for us, tbh. We are probably not going to have an 8/9 man rotation with 6 or so top 100 guys. But I think an ideal mix would be 1 or 2 top 50 guys, 3 or 4 other top 75-ish type guys**, and then fill in the rest with guys with athletic/strength/size advantages. That’s basically how we won the natty.
** I know this math doesn’t add up at all, but bah, hopefully it still makes some sense.
And what is the staff to do with the realization that some players MIGHT leave? I don’t see many recruiting lines that would be that appealing to prospects who might provide immediate relief should those players leave. I’m not sure that those sorts of players want to take a chance that there MIGHT be lots of playing time available, and it’s my opinion that that kind of player wants to see a clear path to early playing time. In DeAndre Hunter’s case, I imagine an argument could be made, but, then, Virginia also had Braxton Key returning. In the summer of 2018, that Jerome, or, especially, Guy might leave seemed speculative, at best. Even if the staff thought they might leave I think their hands were tied, so to speak.
That is *another thing that I want TB to adjust. Why can we ONLY have an 8/9 man rotation? Can we bump that up to 10? That one extra player can be a three point specialist OR just a pure athlete.
This also goes with an adjustment that I would like TB to make defensively. Can we do some pressure defense, maybe some trapping zone. Can we allow our players to play all out and have a bit of a deeper team and a slightly higher pace? That may be asking a bit much, *however I believe that TB is so detail oriented he could change the defense if he wanted to and he would perfect it.
I understand where you’re going with your argument and *yes we did pick up Braxton which was huge defensively for 2019 and Kihei again huge defensively for 2019. My thought is that we *always fill in the gap years with athletes whom are looking to develop and may not be a threat to compromise the “star players” playing time immediately, but in 2-3 years when they may already be gone (which they were in this case).
What we ended up getting were the guys mentioned between 2017-2020 *very few athletes with low ceilings, and not a discernible skill (shooting).
I think you can have an elite defense as a “gap” team (defenders one pass away are sitting in the driving lanes) and as a “deny” team (defenders are tight on the opponents one pass away), so I don’t really view the pressure defense as being necessarily a good (or bad) thing to do. Defense are just choosing different tradeoffs, and what works best depends on what fits your personnel and how well you can coach it.
I agree with that, and what’s more, we had this odd thing happen where the rotation got really tight around late January or so for several games (basically, where Shed got squeezed, and BVP was becoming a ~30 MPG guy), but then at the end of the season it started to expand again – even before BVP got hurt – and we were trying to work in Taine and Papi again. I got killed here for criticizing Papi’s minutes prior to our first ACC-T game (when he started), but this was kind of my basic complaint. If you think you might need a guy in March (and again, Tony did this BEFORE the BVP injury), then it’s a bad idea to give him a steady diet of DNPs for weeks.
If a long rotation is good for the tourneys (and Tony’s patterns this year seemed to suggest it is), then maybe don’t turn the middle of the ACC rotation into a vise…
And look, I’m low-keying my long-standing @DavetheWave approved criticism of Tony, which is that he sees the ACC grind as a better test / measuring stick of the team than the tourneys.
I just mean this as adding a little bit of flexibility, a change of pace, or just plain fun to do something different in the flow of a game. As was mentioned on this thread or maybe another one- when Furman ran a 1-3-1 at us we didn’t know *what to do for a while; so why can’t we cause that kind of concern against other teams ourselves? After 40 minutes you pretty much already know what the team is going to run if they’ve been doing it all game…with that said our defense hadn’t really been a problem- even having smaller players across the board we were still good positionally for the most part.
In addition having a defensive lineup, or atleast having athletes at multiple positions would allow us to have more flexibility throughout the season to guard the Isaiah Wongs, Jamarius Burtons, Jeremy Roaches of the league and country.
Our base defense causes that level of concern in teams when it is right. But I see the need for some more flexibility; I think the most impactful change would be to have backup ball screen coverages for when the hedging isn’t the right fit. Relatedly, having switching in the toolbox would be good too, but that’s more about having the personnel to do so.
FWIW, Nova’s two title teams had pretty tight 8-man rotations the whole season, if I recall correctly, and so did their teams the year before each title.
I was a little surprised when Tony ended up running at second player (usually a post player) at Carsen Edwards in the last few minutes of the Elite Eight game. But desperate measures, as they say.
Dang we lost to a 16 seed twice!
Yeah, we sort of did that in 2019, too. That works fine if you have a pretty clear idea who your top guys are, but that’s not really what happened with us this year.
Everyone yells at me for questioning Tony’s lineups, but Tony seemed to have some disagreements about how he should be running his lineups, too. Like Clemson and Louisville Tony had different ideas than Late January Tony.
I apologize to those of who still believe in Santa Claus and “Tony plays the guys who had the best practice” Claus.
Thanks I made the correction 
This this and more of this!
We don’t make anyone uncomfortable or uneasy with potential changeups. It’s all fastballs all the time. Look what happened at the end of the Miami game when we were down by 10 with 63 seconds left - cut the lead to 1 in less than a minute.
Why not do that and gain a lead earlier in the game?
@Spencer or anyone still a student. Any word on how players are doing/their spirits? I was genuinely concerned for their mental health following the loss.
