If I am not mistaken, that game was played in the Richmond Coliseum. I was there. Sarbonis was 18 years old, and pretty spectacular. The Soviet team was also screwed by some home cookin’ refs. To his credit, the Soviet coach took it in stride. I imagine it was something to which he was accustomed. I believe we also played the Soviet team in U Hall a couple of years earlier and lost to them. As I recall, Lamp & company had a bit of trouble with the international rules. Among other things, teams being fouled at the end of games had the option of shooting free throws or taking the ball out of bounds. If a team was behind, it did them no good to foul hoping for missed FTs. UVa was down, and Lamp, among others, kept fouling. Hard to believe this was all 40+ years ago.
I believe he put in a ton of work on his jumper in this offseason and here we are. Some people just are not good shooters.
Nice zoom out piece for some perspective.
Main question front of my mind (which you hit on):
are the last two games teams figuring out the triangle? Or is it post exam rust?
Maybe a bit too harsh sounding, but for me our offensive issues are mostly personnel. If iMac isn’t hitting threes, and Rohde isn’t scoring, and RD can’t shoot or handle, and Groves is streaky / not someone you design an offense around, and Bond is still finding (and Tony is still finding) what he can contribute offensively, and Elijah is an intriguing talent who hasn’t played for a year and needs to figure out what he can do at a top 25 level, and Blake hasn’t done much since Florida (and is a frosh big man), and Dante can’t shoot or efficiently get to the rim, and Reece is very good but not nearly big enough shoulders on his own … then what’s the right scheme?
I’d like to see something that puts more pressure on the rim and incorporates more ball screen, but we got to the rim against Memphis, and the rim played good defense against us.
TL/DR - I don’t think there’s one scheme that is going to work well for this team consistently if we only have so many offensive skills.
That Boeheim quote bugs me. I heard that podcast. His basic view on our program rn is that Tony doesn’t like NIL so that is somehow explanatory of our lack of talent (lack of talent was inferred by me, not something he said … or was it? I didn’t remember it, but reading your caption, maybe it was said outright).
First of all, I have no doubt that Tony isn’t enamored with NIL. I suspect in a private meeting or coach meetings, Boeheim and the other old-heads whined about NIL, and Tony made clear that he basically agreed with them.
But, second, I also suspect that Tony has made his peace with it somewhat, and that we are doing some stuff, albeit slowly. I don’t think we will be participating in the Dickinson free agent sweepstakes type transfer recruitments, but I suspect we do okay with NIL. Maybe it’s true to the extent that we are not really playing in the NIL-forward transfer stuff, but that’s only one aspect of NIL, IMO.
And third, this stuff becomes an echo chamber. “Tony doesn’t like NIL. If you want to get paid, don’t play for Tony.” Etc. Which is bad and dumb and not ideal for our program’s rep among guys we might want to come here.
Fourth – this team has talent! We have two guys on draft boards. Our problem is “syncing our talent” as I think someone else described it recently. Our NIL is good enough to keep Reece from a 2-way, and he’s super talented. It feels like we got caught in between a bit this year (so far…), but that seems more like a roster management issue we’ve been working through since the natty than mostly a NIL issue.
Also not liking NIL and not being a participatory are two different things Jim.
Plus I don’t think our issue is lack of talent. Our biggest issue now will be lining up that talent to maximize results. I think it’s unfair to expect the sustained success of 2013-2019 but if the recruiting continues like it has, we will have years where stars align.
This year’s team isn’t lacking talent; it’s lacking seasoning.
Agreed!
2025 seems like the next “syncing of talent” season to me and I hope TB feels the same way and plans to at least coach through that season. Have to keep all these guys but should have:
Bliss (3rd year with program)
Gertrude (3rd year with program)
iMac (4th year with program)
Rohde (3rd year with program)
Bond (4th year with program)
Buchanan (3rd year with program)
ARob (3rd year with program)
Cofie (2nd year with program)
I doubt all 8 of those guys are with the program in 2025, but also should see an impact transfer(s) and maybe a 2025 recruit could play valuable minutes as well.
Agree, assuming you mean 25-26
As you know Jerry is a very special basketball mind. He is all into baseball now around Nashville
I noticed this too. Lot can go wrong between now and then obviously but that’s the syncing I was talking about.
But I also believe next year could be special too if we just hit in the portal. Beekman will be extremely hard to replace but I think Dunn’s lack of offense makes it easier to fill that void imo.
Lot rides on Buchanan and Gertrude’s development
Yeah, I’d say this season’s set of results so far isn’t unusual for a team that was returning like 30% of their minutes this season.
This chart is probably going to display horribly in my screenshot, so if you want to see it, go here: https://barttorvik.com/team-maps.php?year=2024
And select “Barthag” for the Y-axis, “Experience” for the X-axis, and filter by high major teams.
We are the 10th least experienced high major team by Torvik’s counting (which weights by minutes played I think), but the only high-major teams with less experience and a better power rating are Duke and Kentucky (also true when you remove the high major filter, but the filter makes for a better chart).
Million dollar question - is there a statistical basis to hope that a younger / less continuous team improves at a faster rate over Jan and Feb and early March?
No but yes
It might be just me, but WRT to the Memphis game, the offensive stat that jumps out to me is that Virginia had 17 turnovers. While I haven’t gone back and rewatched the game to view them, at the time it seemed to me that most were the result of bad decisions by the younger players. This means that they were teachable moments. In some respects, the defensive lapses seemed similar, but this may be just the impression I had. I thought that there was a lack of communication on screens. As I couldn’t hear what was being said, or not said, this is just speculation. However, if I am right, these, too, become teachable moments. Does this mean things can be corrected overnight? I doubt it, but it does mean there is a reasonable expectation that corrections can be made. I imagine this edition of the 'Hoos is going to be very inconsistent for the immediate future, but we’ll probably have an idea by mid-February how quickly they can learn. Experience can be a tough taskmaster.
Boeheim has a history of making stuff up out of thin air. Remember what he said about Wake buying a team?
Not sure. “Barthag Change” is a variable you can put on those Torvik charts, and you can set the timeframe for that variable. But you probably have to get a little fancier and put together a model of some sort to more adequately answer the question.