That is so puzzling to me. He looked totally fine and comfortable out there. It’s like we’ve eroded all of his confidence too because in warmups my guy has a silky smooth jumper and they leave him wide open at the FT line every game. It’s a travesty that part of his game hasn’t been utilized and that says nothing about his b2b game which is nonexistent. Not sure what part of that is on him or the coaching staff but it’s something that I’m worried we’ll just never get to see
5 Likes
The 20-21 three-man was Clark-Hauser-Huff mostly, right? With TM3 and Reece on the wings? I think teams realized they could switch every single action and not be in a tough spot. That’s harder to do against Reece-Armaan-BVP, because each of those guys can do something against a mismatch that comes from switching. We saw it against Wake with Reece and BVP, with Reece driving Carr and BVP burying Appleby in the post. Armaan has taken smaller guards into the block too.
3 Likes
Good point. Of that trio, Kihei was the biggest post threat. However, I guess the weaker comparison I’d make is this: the longer you run something, the easier it will be for opponents to counteract it. One of the benefits of the three man motion (and other wrinkles, like 4-guards), is that coaches don’t have as much film on them. That benefit gets washed out a bit over time.
4 Likes
Addendum: Forbes having Marsh (their 7 foot, not particularly mobile Center) guard Dunn mostly in the 2H, while shading into the lane half the time, was a bit of a 
moment for me.
6 Likes
For whatever reason, our bigs after Tobey have not really developed an inside game. Of all of them though Sheds SHOULD have the ability to do some damage in the post. It just doesn’t seem to happen for him after the 1000s of hours of practice, skill development and strength training.
2 Likes
Yeah, Dunn’s going to have to make some threes to be out there on the wing in the three-man motion.
My general feeling with the three-man motion is that it’s a read-and-react type of offense, which is typically how TB likes to play, so the adjustments are dependent on the range of capabilities your personnel have. If everyone in the motion can dribble-pass-shoot, it’s easier to adjust, because you can just take whatever the defense is giving up. I agree though that it might not be quite this effective all the time, but I think it’s less the surprise factor that makes it effective and more that the teams we’ve played against haven’t had good ways to deal with the problems that the three-man motion offense poses them.
4 Likes
Yeah, if I’m an opposing coach and Dunn is out there, I’m going to cheat off him hard until he shows he’s going to knock down a few or do something off the dribble. Will be up to Dunn to punish that if he can.
3 Likes
He’s 4-13 — 30%. Adequate enough, but he’s attempting less than one per game.
1 Like
UVA up to #7 in the AP poll today, passing Texas, UCLA, and Kansas.
12 Likes
UVA at #7. Teams not ranked: NC, Duke, Kentucky, Michigan St., Michigan, Indiana.
4 Likes
Seth Davis still hates us… and so does the voter in West Lafayette, IN (why does Purdue writer hate us?)… also, is Brenna Greene over ranking us as a make-up call for forgetting to rank us at all a few weeks ago? LOL!
3 Likes
Interesting to try to figure the recency effect in Top 25 voting. 9 days ago, Kansas St lost by 14 to TCU and Arizona lost by 19 to Oregon. We haven’t lost in about 3 weeks and our losses were by 3 to Pitt and 2 to Miami. K State and Zona both leap frogged us after we had a sizable point lead. K State was pretty impressive at Kansas and has a big game tomorrow night at Iowa State. Zona won a tight one at home vs UCLA, who I can’t help but remember finished in last place in the Vegas tournament we won.
Edit: My mistake, I thought KState had a resounding win at Kansas but that was TCU at Kansas. KState won by 1 pt at home in OT vs Kansas. Makes their huge jump in the poll from #13 to #5 even weirder.
4 Likes
Seth Davis ranked us #10 last week and then dropped us to #13 this week after two solid wins and nearly every other team dropping a game. Makes no sense.
He explains his rationale for his picks in his weekly article on The Athletic (College basketball rankings: Purdue is back at No. 1, UConn is out — and so is Charleston - The Athletic).
Of course, Seth offered no explanation about his Virginia ranking in the article.
6 Likes
Heaven help you if you’re looking for rationale or common sense in anything Seth Davis says or does. Even when he says something that sounds sensible, it’s just an accident. He’s whackadoodle.
4 Likes
4 Likes
Seems odd to bring Taine into this. Taine has never played much. Why would he find it odd that he’s not playing now?
It’s a bit of a deflection to bring those guys in to the convo. Papi makes a little bit of sense. But Taine? Nah. Might as well point out that I don’t get to play…
2 Likes
I think Davis is pretty clearly referring to UVA and maybe a couple other teams (all of whom he refers to except for UVA) when he says: “It is often lost on readers that teams can move up and down the ballot not so much on the basis of what they did, but on what others did. If a team has a big win and deserves to jump a bunch of spots, then the teams whom it leapfrogged will move down even if they didn’t lose.”
Which isn’t an unreasonable statement on its face, but not even referencing how UVA somehow fell into that weird gap is kind of ridiculous.
2 Likes
Anyone with an AP vote just needs to remember a simple statement: “The reason [insert team name] moved [down/up] is that, while I thought they were the [X]th best team last week, after all of the games of this past week, I now think that they are the [Y]th best team. Thanks for writing; I love hearing from my fans!”
The reason they can’t write that simple statement is because that’s not actually how they vote, which is why the AP vote is a silly exercise.
4 Likes