I get it. But your post was basically throwing your hands up like âwhat is happening.â How could these two diametrically opposed philosophies co exist in one man!
But, like, youâre smart. And a die hard. all die hards on here know the theory of the case Bennett has. Itâs not randomness - whether or not itâs good. So just address that, offer something in the affirmative thatâs better or address why itâs deficient ⌠thatâs the only point I was making.
Fair enough. I agree with that. After the second blowout there was probably a lot of cultural stuff the staff couldâve done to be like âguys please just go and be assertive.â
As a reminder, weâre still in 3rd place in a âdown yearââŚ.
Reece having to be an alpha scorer is a problem for this team. Reece should be a secondary scoring option while setting up others to score.
iMac, in my opinion, is doing what he should be doing, but he should be shooting less two pointers because we need him to be a third fiddle.
Dunn offensive development has been frustrating, no excuses. He is an elite athlete which allows him to finish with dunks, but he doesnât finish well through contact and there is no reason for him to be airballing open 3âs.
Rohde has also been frustrating. He was a leading scorer for a team that scored 74 ppg! Itâs like he forgot how to score, or more likely, his game doesnât translate to high major basketball.
Minor, also a leading scorer last year (I think), is too short and unathletic. I think @haney mentioned that before the season started. His physicality has been huge for the defense, strong as an ox, but last nightâs dunk attempt in the first half that was blocked tells me heâs just outmanned on offense.
Harris is hard to watch on offense. His quickness is his greatest attribute, yet he pulls up from 17 feet most of the time with no success. I donât know, get by your man and find a teammate?
Taine has some good offensive potential, but matched up with the elite athletes from last night he looked like a fish out of water.
Groves has been better than I expected him to be, but Iâm not sure he can do any more than he already is. The problem with him is heâs too easy to contain because we donât have enough other shooters on the floor.
Elijah suffered from Dante syndrome last night. I wanted to see him recklessly attack and try to yam on some guys head, and he settled for a fadeaway and a pull up jumper. He has the potential to be the kind of guard that excels in college basketball, but 8-35 jump shooting and 61% from the FT line doesnât currently provide a great deal of optimism that will come around.
Blake has little to no touch around the rim and is afraid to be as physical as he needs to be. Refusing to attack the rim and tear it down in the first half, settling for an 8 foot floater was not a great sign. I know @Hooandtrue says he should take 500 NBA threes per day in the offseason, but how about he does the Mikan drill and shoots 500 FTs a day first? He should also work on finding a post move that doesnât start 2 feet from the hoop and end up 12 feet from the hoop when he shoots it.
The roster has talent, for sure, but the talents are so specific that we are too easy to guard no matter who is in the floor. And to be fair to the players, we donât have enough adjustments to what defenses do to us to slow us down. In the end though, talented players is what wins games and that we are in the conversation for the NCAA tournament means we definitely have some talent, but we arenât as talented as the best teams in the league. But thatâs what TB has designed his program around, competing with less talent, and weâve done that! We just arenât consistently good enough on either side of the ball to be where we want to be, as fans, players, staff, etc.
All good things exceptâŚ.2013-2019 were insanely talented. This whole notion that Tony has done it with less is laughable honestly. Heâs done this with NBA talent and guys who were elite. Hell even 2020 team had talent and so did the 2021.
Iâll never buy the idea that Tony does more with less.
If you base talent on where they ranked as HS recruits and transfersâŚ. How does UVAs roster stack up? Pretty well above average.
Oh yeah but as we can see, the ACC ainât what it used to be LOL
He did develop those players those. And none were bonafide âThis is an NBA playerâ out of HS.
I donât agree with the âTony hasnât done more with lessâ. He absolutely has. The one seed Virginia teams had way less talent than the peer 1 seed schools, coming out of HS.
I donât think this season is by any means Tonyâs best coaching job but lets not take away what he did in the past lol.
Getting embarrassed by good teams (and bad teams), while squeaking wins against the bad/mediocre teams is not an achievement Iâd be proud of.
Right, and look where we were in 2013-2019! Literally the best of the best in the whole country! Did we have the most talent in the country those years? I would say no, but we had more talent than we have now. Does this team have more talent than Clemson? Wake Forest? Duke? UNC? NC St? Iâll leave that for you to decide, but we definitely arenât 3rd in the conference in talent, yet weâre 3rd in the standings.
Yeah I think the more brutal perspective is that since the national title, the one season we didnât look terrible against our out of conference power 5 games was last year when 1) we were much older than everyone else and 2) we had the extra euro practices we had a headstart on everyone else on top of running the same starting 5 back. And we still dipped as the season went on.
Itâs a bad time to be an LRA addictâŚthis is not fun to read through. I think relative to preseason expectations, this has been the most disappointing season of the CTB era (for reasons that have been beaten into the ground on here and will continue to be all offseason). At the same time, if you look at where we were on January 13, itâs remarkable that we are even in a postseason discussion. I just hope we can find a way to make the tournament (beat GT handily, respectable showing in ACCT), then make some seemingly obvious program adjustments before next year.
Yeah, the only thing that would get me excited for next year is if we somehow decided to uproot the offensive system.
If we want to think worst case scenario, iMac decides with Tonyâs murky future and with limited returning talent, heâs best to go mercenary for a P5 team that will actually get him spot up shotsâŚ
Think the McKneelyâs are far too loyal for that but probably would be best for his career when you look at whatâs returning next yearâŚ
Players need to be developed but there are only like 5-10 recruits who are bonafide NBA players and thatâs being generous.
Those teams were talented.
Using a blunt force instrument like RSCI (most easily accessible on sports reference), we have less talent than only Duke and UNC. We are about the same as FSU (Hamâs own coaching issues could be dissected if we cared to) and maybe as Wake, if you count higher end talent like Reid and Sallis as being equivalent to more top 50-75ish guys.
And be aware that the blunt force instrument does NOT take into account our guy with top 20 draft potential.
I think the âmore with lessâ narrative undersells Tonyâs abundant strengths as an evaluator/recruiter.
Thatâs a brave hill to die on Stonewall
Tell me about the time RD lit it up
Next year, somewhere in Sioux Falls against the sky Force.
Hate to break it to you, but Sioux Falls are the Skyforce, so I assume you just mean heâs lighting it up in practice, which shouldnât make a difference for his playing time
Edit: youâre saying heâs on a different team and playing an away game⌠what terrible common sense by me
I was trying to come up with a G league location and team name and it turned out to be the same team. 
Also partial to the Maine Red Claws @Sknyluv
The worst is Westchester Knicks. Itâs like the Knicks, but they got scared of riding the subway @WFS_HOO (kidding kidding)
As said, it is not like we do not have the talent, the talent is being ill equipped to succeed this season. Everyone clearly knows CTB âslotsâ guys into roles. If the players play the roles well the team is usually successful. If the talent level is high enough the team can sometimes overcome 1 or 2 roles not being played at a high enough level.
Unfortunately this year was a perfect storm of not enough guys playing their roles well enough and the staff poorly scouting or evaluating certain guys for certain roles. I think it is pretty clear the staff had much higher expectations for Minor, Dunn and Rohde. iMac is probably neutral, leaving Reece as the only âexpectedâ starter to meet or exceed âroleâ expectations.
Couple that with new guys learning the O/D and we are frankly lucky to be where we are.
NOW, all that said, this lies mainly on the staff. They get paid a lot of money to hit the evaluations and or coach guys up to overcome some of the misses, Tony built the current roster, he brought in every single guy fully thinking heâd fit and succeed in a particular âroleâ. It was/is on the staff to adjust accordingly when it is/was clear all the pieces did not fit well enough to work the way Tony thought it would. That has not happen. He instead has convinced himself that time, practice or mind or matter is going to cause things to break our way. We spent way way to long in B/M rather than going to all Triangle or ball screen focused offense. Those clearly fit the roster better. Same with the over hedging and doubling on D. Tony kept trying to force the square peg in the hole and we are saw the results.
I do not know what the fix is? Recruiting, being more flexible with the personnel we have, overhaul on the offense/defensive philosophy, staff changes? I do not know, but I do think this offseason is a bit of a tipping point for Tony, I want more than anything to see Tony go out on top, not off a middling decline over the next 3-5 years. Which one of those things happens is up to him imo and will be decided by what direction the program is pointed over the next six months.
