What am I missing here? On paper they’re not a team with a lot of great shooters. They’ll hit some tonight but they don’t strike me as a run us out of the gym a la UMBC type of opponent. Please correct me if I’m wrong
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I generally disagree. I think that Tony views the discipline and consistency stuff as what’s best for the team in the long term. It seems like he believes that developing a standard for consistency in his players is one of the main reasons that the program has gotten to this point.
I also think that the positioning of playing time as something that is earned by young guys is one of the things that has pushed the younger players to develop their consistency.
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I think that’s sort of correct but I basically think he needs to have a conversation with himself on all this. His goals and tactics and strategies are all a bit misaligned, imo.
We need to be doing more to keep guys like Anthony and McKoy and Casey and heck even Jabri et al engaged to stay for 4-5 years. I didn’t miss any one of those guys at the time, but what he is doing is not getting the right dudes to stay for 4-5 years.
None of my thoughts here are particularly well thought through… so shoot away.
I feel like this team is comprised of players that the packline was originally intended for. Not the most gifted group, but good teamwork and well-executed help principles will hide some of the less-athletic characteristics. Problem is, the packline was created before everyone shooting deep threes was a thing, so the one thing the scheme gives up is now the focal point of many offenses. Good closeouts are important, but I worry about whoever our 5’9" guard is covering and that guy just going off from three.
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Bingo, so now the packline ironically needs an Uber-athlete or three to succeed to close out and/or rim protect, and we don’t currently have more than 1.5 or so in our lineup. So this defense is only ever gonna be so good, which is why I’d play more for offensive return. We don’t currently have a 19-20 defense or even that capability so playing with that same ethos is kinda bad, IMO. But that basically seems to be what we are sorta doing…
Edit - this is why I get into the “misalignment” thing. Want an awesome packline, Tony? Then McKoy and Marco and Casey need to be 4 year guys. Then you need to convince them to stay. And the fan base needs to stop blaming those guys for leaving. (To be clear, this would NOT be my strategy, but if you want to sell out to the packline, it should be)
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KenPom has this game as very evenly matched. UVA is ranked #61 and Providence is ranked #60. He has Providence as a 1 point favorite, but only because he won’t actually call something a draw and he won’t make team less than a 1 point favorite. By his math, I think they’re around a 0.2 point favorite.
Providence has good size and is very balanced offensively. Everyone on the team except their center and back-up center is at least nominally a threat from 3, they draw fouls pretty well and they’ve got a very high 2FG%. They aren’t great offensively, other than maybe their 2FG%, they don’t allow steals but still turn the ball over a little too much and are surprisingly weak at offensive rebounding given how big they are. But they’re “pretty good” at everything.
Defensively, they’re ok. They block a lot of shots (3 good shot blockers) are solid defensive rebounders, and have fairly good interior defense without fouling. But they don’t get steals or force TOs at all and their perimeter defense is spotty. They play slow both offensively and defensively.
The usual careful-with-the-ball, good outside shooting, packline D-style UVA team, even if it wasn’t a great team overall, would be perfectly constructed to crush these guys.
But obviously, that’s not this year’s UVA squad. By the numbers, this year’s team is offensively kinda of below-average to bad at almost everything (not shocking). The exceptions are: they’re surprisingly good at preventing non-steal TOs (but they’re extremely bad at allowing steals, so overall they’re about average at TOs) and they are drawing fouls and attempting FTs at a genuinely elite level and hitting them at a decent clip. UVA is #8 in the country at highest % of total points coming from FTs.
Providence’s shot-blocking and interior defense isn’t as good as Houston’s but it isn’t far off. They’re also excellent at not fouling, which is going to be really ugly for our offense. On the other hand, unlike Houston, Providence doesn’t get steals, which has been a serious weakness for UVA so far.
UVA’s interior defense has been surprisingly stout so far, better than Providence, particularly at shot-blocking, and UVA has been good at forcing TOs which is a weakness of Providence.
This game will probably turn on 3 point shooting as both teams allow a ton of 3FGA’s and also a high 3FG%… That’s not good for UVA, but isn’t as disastrous as one might think. Overall, UVA’s 3FG% is obviously bad, but its been WILDLY inconsistent. Navy and Houston both shot over 50%, but Radford, Coppin State and Georgia shot 30%, 26% and 14% respectively. Boom or bust.
Providence has been much steadier in its mediocre 3 point defense. Wisconsin hit 18% of their 3s, but everyone else has hit 35% or better. Providence’s opponents are arguably off to a better 3FG% start than UVA’s opponents, but the gap isn’t big. Wisconsin’s 3-point shooting woes to start the season are even worse than UVA’s.
Providence is a much better 3 point shooting team than UVA (which is more about UVA being bad than Providence being great), but Providence’s 3-point defense has been consistently bad, while UVA’s 3-point defense has alternated between solid and non-existent. If UVA’s 3 point defense happens to be on this game, I like our chances.
I think UVA wins by 2.
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they have to start with some kind of base defense and make adjustments from there. The program is built on the packline as the base defense, so I’m ok with all these new guys having to learn it and get it right. As that gets better, Bennett can add in other adjustments that make us diverse. But every time our roster has a lot of turnover, we’re going to have more growing pains.
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2 years ago that 5’9 guard was at the head of one of the best defenses in history and that wasn’t a problem. The game hasn’t changed in 2 years. People were chucking 3s then as well
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Helps having 2 elite rim protectors behind you. They cover many sins.
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Yeah, this is huge. Providence has 1 guy on their regular roster under 6’3". He’s their starting PG, but he only plays 23 minutes/game and isn’t in their top 5 in minutes played.
I’m really unclear who Clark is going to guard for big chunks of the game.
Our 5’9" guard was covering Georgia’s leading scorer last night, and held him to 4 points on 2-for-12 shooting. Seems like he’s doing just fine.
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Sure but that doesn’t really fix the ‘problem’ of that discussion. In other words I don’t think it’s really a problem at a large scale
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I tend to ignore the early season KenPom efficiency numbers. I prefer the raw numbers and the “season-only” adjusted numbers you can get from Torvik.
Raw (KenPom):
UVa O/D: 164/106
Prov O/D: 34/154
Adjusted (per Torvik, eliminating preseason adjustment):
UVa O/D: 167/125
Prov O/D: 17/148
They seem like a team we should theoretically be able to score on.
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Armaan’s high school coach (also high school coach of 2023 possible big man target Xavier Booker 
)
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Yea I kinda view this game as a discount version of Houston. Obviously not a 1 to 1 comparison but another program built on toughness. Another roster with grown men. Whether we better hold our own physically this time will probably determine if I am encouraged or discouraged more than whether we actually win or not (expecting a loss).
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Yeah. The margin against Houston was disappointing. However, as folks have noted, Houston was absolutely custom-built to tie this team in knots and they did. +8 was maybe right in terms of how good overall the teams were relatively, but I think it understated how much Houston was likely to win that specific game by.
Navy was a bad outside shooting team going absolutely unconscious against us, and Houston was a beat-down from a team that was not only better but also perfectly made to prey on UVA’s weaknesses. Obviously both are bad, but neither was necessarily disastrous.
I think this is a game where we struggle to score early and Providence gets an early 8-11 point lead. that stays constant throughout the game/we never close/they hit a big 3 to keep distance when we go on a run.
Reverse Jinx pls. And not a super jinx where we lose by 50.
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Tony is wrong if he thinks giving Clark (1st) Caffaro (6th) Stattmann (7th) those places in minutes played - actually contributes more to winning at any point. In what world should Caffaro and Statts be ahead of all 3 of the M’s?
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I think even the Tony-whisperers are having some cognitive dissonance trying to explain leaning so much on Papi and Kody. The best I can come up with is that it’s basically rewarding their loyalty when so many others have jumped ship. Rewarding loyalty can be a good attribute… But it has downsides, too…
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