I just feel like a lot of these issues are tied to recruiting failures over the last four years. I certainly agree it’d be great to have more super athletic defenders with upside on the roster (although just to note, Mamadi was one of our highest rated recruits of the Bennett era), but we don’t. We didn’t land any of those guys that we targeted out of high school and there isn’t some massive glut of those guys in the portal who would be academically eligible/fit our culture/want to come here.
I guess I just take issue with the idea that just packing the team full of athletic versatile defenders at the last minute was an option. We’re in this spot because we recruited poorly for four years and took a bunch of our 3rd choices to fill out roster spots, and those guys didn’t pan out. Adding more McKoy-type guys who decide last minute and are low-rated between the end of last season and beginning of this season wasn’t going to make the difference, or at least I don’t think so. If we wanted to have a roster full of potential diamonds on the rough, they would have been recruited in the 2019 and 2020 classes, but they weren’t. So it is.
Now given that’s the case, we had to decide what to do going forward. I think it makes some sense to keep the roster small, see what you have in the current roster and develop them, and then plan for the big talent infusion to come in 2022 and 2023. Above all else, do not jeopardize landing the talent in 2022 and 2023. If it means this year is subpar, so be it, although I think we did enough in landing Franklin and Gardner to be competitive and I think the team will get better as the year goes along. But to get rebalanced, the most important thing is 2022 and 2023.
But yeah, we will see how things go. Am just thankful today to have you all to debate with about it!
I hadn’t realized til I just looked at the box score that Poindexter (6) got more minutes than the Igor (3), Carson (1), and Taine (0) combined. I was watching on my phone during a long drive with the sound off – was generally aware of their lack of playing time but not the specifics.
What is really interesting to me is that we’re not talking about a lot of minutes here – would playing Carson for 6 minutes instead of Poindexter really matter for the game outcome? It would certainly matter in terms of him feeling like he’s getting some PT and developing his game rather than taking a step back.
What is also curious to me is that in some early season blowouts, you’d think these are the stretches that you’d give Carson more time to develop his D. But against Coppin State, he got 5 mins and Poindexter got 15.
I wonder if what we’re really seeing is that Tony thinks Poindexter has more of a future in this lineup than Carson, so is now trying to develop him into an actual contributor down the road. Sort of like a defensive specialist or something. I really don’t have any other explanation for this trend, but it doesn’t bode well for Carson being on the team next year.
One tiny note - Coppin State wasn’t really a blow out unfortunately. We won by a significant margin, but we were not comfortably ahead for a lot of it. If it had been a true blow out, would have been interesting to see if the minute distribution would have been different. (All this has nothing to do with your point - was just mentioning)
I definitely understand what you’re saying and we’ve made our bed and so I’ll be excited with how we overperform and will be a top 4 ACC team. *as usual at the end of the year. It’s going to take tremendous effort and TB magic- I just wish that we wouldn’t make it so hard while having a baseline and capitalizing on our success from the championship. And yes 2022 is a talented offensive team as far as we can tell.
In my mind I think every 2 years we should be able to recruit atleast a Darion Atkins/ Akil recruit- someone who is going to work hard defensively on the perimeter/post. All we need is ONE of those players every 2 years from across the entire world which I think we can do.
Now they may not be an American (ie: recognizes the unique opportunity in front of them), but that also means that they likely would be more loyal and stay with TB- the guy who has given them a chance.
I feel like we were ahead by enough most of the game to give Tony the freedom to play for development since the win was mostly assured. He felt comfortable enough to play a walk-on for 15 minutes.
Just my opinion for those saying player x or player y should be playing for their development or for next year or so they won’t transfer. My take is playing time is earned, and for years for CTB that is in practice. If someone wants Malachi’s playing time they need to take it. Earned not given. When I played that’s what I wanted from my coaches. If a dude outplayed or outpracticed me, fine. If not it pissed me off if someone played ahead of me because of pedigree or perceived superior talent.
I don’t think Tony woke up one morning and suddenly decided he needed to recruit better. He had a wink link on his staff with recruiting. He fixed it last season and we are seeing the benefits of it with 2022 class as far as ranking at least (won’t know true value til they get here and produce but still).
Not gonna lie hearing this after watching his make against Lehigh has me much more positive on playing him. Just needs to let it rip when he has a chance.
Actually if you count the shared ACC title in 2019, we’ve won 3 of the last 4 regular season ACC titles. The championship and 2 of the 3 ACC titles were all won by one monster class. The 3rd ACC title was won with the last hold over from the monster class and two home run transfers that we needed because recruiting since the monster class has been pretty ‘meh.’
So Sam and Trey stay one year and that is somehow “staying as long or longer” than OAD’s UVA’s never had? Uh, OK. I also didn’t say OAD’s = recruiting success.
I don’t consider a transfer the same thing as recruiting a high school kid. It’s not the same thing. With transfers you’ve had the chance to see them play at this level. You have a much better idea if their skills translate to the college game because you’ve already seen it happen. In some cases you also get to reap the benefit of another college coach’s time development of that player.
I’m not sure what other schools landing monster classes and winning nothing has to do with much of UVA’s recent success coming from it’s own monster class. Sure, a monster class guarantees nothing, even if they’re all hits. But a lot of misses don’t guarantee anything either. Well, at least they don’t guarantee success.
It isn’t true that our transfers have stayed just as long or longer than our high school recruits. Our most recent transfers were Murphy (1 year, max possible was 2 years), Hauser (1 year, max was 1 year), Key (2 years, max was 2 years), Nigel Johnson (1 year, max was 1 year), Darius Thompson (2 years, max was 3 years), and Anthony Gill (3 years, max was 3 years). And it used to be those guys had to sit out for a year in which we could acclimate them to the system, but that’s not the case anymore, which is not helpful to a team that relies on experience as much as we do. In my opinion, transfers are valuable pieces, but our great teams are primarily going to be built through successful high school recruiting or recruiting transfers who’ve only played a season and who we can potentially get three years out of, which we haven’t brought in recently.
Also, it’s somewhat strange to say “despite people saying we didn’t recruit well between 2017 and 2020, we won a ton” when the winning was mostly the product of good recruiting classes brought in before that window. On the court results lag recruiting success, because it takes guys time to develop and see the floor. We recruited amazingly between 2010 and 2016, but our window of major success lagged that and was between 2013 and 2019, which is exactly what you’d expect. Our comparatively poor recruiting between 2017 and 2020 is why the team is having issues now and, despite some needed help from the transfer portal, likely has a lower ceiling than many previous years’ teams.
To keep going at a high level, you need to keep recruiting out of high school at a high level. Hopefully we are returning to that with the 2022 and 2023 classes, but fans noting that it’s an issue doesn’t seem off base, to me at least.