Does UVA start off big to match Dunn on Kugel? I assume they’ll go with Blake in the starting lineup this time. But do they slide him in place of Groves? Or go big and bump Rohde out?
Who starts Friday?
- Rohde
- Groves
- Both
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I’m assuming same starting lineup, but Tony did say something about doing situational. We shall see…
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This game is one of our bigger ones of the season, but frankly, it doesn’t really matter that much. We beat Baylor and Illinois early last year and found ourselves floundering in the end against Furman. Point is, it is wayyyy too early to make solid predictions about this game or how it will effect either team. Hope for the best, but know this is only a small part of the season early on.
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Yeah, predictions are hard. Until just a few seconds left in the Furman game, I thought we were gonna win! 
I don’t think I’m in the “what can we learn from game 1?” thread, but basically, my view is you keep learning more about the team right up until the moment you get upset in round 1. I’M KIDDING!! (I hope…)
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I had a brain fart and forgot the game is in Charlotte. You’re probably right about the crowd.
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I sorted the shooting splits on Torvik by percentage of shots coming from non-rim 2pt attempts, from lowest to highest: Team Shooting Stats - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank
Who’s the analytics team now?
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Just wrote my game preview which should drop in the next day or 2. I highlighted my matchup thoughts almost exactly the same as you have here. Good stuff we’ll see if we’re right.
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i like how we matchup OFFENSIVELY but we have no height really curious to see who bennett puts on condon with his height but if we don’t shoot how we did vs t- state then idk what’s gonna happen
This is the opposite of our normal situation … we generally have the defense ready to slow down or lock down and the offense is the laggard. This game feels like our risk is the post defense and rebounding and not the offense.
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We’re gonna pull out the post double team and see how the Florida bigs pass the ball under duress.
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Going to need to be very careful there with the shooters they have. We let TS get several open look of slow rotations. Post doubles could create same issues. I agree though, we’ll def see it
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Maybe not in game 2 but this team has the profile of one that the post trap could be very effective. Could ultimately help compensate for Groves’s defense and keep him on the floor.
And I worry less about the opponent’s shooters as I do their bigs’ passing abilities.
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Eh, call me a negative nancy but I’m not at all convinced our offense is something we can be confident in, yet. We know post scoring is shaky, and coming into the season outside shooting was a significant question mark. One hot shooting night against a bad team that historically doesn’t defend the three point line very well is not ironclad evidence its a strength. Its entirely possible the team’s outside shooting is the same or even worse than last year’s (in some fashion. Could be higher 3FG% but lower volume).
And if the team lacks post scoring AND is only ok at outside shooting, I’m not super confident CTB would be ok with an offense based around slashing to the hoop. Plus, I’m personally doubtful an offense weak at the two most efficient ways of scoring will be very good.
I do think this team can grow into being defensively elite, and suspect they’ll end up being like a less-extreme version of the '20 team. Very-good-to-elite defensively rather than historically great, with mediocre-to-ok offense rather than disastrously bad ending up as like a 5 or 6-seed.
Interesting factoid: something the '20 squad shared with the championship '19 team and the '21 all-stretch frontcourt was being reliant on 3s relative to other CTB-UVA teams. I think of CTB teams as being big outside shooting teams, and that’s actually not true.
While I think its true they’re big “jump shot” teams, and they tend to be accurate at 3s, they actually prefer shots inside the arc. Every CTB team at UVA has attempted a lower % of 3s (compared to overall # of shots attempted) than the national average, and for some of those teams way fewer 3s than average. The 2011 and 2021 teams are the only teams that attempted an above average % of 3s, and only the 2019 and 2020 teams even got up to average. The rest were all substantially below.
I dont know how good this offense will be but I’m extremely confident it’ll be meaningfully better than 2020. 2020 was a flawed roster due to unexpected departures to the NBA. It was easily the worst backcourt since the early Bennett years. That plus the best scorers being bigs who take a bunch of low % shots and it’s not a recipe for success.
We only scored more than 65 points ONCE all year and only made 10+ threes twice.
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Related to the “do we go big or small,” it looks like two of their bigs have a nice outside shot. All but Samuel.
Could see us wanting Dunn in a lot to help with length and fast close outs. Going to need Groves, Minor, and Buchanan to be effective outside of the lane on defense at times too. Imagine Minor and Buchanan will play the minutes Samuel is in.
(Edit: Handlogten only shot 12 attempts last year from 3 and made 1. First game this year he was 2/2 … so more of a TBD)
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We’re definitely going to double in the post some, even if we’re not good at it yet with this new group. It’s what Bennett does. It’s an unusual trap, so it’s usually pretty effective at disrupting their offense, and getting steals if our rotations on the weak side are good (love it if Reece is playing rover on the weak side waiting on a cross court pass). Most teams trap just by having a guard drop down rather than another big coming from the opposite side of the court. We’ll trap and then sometimes we’ll fake the trap coming over. Opposing bigs don’t like to think so much about who’s coming at them and where they need to pass.
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Those two other bigs were lowly recruited true freshman. They had solid games against Loyola but hopefully Friday will be a reality check. My guess is that Samuel and Handlogten will play the bulk of the minutes unless there’s foul trouble.
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Also with Pullin out I wonder what, if any, kind of guard depth they have. We might have a slight adv there.
Looks like they rotated in Denzel Aberdeen (3-star in class of 2022, #150 in On3 Industry Average that year) as their main perimeter sub. Rishwain (former BC, USF shooting specialist) is their deep depth. Otherwise it’s a lot of Clayton-Richard-Kugel.
FWIW, I think I’d go Buchanan in for Groves, and arrange the perimeter matchups as being Beekman on Kugel, IMac on Clayton, and Rohde on Richard (as he is more of an off-ball player). I’m tempted to stick with the first game starting lineup because Golden’s teams at UF and USF have rarely been heavy offensive rebounding teams, but both Handlogten and Samuel had very solid individual offensive rebounding numbers last season.
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Excellent pun there … intended or not
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