Virginia vs. Florida (11/10/23) 7pm EST ACC Network

Not so sure about that…

https://twitter.com/cwdarney/status/1723158943931789544?t=Q7FdWj_EIHqUZlXaBp2pdw&s=19

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Yeah. Be mad at refs. That’s their job. Anything Corey does should be ignored if the refs are meeting the basic requirements of their job.

So I actually agree with this. I don’t think we played at a particularly high level. You can’t rebound like that or defend like we did for large stretches and be a great team.

BUT - with how young we are, with how many new pieces we’re integrating, I am left more encouraged that they gutted out the win. And they gutted it out by scoring, not just clamping down defensively. We have some firepower. We obviously have a ton to figure out and we need to find the right line-ups and see if we can figure rebounding out, but there’s real talent and fire there.

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I love you HGN, but I feel like based on your multiple posts we watched entirely different games lol.

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Yeah very much seemed like TB was pointing at Cory. Also judging by his postgame presser doesn’t sound like he was too happy about it still.

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2nd game slugfest against a talented p5 opponent. Sure a scoring drought, but one that they snapped out of instead of letting it be a funk that affected the whole squad. Reece decided to go get buckets, did his dpoy thing and your 5 of the future displays he’s more of the present as well. Tons to like

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Idk Im happy.

Sloppy game yeah. But all the shortcomings in this game are things that we can fix, not inherent things we are stuck with. Thats super exiciting. Whether it be boxing out better, schemeing for rebounds, or Minor getting more comfortable with packline and more Leon Bond minutes.

We almost collapsed. But every time we fought and got points some way some how. That’s gutsy.

McKneely stepped up on defense and was a huge part of Kugel’s poor statline. Rohde finally asserted himself some offensively. It’s the 2nd game in with all new pieces and no extra practices. Things will work themselves out.

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Not sure how one could have a negative takeaway from tonight tbh. We played against a coach who specifically schemes to takeaway what our offense is designed to do. We also, on paper, were at a huge disadvantage in the post. This was about as bad of a matchup as we could see without playing an elite team.

Despite that, our freshmen big played like a stud without doing anything that seems outside of his normal range of skills. We controlled the game most of the way. And when it got tight at the end the team showed a ton of grit that has been lacking the last 3 years. Even if we had lost I would’ve seen it as a huge positive overall

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ESPN+ has it as an On Demand stream.

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He absolutely said Cory’s name specifically

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Wait…are you NOT mad at Cory?? Dude, he absolutely influenced the refs to take a THIRD look at that play to change the call. It was a clown move, that’s putting it nicely. Dude just needs to shut up and do his freaking job.
I’m shocked! Two HGN takes I can’t help disagreeing with, in one night! Never thought I’d see the day lol

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I was happy to see the aggressiveness from Reece, but against Florida’s bigs it didn’t seem like Reece driving to the hoop was our best offensive option. He had trouble in the paint all day. (Our whole team did, don’t mean to pick on Reece. Florida’s bigs are big.)

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I hate to be lineup guy, but the drought coincided with the two point guard lineup. The offense all night felt a little precarious though. We were barely getting enough daylight to hit some threes. Otherwise, it would have been a very rough night since we were getting nothing at the rim. Still scored 73 with the drought. It would have been close to 90 without.

On the rebounds, I thought they were primarily a toughness/awareness issue. Kept bringing the ball low on defensive rebounds and letting Florida bigs swipe at it. Guys weren’t motoring to get in position enough when Florida put up shots. On the other hand, Florida’s offense put our bigs in a weird position to rebound.

That’s a long way of saying that I mostly agree. The really good Virginia teams of the past run away with it once up 11.

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yea, CTB was 100% mad at Cory… not the refs.

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All very fair… where was IMac when we needed a couple of buckets during the drought? How about letting Dante cook a couple of possessions? Rhode had a good look and kissed kinda just like his percentage last year would say… upside is it’s only game 2…

Yeah, on the negativity front … Reece was not great to the bucket. A few defensive lapses too. Thank god for last possession. That was huge

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I’m seeing way more negativity than I expected. It’s like we all forgot what we said about this team coming in. We knew they would struggle early but would only get better. We’re seeing a team ahead of schedule, getting contributions from everyone we could possibly hope for sans Minor, and there’s still nitpicking galore.

Florida is a good team with one of the largest front courts we will see all year (Samuels and Handlogten are BIG boys), and we gutted out a win. Sorry but there’s nothing but positives to take away from that. Buchanan is only going to get better and I still really believe Minor will find a role at some point but my god we’ve played only one cupcake so far. Let’s give it time. Did not think this team was ready to win a game like that and frankly I’m happy as hell

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Might not have been a perfect performance, but still a big win on a neutral floor, and have a feeling we’re only going to see 3-4 teams all year that are as good or better than UF.

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Ditto lol

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He finished a couple and they swarmed him and shut down a few - for the assertiveness on display i’ll take good w bad, I think it both won’t be required most games and that Florida in particular was well-suited to defend it

Probably grouping some memories together- so on at least one or two others he dished out of it instead of getting stuffed

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