I’m no shot doctor but Elijah looks too geeked up on his 3 point shot. I’m hoping he just needs to calm down and let the game become intuitive and shot will improve. But I’m not sure he’ll ever be a good shooter. Maybe more realistic is like Dallin Hall level.
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Hampton is now 1-1 after beating Mid Atlantic Christian 103-43 and losing to Milwaukee 90-86. Yep, that’s right: Hampton is averaging 95 points per game. They’re shooting 43% from deep, or almost 10% better than Virginia. They’ve got 8 players hitting 50% or better from deep (on very very low volume). Weirdly, they’re only attempting 23 threes per game (Virginia attempted 36 against NCC and 30 against Rider with much fewer possessions).
Hampton has decent size. Of their seven top players in minutes played, they run 6’7”, 6’, 6’7”, 6’6”, 6’, 6’10”, and 6’8”. And they play FAST: they’re 22nd in the nation with 82 possessions per game. But they’re pretty sloppy at that pace, turning the ball over on 22% of their possessions, good for 286th in the country.
Finally, in a significant advantage over Virginia, Hampton has players with names that sound like a Key & Peele skit: their top two scorers are Xzavier Long and Jalyke Gaines-Wyatt. And you’ll see Eunique Rink off the bench.
Hopefully, Virginia uses this game to work on their offensive cohesiveness. They haven’t yet looked like they’re playing well together except in occasional spurts. And I’d like to see De Ridder continue his offensive fireworks while Thomas starts making shots.
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I usually consider this a disadvantage. It feels like it’s always the funny name or goofy looking dudes who kill us.
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Hampton has the 9th best FT defense in the country. We have the 335th best FT %.
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You realize Ft defense is luck right? (And actually 3 pt % d is largely considered that as well)
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3pt defense isn’t luck.
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I should have said variance. Part of it may be driven by how the team plays defense but how offenses shoot open 3s against the d is generally luck. There are some good articles out there about 3 pt shooting variance that I can post later
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This is the seminal one:
https://kenpom.com/blog/offense-vs-defense-3point-percentage/
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If this is a just world, Ken will have to explain his “3 point defense is largely luck” theory to a crowd, while being guarded by Elijah Gertrude.
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Anyway, we are 6th in opponent 3P rate and 1st in 2P% defense.
14th in defensive block % and 2nd in OR % also relevant stats.
Through 2 games against pretty bad opponents but I’ll take it all the same.
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Not sure those stats are all that relevant as they were padded vs whatever Mid Atlantic Christian is? Isn’t that a HS in the 757 lol?
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Those are our stats. With disclaimer that they’re also against really bad opponents.
Hampton had a good performance away against Milwaukee. Milwaukee was picked to win the Horizon League and also owns a 20 point win against Little Rock (picked to win the OVC).
They will be a little more of a test than our first two opponents who are really bottom of all of college basketball, but we should be able to cover easily.
They do have an extra day of rest and preparation. Will be hungry for an upset, so maybe they have some things planned for what they saw against our first two games.
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Atlantic shores may be what you’re thinking of (revealing where in Virginia I’m from lol)
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Mid-Atlantic Christian is in Elizabeth City, NC. Wikipedia shows that they have 9 academic staff members and 143 enrolled students (in 2023).
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Would not be shocked to see a zone tonight. Hampton will look to disrupt the flow of the offense by any means.
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Would be a pretty short presentation. He’d just hand the ball to Elijah, make him shoot a 3 and then say “see? I’m lucky.”
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If Mid-Atlantic Christian can score 43 points on Hampton, then Virginia should have to run sprints at halftime if they can’t score 40 by then.
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So presumably 10% of the school is on the basketball team?
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Correct. You are also required to major in Biblical Studies with the option of double majoring.
They have a 4 year graduation rate of 25%. It looked like a good chunk graduated in 6 years. Surprisingly acceptance rate is between 63% and 76%.
Tuition is $16,600 and Room & Board is $12,400.
I have questions…hopefully there’s a Netflix documentary or something on these types of schools in my future.
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probably when they all go bankrupt after the enrollment cliff
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