Fortunately Memphis and Wisconsin seem to be clearly better than all but about 3 or 4 ACC teams so I don’t expect to lose 7 more like those. But it feels like we’ve started getting blown out on the road more regularly. Maybe the stats don’t back that up but just feel like it’s more of a recent trend
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No, we’ll beat the hell out of Morgan State.
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Last year blown out at BC - only one.
2022 blowout losses - blown out at Houston, neutral site UNC, home vs Clemson, at UNC, at NCState,
2021 - Gonzaga, at FSU, at Va Tech
2020 - At Purdue, vs South Carolina
2019 - none
2018 - umbc
2017 - Florida, at UNC, notre dame
2016 - none
2015 - none
2014 - only Tennessee
2013 - Acc tournament bs NC State and at Clemson
Memphis points per possession against man to man?
1.19
And vs zone?
0.000000000000
I’m not reading into those numbers. By then Memphis was up 20 and appeared to just be messing around out there.
That said, I would love to see us randomly pop into zone more often when the packline is getting carved up. Throw teams off.
Believe what you want man. But I rewatched that section twice - both teams were playing hard still - problem was the Hoo offense during that stretch scored 2 points … but we did get very good looks transitioning out of the zone to offense. It is harder for teams to matchup as quickly coming back since you’re not right beside your man.
Reece missed alley oop pass to Dunn
Issac wide open three, Reece wide open 3 and Dunn easy missed tip in.
Reece just missed with a bad pass a wide open IMac in transition - would have been a layup - but still got 2 IMac FTs
Generated 2 other deflections and then
Bond missed a mid range and Dunn airballed the 4 foot follow.
Normally with those looks that would have been a 9-0 run - at worst a 7-0 run. Could have been a 10
Point game with 4:30 left and maybe Memphis feels some game pressure.
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Gonzaga, Houston, South Carolina, and Memphis games all share something in common - within a week of returning from exam break.
We always, always play like dogsh*t after taking nearly 2 weeks off. This has regularly been the low point in the season (outside of early March exits) in Tony’s tenure.
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Eamonn with some thoughts. Mostly about how Virginia’s turnover (dis)advantage was the core issue and how it’s ability to generate turnovers is essential for our success. A snippet:
“ A 2023-24 Virginia offense that doesn’t take care of the ball was on dire display in Memphis Tuesday night; the result was as ugly as you might imagine. The physical, relentless, grown-man Tigers hassled UVa into 18 turnovers in 69 possessions, a 26.1 percent rate for a team averaging just 14.2 percent on the season. Reece Beekman had five; Isaac McKneely had four; Elijah Gertrude had three (in 11 minutes). Virginia hung around for a while in the first half, when it knocked down enough tough shots, but in the second half just got run.”
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You’ve also got to look at the big picture here. I would bet any sum you wanted that in preparing to play against us, Memphis didn’t spend a single second preparing to attack a zone look. I wouldn’t say it was all because of our defense they weren’t scoring, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree that having a “change up” look is a bad idea… but we’ve ran it twice in 10 years and that was only a few possessions each. It’s hard to tell what would happen if we added a zone look when opponents have that on their scouting radar as well.
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I think lots of things can work as curve balls that might not work as part of a regular diet.
The problem with this specific team is we are still struggling with some basics (like ball security) that I suspect make Tony hesitant to devote much practice time to wrinkles
@zh00s felt a bit like a vicious circle, too. We sorta seemed to go with a bit of a “let’s run with these mofos” ethic, a little bit. And it worked a little bit at first so we kept it up a little, and then it backfired a lot, too. E.g., EG (see what I did there?) got some early success from pushing it, so he pushed it a bit recklessly, and when it didn’t work, it felt a bit ropey dopey.
To bring up the unmentionable game, for me, the problem wasn’t that we tried to break the press and score fast. The problem is that we broke the press and tried to score fast, but it didn’t work.
(Sometimes good ideas don’t work… but if you try them again, they might work)
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X had a real rough time of it out there. 3 turnovers plus another ~4 near turnovers, all in limited minutes. This would have been a good game for Dante. (Though he would have struggled too. Easy to look good when you’re on the bench.)
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I guess you could say this for any bad game, but it was a good game for Elijah’s development. He’s a better athlete than those dudes on Memphis, but those aren’t dudes he can just out-athlete. Not on their home court and not when they’re 33 years old and have been playing college hoops since the second Cleveland administration.
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This.
Great post. Thank you for the sanity check.
We are 9-2. We have a ton of talent. We had 2 bad games in a row.
Let’s win next Wednesday and move forward.
Go HOOS!
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True - all way more physical and in 3 cases way more old talent than those Hoos teams.
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I expected us to be a good matchup against Memphis - their 2 stars should have been largely negated by our 2 defensive all Americans as they were perfect matchups. They weren’t a great rebounding team (our kryptonite this year). And they want to play fast, and that rarely works against us.
Honestly, Dunn being an olé on defense was so bad one might think he was throwing the game. And the rest of the team just didn’t hustle or focus. 5 turnovers for beekman was so uncharacteristic. And Rhode is still clearly out of sorts (injury?).
Just felt, more than anything, like a team playing their first competitive game in nearly a month vs a team that was fully ramped and operating at its peak. Add in the home crowd and the home cooking whistle, and you get a blow out.
Wouldn’t be shocked if we’d beat them by 20 if we played again in a month or two.
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Earlier in the season playing against inferior competition Dunn got away with playing free safety and going after steals and blocks. He has to learn when he can and can’t. Hopefully the last couple of games have taught him something. He plays out of control at times and it has been costly. Got plenty of talent but he needs to learn what he can and can’t do and when he can take advantage of it
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I just rewatched (using the invaluable stats broadcast PBP as a guide, with the ESPN rewatch fxn) most or all of Dunn’s 1H defensive possessions … and it certainly wasn’t good, but it wasn’t that bad, either. Jones was mostly cooking iMac.
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RD let up one by Jaykwon Walton when RD was the MIG, but it was a nice play, and stopping it would have been a very good play. Maybe RD was a half step or so slow closing out.
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He may have given up the transition 3 to Jones in the mid-1H in transition but it wasn’t clear to me (or to the players apparently) who was meant to be covering whom.
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He gave up a “tip your cap” mid range shot to Jones – the one that got replayed a time or two, because it was a great play.
And … that’s about it. He didn’t play awesome. He only had one block. But he did have one or two nice contests, in addition.
He mostly hurt us on offense, not defense.
Haven’t rewatched the 2H yet…
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Was half watching the game visiting family for the holidays. My quick impression is that Memphis did two things well: (1) they made someone other than IMac score and (2) they managed to take away our transition skills. In other words, they not only didn’t let us force turnovers (and get easy points) but scored on beating the gambling defenders. i would need to look, but if anyone knows the difference in fast break/points off turnovers for us this game verses our other games?
Basically, it seems our main options on offense right now are (1) McKneely three or (2) fastbreak/points off turnovers. And a vet team with a good PG might gum that up. And if the answer is to gamble even more on turnovers/fastbreaks, we might just let the other team have even more easy baskets rather than fundamental defense
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They definitely won the turnover battle, but points off of turnovers haven’t been that big a part of our offense, but I don’t know where to find pts off turnovers by game, off hand. But yeah, we really didn’t turn them over that much, and when we did, we were not able to capitalize all that much.
Watched a good chunk of RD defensive possessions in the 2H. Definitely much worse. He gave up some bad rebounds leading to layups, some layups he probably should’ve contested better, etc. Still not sure how much his weak D was a big factor in the loss, but he was hurting us on offense, and not helping like he usually does on offense.
Interesting we went to that zone after Penny schemed up some pretty nice stuff that really seemed to use the packline principles against us. Seemed important to him (was that the Jeff White article?) to be able to punish it. Schemed up some special stuff and most of it worked.
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Their pump fakes also worked
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