Donāt know why Iām wading into this, but there are a lot of quality assessments weāre skipping over here.
They could be pretty good, good, better than most, above average, decent, merely ok, streaky on the right night, kind of frustrating, maddeningly inconsistent, and, of course, bad before we get to very bad.
Funnily enough the average lead over NCCU was 6 pts higher than the average lead against Rider:
And that goes into T-Rank: Adam's WI Sports Blog: T-Rank Methodology Update
Is it optimistic? I donāt normally feel that optimistic. I actually think itās pretty realistic.
Consider: Weāve seen what they can look like when theyāre playing very well which means that their ability to actually play very well isnāt hypothetical. This is just their second game together that counts. These outcomes would look different in terms of spread with just some improved FT shooting or even okay three-point shooting from Malik Thomas. Most of the mistakes theyāve made that have eaten away at the margin have been mental, not physical. The tendency to stop being quite as locked in when youāre killing a team is very commonā¦ and is much less concerning, broadly, than starting slow and/or just never looking that much better than the opponent.
From my experience - shooting improving to closer to expected is likely as is cleaning up mental mistakes with more experience playing together and for a new coach.
For all of those reasons, I think itās probable that weāll play closer to how we were in the first 13 minutes of the game and first 10 minutes of the second half. Of course, itās not certain, and itās also unclear exactly how good that level is. I think it looks pretty darn good; and would certainly satisfy the āblow out a bad teamā criteria - but no clue how itād stack up against our best competition this year. But that theory feels more realistic than optimistic, to me.
Maybe I shouldnāt be commenting on a game that Iām only 10 minutes into, but at what point in this game do the wheels fall off for us?
Because there seems to be some pessimism for a game we win by 19(?).
Because the rest of the way we play pretty much even with one of the worst teams in college basketball
I mean, I think its fair to say even the best version of this team is dramatically worse than the 2019 squad. So, we should go into any comparison between the two expecting this team to be a lot worse.
Yes. Agreed. I didnāt bring up the comparison
We also played even with Vandy and weāre up double digits vs Villanova.
Lack of focus when up big + lack of chemistry showing vs the zone look. Will be interesting to see if at least team defense can improve enough and how our offensive output looks vs more athletic teams. Iām excited though
Roughly 10 min to go in the 2h.
Oh, my bad. I didnāt notice you were responding to someone Iād blocked.
Hereās all the high major vs Q4 opponents games to this date: Link
Noticed that our average lead was only ~3 pts off of NCSUās average lead against NCCU, despite the huge difference in end of game margin.
The 2019 team started with Torvik game scores of 94 and 93. This year weāve started with scores of 93 and 89. Weāre so fucked! But seriously, what are we doing here? āIf you ignore the part of the game where we completely annihilated them, we suckedā. We won the game almost immediately and then coasted. Happens to almost every good team. And we moved up in Kenpom and stayed the same in Torvik.
Methinks thereās not enough chatter about GrĆ¼nloh and his 7(!) blocks and 11 boards
I am sure you can go look through the best UVA basketball teams and find halves where they played even with really bad teams.
If I recall one of the best CTB teams actually lost a game to a bad GW team
Nah that GW team was very good. It was an upset but they finished 53rd in Kenpom that season, and it was a road game.
I want him back!
Mallory seems to always be active. He flies around, anticipates where he should be. Looks smart and like he loves playing basketball. Love that kid. Hope he gets to see the floor more going forward. Heās going to be one of my favorites for sure!
GrĆ¼nloh is so composed at just 19 and great hands. None of the uncoordinated baby deer stuff like with Diakite, Huff, and Shedrick. And Tobey to some degree. I can see how heās high on draft boards.
One other thing on zone question Iām not overly worried about zones, but our ability to beat a simple zone look is going to be directly correlated to how comfortable guys are playing with each other. A halfway decent zone is going to be an especially lethal tool for opponents to use until we get there. So, not worried too much, but I could see it really wreaking havoc early on.
also want to see Odom make some in game adjustments next time we see a 2-1-2 and 3-2.