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UPDATED: Looking ahead at UVA basketball in 2017-2018

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uva basketballThe 2016-2017 UVA basketball season ended with a thud, and as the Sweet Sixteen prepare to do battle, we’re reduced to looking ahead to next year.

Ah, next year. Good news: there is promise.

Most significantly, coach Tony Bennett loses point guard London Perrantes, a four-year starter who led the program to two ACC regular-season championships, an ACC Tournament title, two national #1 seeds, an Elite Eight, a Sweet Sixteen and 14 postseason wins.

That much was expected. The news today – that junior guard Marial Shayok and sophomore forward Jarred Reuter are planning to transfer – was a bit unexpected, to say the least.

More on the losses of Shayok and Reuter in a moment. The long view here is that Bennett still has seven players who averaged double-digit minutes back in 2017-2018, plus two four-star recruits – 6’11” forward Jay Huff and 6’7” guard DeAndre Hunter – who redshirted this year, plus Class of 2017 recruit Marco Anthony, a 6’6” three-star guard.

And … then there’s the scholarships left open by the departures of Shayok and Reuter, and the additional scholarship opened by the departure of Austin Nichols, the 6’9” forward who played one game for Virginia this season before being dismissed from the program in November.

The good news about just about everybody being back is that, well, just about everybody is coming back, in an environment in which it seems everybody else in the ACC and elsewhere in the Power 5 are losing guys either to graduation or early entry into the NBA Draft process.

If there’s bad news, it’s that everybody is back on a team that had some glaring deficiencies that won’t necessarily get better just with everybody coming back a year older.

While it’s still fresh in mind, I thought it a good exercise to do a sort of self-scouting report on the 2017-2018 ‘Hoos, who it must be pointed out are already getting the very, very, very early buzz for next year, being included in KenPom.com’s preseason Top 10 (at #6) this week.

Which is great, but is it too much? Let’s take a look.

 

The glaring deficiency: Scoring in the post

When Nichols was dismissed after his one game, with him went any hope for the Cavs to get consistent scoring in the post.

Nichols is a classic post scorer, with the ability to score back to the basket, facing up and driving, and hitting the short jumper off pick-and-pops.

Without Nichols, the best option among the bigs in terms of post scoring was Reuter, who unfortunately couldn’t get on the court all that much (10.8 minutes per game) for a variety of reasons – defensive limitations (a 94.6 defensive rating, according to Sports-Reference.com, worst among the UVA bigs) and fouls (5.12/40 minutes) chief among them.

Isaiah Wilkins is the most effective big in the rotation, but Wilkins scores his points largely on pick-and-pops and stickbacks. Freshman Mamadi Diakite has promise, but at this stage in his development is, like Wilkins, not a back-to-the-basket scorer, getting his baskets primarily off jumpers.

Jack Salt, God love ‘im, isn’t worth discussing in terms of offense, his contributions there being limited to catching the ball, when he can catch the ball, and dunking.

How this gets better: not sure right off.

You don’t just become a back-to-the-basket scorer. Diakite seems to project, as he improves, as a Mike Scott type, using his height and athleticism to score on the pick-and-pops and screen-rolls that are plentiful in the mover-blocker scheme.

Reuter might have been the best option for post points next season, but it was just as likely that he would have continued to have a hard time getting minutes. He had double-digit minutes just once in Virginia’s final 12 games, which is saying something when you consider the limited availability of Wilkins in the last seven games, dating back to the win at N.C. State on Feb. 25.

I am not privy as to what may have transpired in this week’s exit interviews, but it may be the case that Bennett made clear to Reuter that his minutes may be a question, and that Virginia may use one of the scholarships freed up by the departures to go after a graduate transfer post player.

Not knowing what the future may hold in that respect, looking at what we know is coming back next season, the good news is that this group is solid defensively. Wilkins, assuming doctors figure out what is wrong with him medically, was the top-rated defender in the ACC in 2016-2017 (with an 88.4 rating, according to Sports-Reference.com), and Diakite (88.9) and Salt (92.3) would have ranked in the Top 10 if they’d logged enough minutes to qualify.

The group will only get better on the defensive end with another year of maturity in the Pack-Line.

 

The backcourt: A lot of dudes

So you lose a four-year starting point guard, and you’re not worried in the slightest, and that’s not at all knocking Perrantes, the team’s leading scorer in 2016-2017 (12.7 points per game).

It’s just that, there are a lot of dudes coming back to spread the minutes at the 1, 2 and 3.

Shayok (8.9 points per game, 44.5 percent shooting) was the most developed offensively, logging 15 double-digit games this past season, the strength of his game his ability to score on dribble-drives, a valued skill with this group.

But Shayok, like Reuter, had his own issues getting and keeping minutes. Despite his proclivity toward big games, Shayok could also disappear for long stretches, both in-game and for seemingly weeks at a time.

Over a five-game stretch beginning with that Feb. 25 game at N.C. State, again with Wilkins limited by sickness, Shayok got on the floor for a total of just 54 minutes, and had two goose eggs scoring-wise.

Where Shayok lacked in consistency, Devon Hall (8.4 ppg, 40.8 percent shooting) epitomized what they call being a glue guy, able to score off the dribble and hit the three (37.2 percent), and he was also the team’s second-leading rebounder (4.4 a game).

Another glue-type guy is Darius Thompson (6.2 ppg, 44.8 percent shooting), who might be the most athletic player on the roster.

The most intriguing players are the two freshmen who logged significant minutes this season. Kyle Guy (7.5 ppg, 49.5 percent three-point shooting) had 11 double-digit games as a freshman, but also registered five goose eggs, and saw his playing time yo-yo literally from one game to the next (two minutes in a Feb. 20 loss to Miami, 35 minutes in a win at N.C. State on Feb. 25).

Ty Jerome (4.3 ppg, 47.3 percent shooting) was almost an afterthought until coming up big in a road win at Notre Dame in mid-January. From that point on, Jerome averaged 6.9 points per game and had five double-digit games.

Guy, for his part, will improve offensively when he adds the ability to dribble-drive to his game. The kid with the bun shot just 38.2 percent on two-point shots as a freshman, and knowing this, opposing defenders could cheat on him running off screens at the three-point line and basically take him out of the game in key situations.

Defensively, as in the post, the backcourt is solid. Thompson (93.8) and Hall (94.6) each ranked in the Top 10 in the ACC in defensive rating, and you will be shocked to learn this, as I was, but the unit may actually get better with the departure of Perrantes, whose defensive rating (97.1) was barely better than that of the defensively-maligned Guy (97.3).

Presuming that LP’s minutes will go to Jerome (93.5) at the point, the backcourt will only get better defensively in 2017-2018.

Which is scary.

 

Early prognosis: More of the same, but better?

Danny Neckel at StreakingTheLawn put together a neat look at what Virginia returned in terms of minutes, scoring, rebounding and assists over each of the past five seasons, and then looking ahead to next season.

Of course, now the numbers are a bit skewed, with the news that Shayok and Reuter are riding off into the sunset. Before today’s news, Neckel’s numbers had UVA returning 84 percent of the minutes, 80 percent of the points, 89 percent of the rebounds, 73 percent of the assists.

My quick math has those numbers now at: 69 percent of the minutes, 62 percent of the points, 77 percent of the rebounds, 62 percent of the assists.

The 2016-2017 team had 57 percent of the minutes, 42 percent of the points, 48 percent of the rebounds and 69 percent of the assists.

Which is to say, there’s still a lot coming back, even with the losses. And then consider that the rest of the ACC seems poised to lose a lot. Duke knows, for example, that it won’t have Amile Jefferson (graduation), and underclassmen Grayson Allen, Luke Kennard, Jayson Tatum and Harry Giles are likely to at least consider early entry into the NBA Draft process.

North Carolina, similarly, loses big men Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks to graduation, and may lose at least junior Justin Jackson (the ACC Player of the Year) to the NBA Draft.

Notre Dame loses V.J. Beachem to graduation and may see Bonzie Colson tempted by his draft prospects. Syracuse will lose Andrew White III, John Gillon and Tyler Roberson to graduation and may lose Tyler Lydon to early entry.

Other programs that may also be hurt by early entry include Louisville (Donovan Mitchell) and Florida State (Dwayne Bacon, Jonathan Isaac).

Yowsers, that’s a lot of movement in terms of talent, whereas Virginia is, by and large, standing pat.

Bennett will have the nation’s best defensive unit back, a year older and a year wiser in the Pack-Line, opening up the possibility that he and his staff can put their focus in offseason workouts on improvements on the offensive end, as he was able to do in the offseason heading into 2015-2016.

He’ll love that he was able to give Jerome, Guy and Diakite increasing minutes in the heart of ACC and postseason play to be able to build on for their sophomore seasons.

He has grizzled senior veterans in Wilkins, Hall and Thompson to set the tone for the spring and summer heading into the start of practice in October.

The big question is what to do about scoring in the post. Is there a gem on the graduate-transfer board that can come in and contribute while also learning the Pack-Line, or do you turn your focus inward and try to develop what you already have in the program?

All things considered, it’s not a bad place to be looking ahead.

Column by Chris Graham

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