Cavs atop KenPom.com Ratings: The 57-28 win over Georgia Tech on Thursday temporarily lifts UVA to the top spot in the KenPom.com Ratings.
Both Virginia and Kentucky are 18-0. The Cavs have a Pythagorean rating in the KenPom system of .9836, .0018 ahead of Kentucky.
Two other ACC schools are in the KenPom Top 10 – North Carolina (7) and Duke (9).
Notre Dame is #12, and Louisville is #13.
Two December non-conference opponents are in the Top 25 – VCU (17) and Maryland (21), with Davidson (32) not far behind.
Brian Gregory offers thoughts on how to beat Virginia: His team scored an ACC-record low 28 points, so take this with a grain of salt. Or maybe consider what Brian Gregory had to say in response to a reporter’s question on what a team would need to do to have success against Virginia’s defense to be something that he learned the hard way.
“Teams that have guys that can make plays 1-on-1 and make tough shots are the teams that will be able to play with them for forty minutes,” Gregory said. “And you need a couple guys to do this; one guy isn’t enough. You have to make every open shot, and that’s what Virginia did. Defensively, we were pretty good too. We own the 28 points. But, they just have guys that will make the open shots.”
Nice effort for 57? You don’t often look at a 57-point output as being evidence of a good night offensively, but appearances can be deceiving.
Virginia and Georgia Tech each had 55 possessions in their game Thursday night. The Cavs scored on 26 (47.3 percent) and averaged 1.036 points per possession.
UVA also shot 45.3 percent from the field (24-of-53) and was 5-of-9 from three-point range, and committed just four turnovers.
Back to KenPom: Virginia is the nation’s third-most efficient offense in the nation, scoring 1.203 points per possession. (Notre Dame is #1 at 1.230 points per possession; Wisconsin is #2 at 1.225 points per possession.)
You’re excused if you didn’t realize that UVA is that good offensively. Nobody else knows that, either.
– Column by Chris Graham
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