My #TeamAFP colleageue, Scott German, asked me, during Saturday’s Virginia-Houston game, if it seemed like freshman guard Isaac McKneely has been getting more minutes of late.
Yep.
So let me ask you, he said.
Whose minutes is he getting?
We both had the answer.
Armaan Franklin’s.
I just ran the numbers, and the numbers seem to bear that courtside observation out.
Franklin, who memorably had a 26-point game in Virginia’s win last month over Baylor, hasn’t done much since – averaging 7.2 points per game, shooting 35.6 percent from the field, 34.8 percent from three.
His minutes have been diminishing as his productivity has declined. In Virginia’s last four games – Michigan, Florida State, JMU and Houston – Franklin has averaged 24.5 minutes per contest, after averaging 29.4 minutes in the first five games this season.
McKneely, a four-star prep recruit, was brought along slowly by Tony Bennett, getting 16.5 minutes per game through the Michigan game.
But in the last three, iMac is averaging 23.3 minutes per game, and while we’re still waiting on the productivity – McKneely is averaging a modest 4.9 points per game this season, on 35 percent shooting from the floor and 38.7 percent from three – as that comes, it could be that we could be seeing him sliding into the starting lineup sooner rather than later.
“I think he’s been improving,” was the most that Bennett would allow after the Houston game, a 69-61 loss, in which McKneely had nine points on 3-of-6 shooting, 2-of-5 from three, in 25 minutes.
“iMac was pretty sound tonight, and, you know, I think that should give him some confidence to keep going at it,” Bennett said.
OK, so, Bennett is slow walking the obvious here: that McKneely is ready.
Bennett himself seemed to concede the point Saturday afternoon in front of a national TV audience, drawing up a play out of the under-4 media timeout, after Virginia had scratched and clawed an 11-point Houston lead down to six, to get McKneely an open look from three, that did everything but fall through the dang hoop.
“It was right there,” Bennett said, with a bit of a grimace.
McKneely’s attitude after the miss is what you want to hear from a shooter.
“Gotta live with the outcome,” McKneely said. “It’s all right. It’s whatever, you know, next shot mentality.”
This is the two-time West Virginia player of the year talking. Nine games into his college career, the guy who has a national title banner hanging from the rafters ran a play for him to get open for a big three against a Top 5 team.
Bennett and McKneely both know that the kid is made for these kind of moments.
A surprising detail, from a deep dive into the stats, is that McKneely is already a comparable option to Franklin on the defensive end.
According to Synergy Sports, McKneely is allowing opponents to shoot 37.1 percent, and opponents are scoring 0.778 points per possession with him as the primary defender.
Franklin’s opponents are shooting 31.3 percent and scoring 0.762 points per possession.
Franklin had 10 points on 3-of-6 shooting, 2-of-3 from three, in 24 minutes in Saturday’s loss, but one of his two threes came with the outcome already decided, with 26 seconds left, and Virginia again down 11, and it’s notable that he was on the bench for a nearly seven-minute stretch in the second half as Virginia mounted its late rally.
McKneely subbed in at the 15:24 mark of the second half and was on the floor the rest of the way.
“Coach Bennett left me in there a lot today. I guess that that’s a good thing. He trusts me to be out there in crucial times,” McKneely said.
It’s something for the young man to build on.
“You know, I’ve just been working on, you know, over the past few weeks, just building my confidence up as a freshman playing in the big game like this,” McKneely said. “You never know what’s going to happen, but I just tried to look at it like another game, and just go out there and do what I’ve been doing since I was four and just play the game of basketball.
“That’s the mindset I try to keep when I’m out there. And you know, just 100 percent effort on both ends the floor is what Coach Bennett wants, so I’m just gonna go out and do that every time I’m in the game.”
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Chris Graham
