Lost in all the attention being given to the absence of second-leading scorer Justin Anderson is the trouble that second-ranked UVA has had closing out games of late, a trend that dates back to the last couple of games before Anderson went down with a broken finger on his left hand.
Duke closed out its 69-63 win in Charlottesville on a 22-7 run over the final 5:08. Two days later, North Carolina outscored Virginia 16-9 in the final 3:29 in a 75-64 loss to UVA.
On Feb. 7, Louisville got back into the game in the final 4:17 outscoring the ‘Hoos 12-7 down the stretch in a 52-47 loss. On Feb. 11, it wasn’t quite so pronounced, but N.C. State was able to claw its way back into the game from a 42-37 deficit at the 4:40 mark to cut the margin to two and was a missed layup in the final seconds from sending the game to overtime in what turned into a 51-47 loss.
And then on Saturday, Wake Forest outscored Virginia 22-10 in the final 10:42 to close a 13-point gap to one before failing to get a shot off in the final seconds in a 61-60 loss.
Two things have to go wrong to have this happen: your offense has to stagnate, and your defense has to stop getting stops.
The hallmark of Tony Bennett UVA basketball is, of course, its defense, rated second in the country by KenPom, but the offense, underrated as it is, is also a foundational element. Before Anderson went on the shelf with the broken finger, KenPom had Virginia rated in the Top 10 nationally in offensive efficiency, and UVA is still rated 18th even with the back-to-back-to-back subpar performances in the wins over Louisville, State and Wake.
But look at those closing runs on both ends.
- Duke: scored 22 points on its final eight possessions, 2.75 points per possession, while UVA scored seven points on its last nine possessions, .777 points per possession.
- UNC: scored 16 points on its final nine possessions, 1.777 points per possession, while UVA scored nine points on its final eight possessions, 1.125 points per possession.
- Louisville: scored 12 points on its final eight possessions, 1.5 points per possession, while UVA scored seven points on its final seven possessions, 1 point per possession.
- N.C. State: scored 10 points on its final nine possessions, 1.111 points per possession, while UVA scored nine points on its final nine possessions, 1 point per possession.
- Wake Forest: scored 22 points on its final 17 possessions, 1.294 points per possession, while UVA scored 10 points on its final 17 possessions, .588 points per possession.
Quick math on these endgame situations: UVA opponents scored 82 points on 51 possessions, 1.61 points per possession, while UVA scored 42 points on 50 possessions, .840 points per possession.
The bad defense numbers are a bit inflated because Duke had that otherworldly finish, and it could be argued that Carolina scored its points in garbage time, though the Heels were thisclose to taking that game from garbage time back to real time after being down 16 inside of four minutes.
To be fair, Virginia’s offensive output in the UNC, Louisville and N.C. State endgames was probably also a bit inflated because the Cavs were sent to the foul line by opponents trying to stop the clock to get additional possessions.
Trying to analyze what is happening to cause these trends, the bad defense and the worse offense, it’s not hard to come up with any single answer. Duke and Wake used the threeball (Duke getting penetration and kickouts, Wake using good screen action to free up pick-and-pops), Louisville and N.C. State focused on getting guards into the lane, Carolina a little bit of both.
It’s not like anybody did anything special to slow Virginia down on the other end. If anything, it seemed more the case that Virginia stopped itself, through a combination of bad shots and reluctance on the part of anybody in Bennett’s star-less system to want to be the man to step up and take control.
And that factor right there could prove to be the downfall of this otherwise great Virginia team, if it ends up coming up short in its quest for a championship. From media day in October onward, the team has talked about how “Joe isn’t here anymore,” referring to Cleveland Cavaliers rookie Joe Harris, though his specter still hangs over team huddles late in games, with Malcolm Brogdon referencing Harris in breaking down for reporters a play that Bennett called out of the huddle late in the Louisville win that freed Brogdon for an open three in the left corner.
When Harris was in the mix, you expected him to step up and take the big shot, or at the least serve as a convincing decoy. But the team’s new leaders, Brogdon and Anderson, seem to prefer a more democratic arrangement that works just fine for 30, 35, 37, 38 minutes, but is maybe an issue in late-game situations where somebody needs to just say, Gimme.
The defense is an easier fix, if a fix is even needed. The more I look at the past five endgames, I’m actually starting to think that we’re just seeing a couple of outlier-type efforts (Duke, particularly) that are inflated in terms of points per possession because of the impact of the threeball.
The principles of Bennett’s Pack-Line defense call for an emphasis on preventing easy shots in the lane and mid-range with the vulnerability point being the three, since that’s what the Pack-Line will give you, the three, albeit a contested three.
UVA defenders were just a split-second late closing out on Duke’s three-point shooters in the final five minutes after doing a solid job for the first 35. Wake got an elite performance from Dinos Mitoglou (6-of-12 from long-range) that was sustained game-long, so his impact wasn’t limited to the final minutes, and will be an issue that Bennett will need to address before the Feb. 25 rematch in Winston-Salem.
So in the final analysis, the D just needs to keep doing what it does game-long, focus in the final minutes on closing out hard on three-point shooters, and figure out what it wants to do offensively in endgame situations, and specifically who is going to be the man to initiate those situations, and all will be fine.
I didn’t mention that this team with all these issues is currently 23-1 and ranked second in the nation in the polls.
Yeah, talk about splitting hairs …
– Column by Chris Graham
Share
Contributors
