UVA Basketball fans will see two familiar faces on the visitor sidelines on Saturday (6 p.m. ET, ESPN) with Maryland, a former hated ACC foe, in town.
Elijah Saunders was the second-leading scorer on last year’s team, the final one of the Tony Bennett era – the season coached by Ron Sanchez after Bennett bailed before the season.
The other familiar face: Buzz Williams, Latin for: he who sweats a lot.
Buzz is, of course, the former coach at Virginia Tech, among many other places, now in his first season at Maryland.
His Terps (6-5, NET: 162) are still trying to find themselves.
They’re 0-4 in Quad 1 games (101-83 loss to Michigan, 100-61 loss to Gonzaga, 105-72 loss to Alabama, 83-64 loss to Iowa).
Those four losses have come in their last five games, after a 5-1 start that included a Quad 3 loss at home to Georgetown.
Buzz, being Buzz, will get it turned around, eventually – he’s had three Sweet 16 and one Elite 8 teams, though, notably, you’d probably want to call his tenure at Texas A&M, which was supposed to be a homecoming for him, a failure: he was 120-73 in six seasons there, but never got past the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Getting to know: Maryland
The leading scorer, 6’9”, 250-pound senior Pharrel Payne (17.5 ppg, 7.2 rebounds/g, 62.4% FG), followed Williams from A&M, where he was a 10.4-ppg scorer a year ago.
As you can tell from the shooting percentage, it’s all at and around the rim for Payne – 81.2 percent of his shot attempts are within 4.5 feet of the hoop, per CBB Analytics.
Payne draws lots of fouls – 6.6 per 40 minutes, which is top 1 percent nationally.
That’s a big challenge, obviously, for Virginia’s three bigs – Thijs de Ridder, Johann Grunloh and Ugonna Onyenso.
Expect early foul trouble for the ‘Hoos in the post.
Point guard David Coit, a 5’11” senior, averaged 20.8 ppg as a sophomore at Northern Illinois, transferred to Kansas, didn’t get much run there, and is now putting up good numbers at Maryland (14.8 ppg, 2.6 assists/g, 43.5% FG, 46.5% 3FG).
The starting two guard, 6’5” freshman Darius Adams (12.6 ppg, 32.1% FG, 24.5% 3FG), has one good skill – getting to the line.
He’s averaging 7.2 free-throw attempts per game, and has three games this season with 10+ – including 21 (!) in the 95-90 OT win over Mt. St. Mary’s last month.
Payne, incidentally, averages 9.6 free-throw attempts per game, and Maryland, as a team, averages 28.5, ninth nationally.
Virginia averages 25.0 charity tosses per game, 47th nationally.
What I’m telling you: assume you’re going to miss the first quarter of the JMU-Oregon CFP game, which kicks off at 7:30-ish p.m. ET.
Forecast
- KenPom: Virginia 83-70
- BartTorvik: Virginia 86-69
- ESPN BPI: Virginia +7.9
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Chris Graham
