The question you get in the media mailbag most often from Virginia Basketball fans: is Tony going to open things up on offense more this year?
The answer you always end up getting after watching the first few minutes of the season opener: no.
But when you look at the roster that Tony Bennett has put together for 2023-2024, it’s worth at least asking again, just in case the answer is different this time.
Because Bennett has Reece Beekman, a projected first-round pick, back to run the point, and he has two other guys at point – Dante Harris (Georgetown) and Andrew Rhode (St. Mary’s) – who have started at the D1 level and scored in double figures at their previous stops.
And also because Bennett has shooters – Rhode (32.0 percent as a freshman at St. Mary’s last season) can fill it up from three, as can sophomore Isaac McKneely (39.2 percent last season) and Oklahoma grad transfer Jake Groves (38.1 percent last season).
Even Beekman, a mid-20s shooter from three in his freshman season, improved to 35.1 percent from behind the arc last season, making opponents respect him when the ball swings out in his direction on the perimeter.
To summarize where we are here, then: Bennett has three point guards who would start almost anywhere, he has shooters.
And he has a beast in the low post in Merrimack grad transfer Jordan Minor, who scored 17.4 points per game last year; according to Synergy Sports data, 81.6 percent of his field-goal attempts came at the rim, which, yeah, that’s a lot.
Minor will be the first real post presence on the offensive end for Bennett dating back to the Anthony Gill years.
There’s a lot here for Bennett to work with, basically.
So, is he going to open things up a little more to try to get his team some easier looks?
“I was gonna start with a slam dunk contest and a transition drill. I should have done all that. You guys would have been, What is happening, this is the new era,” Bennett told reporters at the program’s media day on Monday, joking about how he’d started the team’s Blue-White Scrimmage on Oct. 14 with a three-point shooting contest, but had other options.
To be fair, there’s no easy way to start a public scrimmage with a hard hedge on a pick-and-roll contest.
Bennett conceded in the media-day chat that his team was a bit “streaky” last year from three-point range, which is an understatement.
Cherry-picking some examples of the bad side of “streaky,” the ‘Hoos were a combined 8-of-33 from three in back-to-back losses to Boston College and North Carolina in mid-February, 4-of-17 in the 59-49 loss to Duke in the ACC Tournament title game, 2-of-12 in the backbreaking one-point loss to Furman in the NCAA Tournament.
Not gonna win a lot of games shooting that poorly from three.
Because of the unreliable shooting from long-range, “we were probably a little more midrange-oriented last year with how we played,” Bennett said, midrange being the dirty word in basketball circles these days, with the analytics pushing coaches into finding more high-percentage shots at the rim and more shots from three, and having their guys do as little as possible in the midrange, where the shooting percentages are lower, and the shots still only count for two.
At least some of that overreliance on midrange shots is a function of Bennett’s preferred grind-it-out approach.
Per KenPom.com, Virgina ranked in the top 20 nationally in average possession length in 2022-2023, and the Synergy numbers had Virginia in the Top 50 nationally in field-goal attempts in the final four seconds of the shot clock.
The ‘Hoos connected on 32.4 percent of those late-shot-clock field-goal attempts, which isn’t surprising, given the nature of those kinds of shots – guys being rushed to try to at least get something on the rim.
You’re going to get more of those types of rushed late-clock shots when you run as much offense in the halfcourt as Virginia does – last year, 92.0 percent of Virginia’s possessions were halfcourt, ranking ninth overall in the nation.
For sake of comparison there, Gonzaga, the nation’s most efficient offensive team a year ago, averaging 1.223 points per possession, per KenPom.com data, got 66.5 percent of its offense in the halfcourt, and was more efficient in those possessions – shooting 51.0 percent from the floor, per Synergy – than Virginia was in its halfcourt possessions (43.6 percent).
Listening to Bennett at media day, the sense you get is, don’t hold your breath that there’s any change coming.
“I think it’s, again, the same thing, as I said, opportunistically, if it’s a good look, and it’s the right guys, take it early,” Bennett said. “If we were probably a little more midrange-oriented last year with how we played, this year, you know, my hope is Isaac McNeely can stretch the floor and shoot the ball, he’s shown that. Jake Groves, the transfer from Oklahoma, can play the, you know, he can stretch it, whether he’s playing a forward spot. Obviously, Reece has really improved his shot. You know, Andrew Rhode has, you know, he’s a complete player, but he’ll stretch it. Taine (Murray)’s improved his shot.
“I’m just trying to go through guys, you know, so guys can take it, but if it’s a good shot at the right time with the right guys, absolutely, it’s a green light to take it.”
In the interest of transparency, Bennett’s 2018-2019 national champs played even slower than last year’s group: 93.5 percent of the champs’ possessions were halfcourt, though one difference there was the better shooting (46.5 percent) in the halfcourt sets.
That squad had De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy leading an offense that ranked second nationally in offensive efficiency (1.234 points per possession, per KenPom.com), so, yeah, gold standard there.
“You can look at analytics, and that’s important, but the last thing you want to be doing is shooting a ton of threes, if it’s guys that aren’t as consistent with it, or, you know, you’re not a great interior scoring team, trying to pound it inside all the time,” Bennett said. “It’s just what the defense gives you, what your team can do, and you do want to have a good balance. But I think sometimes the game dictates that, and how teams guard you, and certainly philosophically what you believe. So, when we had Kyle and Ty, those two, we shot more threes, where we had, you know, there’s more green light. I believe we shot more, at least our percentage was better. I think we were shot more, too. So, a lot of it has to do with your personnel.”
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Chris Graham
