I agree with your observations about the pitiful rebounding the last few games. Is there any reason a team with size and experience isn’t enlightened enough to box out and follow shots? I remember the 2019 team. They didn’t have great size, but they were special.
BPH
The good news: Tony Bennett and the staff have a few days until the next game (next Wednesday) to figure out what they need to do to fix the rebounding issue.
The bad news: can’t just call up somebody from the G-League, swing a trade or pluck a guy from the waiver wire.
Basically, yeah, they have to work with what they’ve got.
I’m hearing a lot from folks the past few days about, why don’t you write about how Kadin Shedrick, Francisco Caffaro and Isaac Traudt are doing, but, that point is moot – they’re gone.
I’m also getting the suggestions to the effect that: what about Anthony Robinson, the 6’10”, 240-pound true freshman who is, for now, redshirting?
Robinson could be an answer, but I assume there’s a reason that he’s redshirting, and that the reason has to do with Robinson and the coaching staff deciding that the year would be better spent with him developing.
A lot of times, that’s a nice way of saying, he’s not ready to contribute this year.
I’m assuming here that Bennett is working with what he has decided he has to work with for 2023-2024.
With that as the operating assumption, I wonder if we’re all focused on the issue being at the five spot, but the bigger issue may actually be trying to force Ryan Dunn into playing the four.
I’m thinking here that Bennett looks at Dunn’s size (6’8”, 216) and skill set and thinks, De’Andre Hunter (who was listed at 6’7”, 225 as a redshirt sophomore in the 2019 title run).
And I’m already beginning to think, and yes, it’s early, but Dunn may be a better defender than Hunter was early in his Year 2 at UVA.
(And remember, Hunter redshirted his true-freshman season; Dunn didn’t.)
Hunter was the four in a four-guard lineup around 6’9”, 228-pound five Mamadi Diakite, who started the final five games of the 2019 NCAA Tournament, after replacing 6’10”, 250-pound Jack Salt early in the opening-round game and going for 27 minutes, basically the starter’s minutes that day.
That group was outrebounded once in March and April – by Auburn in the Final Four, by two (33-31), and Auburn, in that one, had an offensive-rebound rate of 25.7 percent.
West Virginia, last night, had an offensive-rebound rate of 35.3 percent, and that represented improvement for Virginia on the boards – in its two previous games with Power 5 opponents, Florida and Wisconsin, each of those two had 50 percent or better offensive-rebounding rates.
Blake Buchanan, the 6’11”, 225-pound freshman, currently getting 18.2 minutes per game at the five, has shown flashes of what he will be, but he’s getting overpowered by older, stronger college bigs; Buchanan needs an offseason in Mike Curtis’ strength program before we can expect him to be a Diakite.
When Buchanan fleshes out more into 240, 245, he won’t be as easy to rebound through and over, and the drives to the basket that he’s either altering on his own or are getting rejected will be dunks and and-ones.
But that’s down the road.
Right now, it’s an undersized (or rather, for now under-strengthed) big and an undersized four when it’s Buchanan and Dunn on the floor together in the post.
And then you have Jake Groves, who is getting 18.3 minutes per game at the five, and is a 6’9”, 211-pound (gulp!) stretch four having to play the five.
Groves and Dunn out there together are two undersized stretch fours.
This is my preface to my wondering out loud if the solution to the rebounding issue in the here and now isn’t shifting Dunn from the four to the three, sliding Isaac McKneely to the two spot, alongside Reece Beekman at the point, and then playing Groves at four, his natural spot, and Buchanan at five.
That slides Andrew Rohde to the bench with Dante Harris in the backcourt, and opens up more minutes for Jordan Minor, a 6’8” guy listed at 242 pounds, as the bench guy in the post.
The floater, Leon Bond III, is this team’s Braxton Key – a little smaller (Bond is listed 6’5”, 203; Key, in 2019, was listed at 6’8”, 225).
Despite his size, Bond has proven himself to be what Bennett would call a willing rebounder – second on the team in rebounds-per-40 minutes (9.8) – so he can give the team minutes as an undersized four (akin to Jayden Gardner, who was effective as a 6’6” four the past couple of years).
I can envision a scenario as this team matures in late January and early February in which Bennett’s death lineup – the group he has on the floor in the final five minutes to close out games – is Beekman, McKneely, Bond, Dunn and Buchanan.
You’d be going 6’3”, 6’4”, 6’5”, 6’8” and 6’11” across the lineup, with the two top candidates for ACC Defensive Player of the Year, a good mid-sized rebounder in Bond, and a guy in Buchanan that you could just have focused on boxing out his guy, Jack Salt-style.
That’s the best I can do, anyway.
The pieces are there, is what I’m suggesting. It’s just figuring out the alchemy.
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Chris Graham
