Mailbag: Talent on the UVA hoops roster, impact of faster tempo on D, Saunders

I love your coverage of the UVA Basketball program. It’s great.

You wrote this team is more talented than any since the 2019 championship, and I hope you are right, but I think some people would really need to achieve for this group to be viewed as more talented than the ‘20-‘21 roster.

Trey Murphy is a very good pro, and Sam Hauser was a rotation guy for a NBA champion. Jay Huff is a fringe NBA player. Granted, there was a drop off from those three that year, but I am not sure I see an NBA player on this team.

Anyway, love the coverage, really hope you are right!

Lawrence

That 2020-2021 UVA hoops group was a talented group. Lawrence has that right. If not for the COVID quarantine, they would have done something in March that year.

I seem to remember, though, at the start of that season, no one had any of those three being more than marginal NBA guys, if that.

Trey Murphy showed up after two years at Rice averaging 10.9 points a game, Sam Hauser didn’t get drafted after putting up big numbers for us, and Jay Huff didn’t come into his own until his third year, and even after his final season wasn’t considered by many to be an NBA prospect.

Of course, back in the day, Malcolm Brogdon and Joe Harris supposedly weren’t NBA prospects, and De’Andre Hunter redshirted as a freshman, we stole Ty Jerome from Iona, Kyle Guy was talented but undersized.

I don’t know that Tony Bennett has had a sure-thing guy at UVA. Lots of good, quality college basketball prospects, but no surefire NBA guys.

Looking at the current roster:

• TJ Power: five-star
• Isaac McKneely: four-star
• Dai Dai Ames: four-star
• Jalen Warley: four-star
• Jacob Cofie: four-star
• Blake Buchanan: four-star
• Taine Murray: four-star
• Andrew Rohde: four-star
• Elijah Saunders: three-star
• Anthony Robinson: three-star
• Christian Bliss: three-star
• Ishan Sharma: three-star
• Carter Lang: three-star

Elijah Gertrude (four-star) is out for the season, which is why we have Ames.

The total talent level is as high as I can remember.

The issue for this team, as with the 2020-2021 team, is the lack of time on the court as a group.

Tony scheduled aggressively, so he seems to think he has something this year.

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Accepting the old saw that there are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs, what impact do you think a faster (if even only slightly) tempo will have on our defense?

My understanding is our slow offensive pace is partly a recognition of how hard our guys play on defense, and it gives them a chance to recover.

There surely is a happy medium – the 2019 team was not UVA’s best defensive team but they had length and were physical.

With so many new guys and the team playing faster (whatever that means in a TB world), how do you see our defense this year?

Dan

Good question. Now, I will say, the 2019 UVA team, according to KenPom, ranked fifth in adjusted defense (and second in adjusted offense), so it was better defensively than we remember.

It was just so good on the offensive end.

Speeding things up means more transition baskets for us, and maybe some better looks in the halfcourt – with fewer shots inside of five seconds to go on the shot clock.

That comes with a price –  I have to imagine that our guys pushing fast breaks and secondary breaks will lead to opponents getting more transition opportunities.

I will say, the past couple of years, what we used to see years ago out of opponents – basically, tiring out because of having to run offense against our D, and defend us for 30 seconds on the other end – hasn’t been happening.

We used to win games in the final 8-10 minutes just because the other guys were exhausted from having to play us, leading to what we came to call the Cavalanche – the big run that came when the other side waved the white flag out of fatigue.

The odd thing is, when I look at the stats, we’re only talking about the difference between 60.1 possessions per game (for us, last year), 66.4 possessions per game (Duke last year) and 70.6 possessions per game (UNC last year).

That’s between 6-10 possessions per game (on both ends) that we’d be creating.

(I can’t imagine a TB-coached UVA team ever averaging 70 possessions per game. Maybe 65. Maybe.)

The trick will be, getting our guys a few easier shots in transition and early in shot clocks, and limiting easy shots at the faster pace on the other side.

I have no idea how that is done. This is where I’m happy to cede the floor to the guy who makes $4M a year to figure that out!

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I just watched your video about the basketball team. I was at the scrimmage Saturday, and would like to touch on what I saw. I was very impressed with the physical look of this team. In my opinion, Elijah Saunders already has an NBA-ready body.

For the first time in several years, I’m actually optimistic about this team. 

I think the question about Tony willing to stick with the faster pace if this team face’s adversity early is valid.

Chris

Elijah Saunders is going to be a key guy. I have him slated to start at the five spot in my dream lineup, alongside TJ Power at the four.

Saunders and Power give the offense two bigs who can shoot off pick-and-pops in the mover-blocker, and help space the floor to give the guards room to operate on dribble-drives.