UVA Basketball fans are feeling sorry for themselves. The one guy left out there who still counts himself as a Miami Basketball fan took Tony Bennett stepping down two weeks before the season and said, hold my beer.
Former UVA assistant Jim Larrañaga quit before Christmas after his team lost at home to Mount St. Mary’s to fall to 4-8.
The interim, Bill Courtney, is 0-8 since taking over, with six of the losses by double-digits, though the ‘Canes had a near-miss over the weekend, taking Cal to OT before losing, 98-94.
Here we are, all up in arms about being 9-11, 2-7 in the ACC, a mere six years after winning a national championship.
Ahem, Miami was in the Final Four two years ago.
Forecast
- KenPom: Miami 70-69
- BartTorvik: Virginia 67-66
- EvanMiya: Virginia 69-68
- Haslametrics: Virginia 68-65
- ESPN BPI: Miami +3.0
How these two match up
Dear lord, it’s worse than I thought. Virginia is a slight, slight favorite against a team coming in on a nine-game losing streak.
The end to this season can’t come soon enough.
The top three guys for Miami are familiar names – former FSU standout Matthew Cleveland (15.1 ppg, 51.7% FG, 40.0% 3FG), Final Four team-holdover Nijel Pack (13.9 ppg, 4.3 assists/g, 45.4% FG, 38.6% 3FG) and Virginia Tech transfer Lynn Kidd (11.1 ppg, 6.9 rebounds/g, 63.8% FG).
Problem is, Pack is out with a knee injury that has had him sidelined since before Larrañaga stepped down before Christmas.
It does him no good at this stage to come back.
He has a career ahead of him playing overseas to keep in mind.
The absence of Pack has forced Courtney to go with 6’5” freshman Jalil Bethea (6.9 ppg, 1.2 assists/g, 40.0% FG, 32.7% 3FG) and 6’3” freshman Divine Ugochukwu (5.1 ppg, 1.5 assists/g, 61.8% FG, 20.0% 3FG) at the point, with mixed results.
One other issue that I’m not seeing a lot written about: Kidd was a healthy scratch from the loss at Cal; 6’8” senior Brandon Johnson, an ECU transfer, started in his place, and had 16 points (with four threes) and eight rebounds.
Cleveland, for his part, came off the bench in the Cal game, and scored 30 points, but again, it was off the bench.
It’s obviously hard to get a handle on what Courtney is doing, and I have to say, that’s gotta be a challenge for the UVA staff.
I’ll give Courtney credit – whatever he’s doing, it worked better than it had been.
In the previous three before the OT loss at Cal, Miami had lost by 35 at Duke, by 43 at home to SMU, and then by 37 at Stanford.
ESPNU might want to reconsider broadcasting this one.
There’s gotta be a rerun of a cornhole tournament or one of those strongman competitions sitting in the can.
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Chris Graham
