Sunday’s game with American U. was a classic setup for what we call in the sportswriter business a “trap game” for the UVA Basketball team.
Virginia, which is sloshing through a rare down season that looks like it’s going to end on a Tuesday or Wednesday at the ACC Tournament, was coming off a narrow loss to a Top 25 team earlier in the week, and getting ready to face a guarantee-game opponent.
The UVA kids don’t have another game for nine days, so their cars were packed for a trip home for the holidays.
The students, usually loud, are already back home, a large swath of the student section on the lower level at JPJ empty.
The non-students didn’t exactly come out in droves, preferring last-minute Christmas shopping or a Sunday at home in front of the TV watching late-season NFL.
On the American U. side, the game presented an opportunity to steal a win against an ACC program with a five-year-old national championship banner hanging in the rafters.
You don’t get those kinds of chances if you’re at American U. all that often, so you take them when you can get them.
I wrote about the trap game aspect to this one in my pregame preview, and referenced it a few times during my Live Coverage blog.
ICYMI
- Preview: What UVA Basketball fans need to know about American U.
- UVA Basketball: ‘Hoos barely avoid pre-Christmas trap, top American, 63-58
So, for those who give themselves regular access to my mania, you weren’t surprised at all that American U. had the lead at the under-four second-half timeout, that it took a 7-0 run over a 1:25 stretch for Virginia to get control, and then 7-of-8 shooting at the line in the final 24 seconds to seal the deal.
I told you it was coming, what I told you was coming happened.
The depressing thing about today is, for the first time since Tony Bennett’s second season in Charlottesville, way back in the 2010-2011 season, it feels like, none of this matters.
The 63-58 UVA win that we saw today isn’t going to mean a lot in the grand scheme of things.
Neither of these teams is playing beyond their conference tournaments unless they cut down the nets.
Nobody did anything particularly newsworthy.
There weren’t any NBA scouts on hand, because there wasn’t anybody on the floor for scouts to take notes on.
There was barely anybody with a regular byline sitting on press row.
Tony Bennett retired two short months ago.
It feels like an eternity.
What we saw
I was excited after seeing the changes to the offense instituted by Bennett’s one-and-done successor, Ron Sanchez, for the game with #21 Memphis earlier in the week.
Sanchez almost entirely threw out the old playbook that he inherited from Bennett, who used his father’s mover/blocker sides offense, which uses screening, ball movement and patience to work the shot clock and wear out opponents, but is also too easy to defend when you don’t have guys who can run off screens ready to catch and shoot, and with the ability to make shots.
The game plan for Memphis was heavy with pick-and-rolls, dribble handoffs and spacing to give bigs room to operate in the paint, and it was all working, until Memphis coach Penny Hardaway decided to counter with a full-court press and halfcourt traps, and Sanchez couldn’t come up with a response.
ICYMI
- UVA Basketball: Hardaway wins chess match with Sanchez, avoiding upset
- UVA Basketball: Late ‘Hoos rally comes up short in 64-62 loss to #21 Memphis
As you would expect from a coaching staff that only knows Tony Bennett Basketball, the response to the 64-62 loss to Memphis was, OK, we’ll just go back to the way we’ve always done it.
How effective Tony Bennett Basketball is with this group is answered with this stat: Virginia needed a flurry in the final 3:13 to get over 60 against an American U. team that came into the game ranked 261st in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, and seven of the 14 points in the closing stretch came at the free-throw line, with American forced to foul to try to extend the game.
It’s. Not. Working.
If you want to know why I don’t trudge down to the postgame press conferences to engage, it’s because you get answers like this.
“I think we’re trending in the right direction,” Sanchez said.
Editorial comment: at least he didn’t tell us he needs to go look at the film.
Next thing out of his mouth: “I go back to our defense,” and sorry, again, gotta interrupt here, but American U. scored 58 points on 57 possessions, and had 11 made threes, so, it’s not like the D was lockdown good today.
Back to Sanchez: “I was trying to figure out some things I know we wanted to try to play a little differently and do some things that were different. A couple of guys are really comfortable in some areas, and those guys are guys that are main contributors to this team right now, so we kind of have to meet them halfway, you know, trying to do some things different, but also giving them a taste of the old that has a lot of comfort for them.”
This is Sanchez saying, we think we’ve only got a couple of guys who can actually put the ball in the basket, so that’s why we went back to the offense that we know doesn’t work, because Isaac McKneely likes running off screens, basically, and we can’t figure anything else out.
Virginia shot 46 percent (23-of-50), but, deep dive: 8-of-19 from three, 8-of-18 at the rim, 7-of-13 on paint and midrange twos.
That last one, the good shooting on paint and midrange twos, is an outlier: in their previous five games, the ‘Hoos had gone 19-of-69 (27.5 percent) on paint and midrange twos, so, roughly 4-of-14 per game.
Do the math: three fewer makes on the paint and midrange twos today, and this one is an L.
But, you know, things are “trending in the right direction.”
Reality check
I’m being overly harsh.
The reality here is, as I wrote earlier in the week, this is a placeholder season for UVA Basketball.
ICYMI
- With apologies to The Boss: Glory days, well, they’ve passed UVA Basketball by
- UVA Basketball: ‘Hoos showing signs of progress, but the margin for error going forward is thin
Ron Sanchez is the interim coach, and the writing is on the wall regarding his status once the season is over.
I’m hearing about a group of prominent alums and caretakers who are putting their heads together about the next steps for the UVA Basketball program, and among the items on their to-do list is vetting potential coaching hires.
I think we can presume, from that, that an overhaul of the coaching staff, and an exodus of guys from this team, is forthcoming.
It can’t be a fun place in life to be in, for anybody.
I can see how a game on a Sunday, three days before Christmas, hardly anybody in the stands, your attention would be on getting through it and getting on the road.
Credit to the kids and the coaches for getting the W, against that backdrop.
“I think they decided to come together down the stretch,” Sanchez said. “We executed certain things. Well, we screened well, I think Isaac was a little more aggressive hunting shots in crucial times. I think Taine Murray hit a big-time three in the corner there. But as a whole, I think that at the three-minute mark, we could have just packed it in, and they decided to stick together and battle, and, you know, came out with the win.”
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Chris Graham
