We’ve reached the point in the throwaway 2024-2025 UVA Basketball season, after Saturday’s 88-65 loss at Stanford, where, reality check, there’s no sense being overly critical anymore, because it just is what it is.
Duke had a throwaway season back in 2020-2021, going 13-11 and missing the NCAA Tournament.
North Carolina has had two in recent years: 14-19 in 2019-2020 and 20-13 (and no NCAA Tournament, after starting the season ranked #1 in the preseason) in 2022-2023.
Michigan State, led by our favorite guy from 10 years ago, Tom Izzo, has lost at least 13 games each of the past four seasons.
Villanova is still trying to get it figured out three years into the life-after-Jay Wright era.
This year for UVA Hoops, let’s hope it’s a blip on the radar – an interstitial year between 15 years of Tony Bennett, and his one national championship, two ACC Tournament championships, six ACC regular-season championships, and whoever the next guy is (Shaka Smart? Matt Painter? I’m even hearing some talk behind the scenes for Mark Few).
That said, yes, it’s weird being here in mid-January, with an 8-8 team that has now lost three straight by an average of 19 points, with KenPom now projecting our guys to finish 13-18, on the cusp of not even making the ACC Tournament – yes, that’s a thing now, with an 18-team league, only 15 teams get in, and KenPom is projecting UVA to finish, gasp, 16th right now.
The one thing that is still different between the college game and the NBA is, you can’t tank your way into the #1 pick, so we’re still going to trot our guys out there and hope for the best.
The hard part is: the players know, the coaches know, the support staff knows, the next coach, whoever that is, is going to clean house.
Which means the next 15 games aren’t so much about this year, they’re not about developing to be better here next year; they’re about auditioning, for the players, for the transfer portal, and for the coaching staff, for their next gig.
Which gets us to Saturday, at Stanford
Stanford scored 88 points on 57 possessions, which is astounding.
More ugliness from the stat sheet:
- Virginia had 12 turnovers (Stanford had six), and Stanford had 14 offensive rebounds (Virginia had six); this is how Stanford had 16 more field goal attempts.
- Stanford had a 22-4 advantage in points off turnovers, a 19-8 advantage in second-chance points, and a 40-12 advantage in points in the paint.
- Stanford was 16-of-21 on shots at the rim; Virginia was 5-of-12 at the rim.
It’s amazing, when you look at those numbers, that the Cavaliers lost by 23, and not a lot more.
Interim coach Ron Sanchez tried what he could, giving freshman Ishan Sharma his first career start, and Sharma hit a couple of threes early, but only got up a total of four shots in a career-high 32 minutes.
Sharma needs to be coached to be greedier on the offensive end.
The offense, by and large, seemed a little more free-flowing than it had in the past two, getting good looks for Isaac McKneely (22 points, 7-of-14 FG, 5-of-11 3FG).
The ‘Hoos were 10-of-21 from three on the day, which is a big part of what you need to do to maximize efficiency on offense.
The lack of attempts and finishes at the rim and in the paint are a continuing problem for this group.
I mentioned above, UVA was just 5-of-12 at the rim, and had just one other make in the paint.
On the defensive end, this one was an unmitigated disaster.
Virginia’s defensive rebounding percentage was a plain awful 54.8 percent (17 boards in 31 opportunities), and Stanford was splitting the defense and getting to the rim on high screen-and-rolls in the second half like it would in practice against its scout team.
The D, or lack of it, on the screen-and-rolls got so bad that Sanchez came out of a timeout in a zone, which he quickly scrapped when Stanford took advantage by making an open three.
Adjustments?
I don’t see it.
The limitation that this staff has is, they’re all Tony Bennett Basketball guys, and all they know is this style of ball, which isn’t working, and isn’t going to work, given the makeup of the roster.
Dai Dai Ames is the only guard who can create shots off dribble penetration, and he got 14 minutes off the bench in this one – and is averaging 9.3 minutes per game over the last four, since landing in Sanchez’s doghouse for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear as to why.
This team can score at a reasonable rate when McKneely is hot from the perimeter, but you can shut him down, and when you do, the offense is molasses trying to flow uphill.
The defense lacks a shutdown defender, in the mold of a Ryan Dunn, De’Andre Hunter or Akil Mitchell.
There’s no rim protector, in the mold of a Jay Huff or Mamadi Diakite.
And there’s certainly not a guy like a Darion Atkins that you want on your side when a game turns into a dick swinging contest.
That’s the thing that bothers me, and I wrote in the lede that I didn’t want to be overly critical, but this is worth bringing up.
The thing that has been missing in the past week, in the three blowout losses, is any sense that the guys on the floor are taking losing personally.
I know that the writing is on the wall for this season, but still, I’d be more than a little p’d off at getting beaten like a JV squad by second- and third-tier ACC teams.
This was the fourth 20-plus-point loss, the seventh double-digit loss, for this team this year, and there was no sense from anybody – players, coaches, managers – that it was that big a deal.
If anything, going forward, we need to see some red ass from this group.
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Chris Graham
