What UVA Basketball fans need to know about Navy

The Navy-Virginia game may be the slowest basketball game this year.

The Midshipmen (6-4) are averaging 61.5 possessions per game this season, 352nd in D1, according to KenPom.com.

You know who is 353rd: the ‘Hoos average 59.4 possessions per game.

Expect to see a lot of dribbling, a lot of screens, cuts, curls, late-shot-clock heaves.

Rebounds.

Navy shoots 40.2 percent from the field, 321st nationally, 31.7 percent from three, 243rd nationally.

Even the guys who can put it in the bucket need extra tries to get it there.

Cam Davis, a 6’0” junior guard, leads the Middies in scoring (14.3 ppg), but he’s shooting just 38.5 percent from the floor, though he is hitting a respectable 35.1 percent from three, on 5.7 attempts from long-range per game.

John Carter, a 6’3” sophomore guard, is an even bigger volume shooter from three (8.9 attempts per game). Carter is scoring 14.0 points per game, shooting 35.2 percent from the floor and 32.6 percent from three.

The most efficient of Navy’s Big Three is 6’3” sophomore guard Greg Summers (9.7 ppg, 41.2 percent from the field), though Summers doesn’t offer range (he’s put up just five threes in 10 games this season).

There is reasonable height in the post, with four rotation guys at 6’7” or 6’8”.

Evan Wieck, a 6’8”, 240-pound senior, is the best of that bunch, putting in 8.0 points per game on 62.5 percent shooting.

Coach Ed DeChellis will go conventional three-guard, two-post for most of his minutes, which should preclude any lineup shuffling from UVA coach Tony Bennett, who figures to have 6’8” guard Braxton Key back for more minutes, now that Key, a senior, has two games under his belt following wrist surgery.

Seven-foot redshirt freshman Francisco Caffaro has started the past two for Virginia, after putting in 10 points and seven rebounds off the bench in the 56-47 win over North Carolina back on Dec. 8, but the young big hasn’t taken advantage of the time on the floor.

Caffaro was scoreless on 0-for-2 shooting with three rebounds in 14 minutes in Virginia’s 56-44 win over Stony Brook on Dec. 18, then was scoreless again, without a field-goal attempt, and just one rebound, in the 70-59 loss to South Carolina on Dec. 22.

Bennett used 7’1” redshirt junior Jay Huff off the bench in the last two, after Huff went scoreless in the win over UNC. The big man had 12 points and seven boards in the win over Stony Brook, then a modest six points and four rebounds in 21 minutes in the loss to the Gamecocks.

KenPom.com projects the final score at Virginia 57, Navy 39, projects the number of possessions in the game at a glacial 54, and gives the Cavaliers a 94 percent probability to win.

The ESPN Basketball Power Index puts the win probability for UVA at 95.2 percent.

Story by Chris Graham