To suggest that Evan Nolte is even an enigma can get certain sections of the UVA fan base fired up mad.
Nolte has started four games in place of injured All-America candidate Justin Anderson, and while Virginia has gone 4-0 in Anderson’s absence, it’s hard to look at the box scores and see how Nolte has contributed in any way.
Over the past five games, dating back to the Louisville game, in which Anderson went down late in the first half, Nolte, a 6’8” junior, has averaged 27 minutes per game, a big step up from the 11.3 minutes per game that he had been seeing before the Anderson injury.
The increased playing time hasn’t correlated to an increased level of offensive productivity from Nolte, who is averaging 2.8 points per game in the past five games, after averaging 2.3 points per game prior to the recent run of extended play.
Nolte is shooting 27.7 percent from the field (5-of-18) in the past five games, and 25 percent (4-of-16) from three-point range.
In ACC play, Nolte has an offensive rating, per KenPom, of 61.4, by far the lowest on the UVA roster.
So how, fans ask, does Nolte keep getting minutes?
“Evan’s really good for us defensively, and handling the ball, he’s real sharp. His experience and his mind has been good, solid there,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said on a Monday conference call with reporters.
“Confidence, yeah, you know how that goes. When you can get a few to go down, it helps with your rhythm and confidence. That’s why our job is to keep presenting the right kind of shots, taking the right ones when they’re there, and not letting up on the other stuff that he’s been doing well.”
Analytics don’t provide a good handle on a player’s role on defense, particularly in a system like Bennett’s Pack-Line, which puts a premium on being able to see the whole floor beyond your own individual assignment.
The only number that can give us insight into how Nolte is faring in his time on the floor from an overview perspective is the hockey-influenced plus-minus, basically your team’s margin in your time on the floor.
Nolte’s plus-minus over the last five games: +33. The team’s aggregate plus-minus over that stretch: +32.
Bennett defended Nolte’s shooting woes in the context of how the team as a whole is struggling to shoot the ball since Anderson went down.
Virginia is shooting 41.4 percent from the floor since Anderson’s injury (89-of-215), and is hitting just 21.8 percent (12-of-55) of its three-point shots.
Before the Anderson injury, Virginia was shooting 46.8 percent from the floor and 38.1 percent from three.
“Shooting the ball, yeah, all of us, we’re not shooting the ball well as a team, and that’s just what it is,” Bennett said. “You can’t just say, well, we’ve just been unlucky, they’ve just kind of rolled, toilet bowled, in and out. We’ve gotten some good looks, and we’ve missed them. We try to go to work on that, guys are getting some individual work on that, and we keep trying to get the right kind of looks.”
So it’s not just Nolte, said Bennett.
“We’ve obviously been struggling to knock down shots across the line since Justin was hurt. But that’s part of what I like, is that guys have found ways to win in spite of that, and that’s been a positive. My hope is that we’ll find ways to improve,” Bennett said.
– Story by Chris Graham
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