
Interim UVA Basketball coach Ron Sanchez tried to say, after last week’s last-second loss to SMU, that he’s not “experimenting” with his rotation, which tells us, he just doesn’t realize that he’s still experimenting with his rotation.
Two reasons why he’s still experimenting: no continuity on offense, no continuity on defense.
KenPom rates the offense 223rd nationally, in the area of the likes of Wyoming, American, Towson, Colgate.
There’s been a recent Virginia team that was as bad on the offensive end – the 2019-2020 team, which ranked 234th, but was still able to finish 23-7, with 11 wins in its last 12, because it ranked first nationally on the defensive end.
ICYMI
I don’t know that Sanchez, Tony Bennett – for that matter, Red Auerbach, if he were to come back from the dead – would be able to get the offense working, absent a dramatic midseason change in approach, which ain’t coming, because the guys on this staff know Tony Bennett Basketball, and only Tony Bennett Basketball.
Defense is the only way this team gets better.
We’re seeing it in flashes – the Cavaliers held SMU to 54 in that last-second loss last week; that SMU team went out, three days later, and dropped 117 on Miami in a blowout win.
That effort from the ‘Hoos was sandwiched by 80-plus-point outputs for Louisville and Stanford, two of the four opponents who have put up 80 or more on Virginia this season.
For reference: the last time a UVA team, before this season, gave up 80+ in a single game had been back in the 2020-2021 season, when it happened twice (Gonzaga, Florida State); to get to four 80+ games total, we have to go back to 2018-2019, so, four games total over six seasons.
What’s going on here?
Last year’s group, which ranked seventh nationally in adjusted defense, had two defensive stoppers – Ryan Dunn and Reece Beekman (who were first and third, respectively, in the ACC in defensive rating).
Both are in the NBA now in large part because of what they can do on the defensive end.
This year’s group has one guy in the Top 20 in the ACC in the defensive-rating metric, Jacob Cofie (16th), and Cofie has had trouble getting minutes of late – getting 10 in the loss to Louisville on Saturday, and 18 in the loss to SMU mid-week.
Cofie’s minutes have been inconsistent, as has been the case with Blake Buchanan (anywhere from 11 minutes to 27 over the past five), Anthony Robinson (anywhere from four to 14 in the last five), TJ Power (anywhere from DNP to 12 in the last five), Taine Murray (anywhere from three to 28 in the last five) and Dai Dai Ames (anywhere from four to 28 in the last five).
That’s because Sanchez is still, if not experimenting, still trying to figure out what he has.
I sympathize with him here, but what he’s unwittingly doing is making it hard for his guys to develop any kind of chemistry and continuity on the defensive end, which can be hard to do in the Bennett Pack Line defense even when you’re getting consistent reps, because of its demands.
Picking up the Pack Line
“I wish you could speed up Mother Nature, and I wish that you could speed up experience. You know, the only way you get it is by being in it,” Sanchez acknowledged in a back-and-forth with reporters over Zoom on Monday, ahead of UVA’s game tomorrow night with Boston College.
Sanchez has been coaching the Pack Line since he first hooked up with Tony Bennett on the staff of Dick Bennett at Washington State a generation ago, so, he’s as qualified as anybody coaching right know to talk about what it takes to run it right.
He explained it this way in the Zoom talk, in response to a question about how Robinson, a 6’10”, 250-pound redshirt freshman, is picking it up:
“The game is fast, you know, sometimes in high school, you know, big guys just kind of play the basket and, you know, you kind of zone up and, you know, then you get to college, man, you got to guard a zoom action, into a pin down, into an away screen that, you know, so you have to be really continuous in order to be really productive defensively, and that’s at any position, unless you’re a team that’s going to play a zone the entire time.”
Which is to say, no, it’s not just staying with, and in front of, your guy.
Robinson looks to me like a guy who could develop into a Jack Salt-type defender, but it takes time to get there, and Sanchez, with that interim tag looking more and more tenuous with the day, doesn’t have time.
Working with what he’s got
The only guy in the frontcourt with any experience in the Pack Line before this season is Buchanan, a 6’11” sophomore who got 15.0 minutes per game off the bench as a freshman last season.
And Buchanan is a Jekyll-and-Hyde guy right now, either really good (11 points, 15 rebounds vs. SMU) or barely there (zero points, two board vs. Louisville on Jan. 4; two points, three boards vs. Stanford on Jan. 11).
Cofie, a 6’9”, 232-pound freshman, meanwhile, has seen his minutes cut the past two, and it looks to me that it’s a factor of his play on the defensive end.
ICYMI
Sanchez, addressing Cofie’s minutes today, said his “trend is very natural for a first-year guy.”
“You know, as you get into ACC play in the middle, these high school kids, they haven’t played this many games, you know, this stuff, like practices, are challenging, games are challenging, the travel is challenging,” Sanchez said. “So, some of this stuff we’ve experienced with Jacob, you know, going from California to here to travel to, you know, some of those physical things that impact, you know, your energy level, you know, the management of that, I think those are his, his learning experiences right now.
“I don’t think it’s any different than any other first-year guy who hasn’t really experienced that yet,” Sanchez aid. “So, you know, he’s, you know, geared up and has a lot of energy, he plays well, and you know, sometimes, you know, maybe that impacts his performance. So, we’re just trying to help him grow through that. And if he’s not, you know, competing or, you know, doesn’t have enough energy to compete at the level that we expect, you know, other guys will get the opportunities.”
The TL;DR version of that: Cofie’s minutes have been cut the past two because he hasn’t been playing defense.
And that’s your one guy with good defensive numbers there.
Cofie seems to have hit a wall, reading between the lines of what Sanchez had to say, Robinson is still figuring out the defense, Buchanan is either great or a no-show.
The other guy in the mix here, Elijah Saunders, a 6’8”, 242-pound junior who transferred in from San Diego State in the spring, doesn’t play like a 6’8”, 242-pounder on the defensive end.
Saunders leads the team in rebounding (5.4 rebounds/g), but Sanchez tends to use him against the lesser of the offensive threats on the defensive end, because Saunders is the team’s best, most consistent option on offense (12.1 ppg, 45.4% FG, 38.5% 3FG).
Saunders doesn’t give you rim protection (0.3 blocks/g), and that’s been an issue for this group, with Dunn (2.3 blocks/g in 2023-2024) now in the NBA.
With no Dunn-type there to clean up messes at the rim, and no Beekman-type in the backcourt to make it hard for opposing guards to get paint touches, it’s been a grind for Sanchez, in terms of trying to figure out how to get stops.
A reporter asked Sanchez about the coaching that goes into trying to find a fix, and Sanchez acknowledged, it’s tough.
“You know, to cloud, you know, guys’ minds with more teaching or different things, I think would be a mistake at this point,” Sanchez said. “I like to think that, you know, the more guys are thinking, the slower their feet get, so we’re trying to get them to think less and just play, you know, more instinctively, and you know, they’re getting closer. They’re just, you know, obviously not coming along at the pace that many would like, but you know, you just need time and games under your belt in order for you to improve.”