Somebody pick up #44! If you hadn’t heard of 6’10” Wake Forest freshman Dinos Mitoglou before Saturday, and my hand is raised here, kid is for real.
Mitoglou scored 18 points and was 6-of-12 from three-point range, hitting two threes in the final minutes, including one with 40 seconds left, almost singlehandedly getting Wake back into the game.
His season numbers – 9.6 points per game on 45 percent shooting from the field and 38.9 percent from three – are deceptive. Mitoglou had 26 in Wake’s overtime loss at Syracuse last month, 21 (on 6-of-7 shooting from three) in the win over Miami on Wednesday, and is averaging 14.2 points per game in his last nine in ACC play.
Mitoglou’s range at the four rendered UVA big man Mike Tobey to the bench. Tobey got caught up in pick-and-pop action that freed up Mitoglou for open looks, and Virginia coach Tony Bennett ended up going more with Anthony Gill and Darion Atkins to try to check Mitoglou as a result.
With a return date with Wake due in Winston-Salem on Feb. 25, it will be interesting to see what Bennett tries to do to counter the Mitiglou factor.
Bricked: By my count, Virginia’s perimeter guys made five jumpers – two by London Perrantes, one by Malcolm Brogdon, and the two threes by Evan Nolte.
Five jumpers.
The play-by-play lists a couple of shots by the bigs as jumpers, but only one – a first-half bucket by Tobey – was outside of 10 feet.
In contrast, Wake Forest was 10-of-24 from three-point range. Meaning Wake outscored UVA 30-6 from behind the arc.
You don’t win a lot of games making five, maybe six, jumpers, when your opponent is that effective from the perimeter.
Give the perimeters credit: So Brogdon and Perrantes were ice-cold from outside – 3-of-16 on jumpers, according to my review of the postgame play-by-play.
They still scored 11 points each getting the ball into the lane.
Combined Brogdon and Perrantes were 6-of-8 on shots in the lane.
Tale of two halves, and two halves within the second half: Virginia scored on 11 of its 31 possessions in the first half, and averaged an anemic .774 points per possession in the opening 20 minutes.
The second half was a different story: 17 scores on 33 possessions, 1.121 points per possession.
Within the second half, UVA scored on 12 of its first 16 possessions in the 27-7 run that opened the half, scoring 1.688 points per possession. The final 17 possessions saw five scores and .588 points per possession.
Another way to look at the above stats: Roughly 30 minutes of game action, the first half and the last 10 or so of the second half, Virginia scored on 16 of 48 possessions, .708 points per possession.
Good thing they were different-level efficient in that other 10-minute stretch.
Minutes Watch: One area of concern has to be the amount of minutes Perrantes and Brogdon have had to log with Justin Anderson on the sideline.
Brogdon is averaging 37 minutes per game over the last six games, dating back to the Jan. 25 win at Virginia Tech, his fewest minutes in that stretch being 36 in the win at North Carolina on Feb. 2.
Perrantes is averaging 36 minutes per game over the last six, his lowest being 34-minute games the past two, at N.C. State and the home game with Wake.
Might have something to do with the jumpers not falling of late … and there’s still a lot of basketball to be played.
– Column by Chris Graham
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