In what was ostensibly a game of basketball, Virginia suffered an embarrassing loss last Tuesday to in-state opponent James Madison. The Hoos went ice-cold from three-point range in the defeat, plunging into a 10-minute scoring drought that contributed to the eventual 52-49 loss.
It was the low point of Virginia’s season, maybe even of the Tony Bennett era (save, perhaps, the UMBC loss), and it instantly changed the narrative surrounding this team from “we’re a work in progress” to “we may be left out of the bracket on Selection Sunday.”
We’re definitely at the point where things begin to shift from analyzing Virginia’s play to agonizing over how each game affects a potential NCAA Tournament resume. Make no mistake: the Hoos are going to be on the bubble. And they may spend a good portion of the season on the outside of it.
But there is a way out of this quagmire.
Similar sentiments to the ones being voiced right now were spewed in the 2019-20 season. That Virginia team suffered its own set of disturbing losses, falling by 29 to Purdue and 11 to South Carolina before the calendar turned. It then embarked on a string of demoralizing ACC losses, dropping three consecutive and four out of five. But that team turned things around beautifully, winning their last seven games and 11 of the final 12.
That team possessed a stingy defense, something it shares with this one. While Virginia’s current defense can be improved, it’s been abundantly obvious that defense is not the issue.
For this iteration of Virginia basketball to find anything approaching success, it’s going to have to follow the offensive blueprint laid out by the 2019-20 team.
Where the two teams differ
While the 2019-20 team had its early-season struggles, it got off to a far more promising start than this year’s team did. The 2019-20 group won its first seven games before the shellacking at the hands of Purdue. 11 games into the season, the Hoos were 9-2; with 10 games played this year, they are 6-4.
So it’s safe to say that Virginia was in a better position a couple of years ago than it is today.
But that team was less than a year removed from cutting down the nets in Minneapolis, and returned key pieces from the title-winning squad. Mamadi Diakite, Braxton Key and Kihei Clark were all back to reprise their roles. Those three were integral components of what was the nation’s top-ranked defense on KenPom a year before, and had forged relationships with each other on both ends of the floor.
This team does not have that. Jayden Gardner and Armaan Franklin, playing 74% and 73% of available minutes, respectively, just arrived this season from other conferences. And the rest of the depth chart was radically changed after last year, with three starters and basically the whole bench being replaced.
This is to say, it’s going to take more time for this team to coalesce than it did for the group of two years ago. But the same transformation is possible, and here’s where the two teams align.
Kihei Clark is… Kihei Clark
The success of the 2019-20 team rested largely on Kihei’s shoulders. He had his struggles as a second-year, but by and large produced admirable performances.
Fourth-year Kihei is decidedly better than second-year Kihei.
He actually shot it fairly well back then, connecting on 38% of his three-point attempts. But that was on a significantly smaller volume of shots; he hoisted 96 threes that year and is on pace to exceed that number by about 40 this season. He’s also shooting it better now, with 41% of his attempts finding the net. Against JMU, Kihei accounted for 3 of Virginia’s 4 made threes.
His assists per game numbers have gone down, but so too have his turnover numbers. His effective field goal percentage is up, and he looks very good with the ball in his hands. Kihei is one pillar of the 2019-20 team’s winning structure that has already been erected in this season.
Jayden Gardner is a better (offensive) Braxton Key
Gardner is within two inches of Key and about 15 pounds heavier. Aside from their physical similarities, however, the two have comparable styles of play. Both hound the boards, use their strength offensively, and do not have a consistent three-point shot.
But in every statistical category, Gardner is the better player. He’s a far more prolific scorer and rebounder, shoots the ball better, knocks down more free throws… you name it, Gardner’s numbers are better.
The only area where Key holds the edge is defense. Key is one of the better defenders to don a Virginia jersey in recent years, and while Gardner has been fine defensively, he’s not up to the level that Key was. But Gardner’s offensive advantages outweigh Key’s defensive edge, making him a better version of the same type of player.
Kadin Shedrick is not quite Mamadi Diakite
Thus far, we’ve addressed two elements of this developing formula that are more potent in this team than in the 2019-20 team. Here’s an area where these Hoos are not quite as strong.
Shedrick and Diakite are different players with different skill sets, so this is not as one-to-one of a comparison as the above two. Shedrick is perhaps better in the post, but he will never obtain the same speed and athleticism Diakite possessed. Mamadi could get the ball on the three-point line, take two dribbles and soar in for a rim-rocking jam; Shedrick is more at home posting up.
Most notably, Shedrick cannot stretch the defense the way Diakite could. This is less an indictment of Shedrick’s game than a praise of Diakite’s, but it’s an important note nonetheless. What present-day Virginia gains over 2019-20 Virginia with Gardner and Clark, it probably loses at this position. Shedrick is also Jay Huff-esque foul prone, so he gives up time to Caffaro, and that is unfortunately an even bigger drop from Mamadi.
Virginia is still looking for its Tomas Woldetensae
If the first three sections of this comparison showed 2019-20 Virginia to be fairly equal to current Virginia, this fourth and final one demonstrates quite the opposite.
As is obvious to every literate person in the world who peeked at the UVA-JMU box score, this team is woeful from beyond the arc. Really, really bad. To the point that if you set up a Virginia player 22 feet from a barn door with a ball in hand, he wouldn’t be able to hit it, much less throw it in a hoop from that distance.
Tomas Woldetensae wasn’t perfect for Virginia in the 2019-20 season—he had his off nights, for sure—but when he was on, he was on. The JUCO transfer canned 7 threes on two occasions, and 6 once. He was a shooter—nothing more, nothing less—and his ability to drill perimeter shots had the double benefit of adding points to the scoreboard and stretching the opposing defense.
This Virginia does not have a Tomas Woldetensae. It was supposed to be Armaan Franklin, who shot 42% from deep at Indiana last year. But his shot has gone cold, even if he’s contributed in other ways, and his numbers in Bloomington came on a relatively small volume of shots.
Maybe Franklin morphs back into a killer shooter. Maybe not. But if he does not, somebody else has to pick up the slack from deep aside from Kihei Clark.
Maybe it’s Taine Murray, Igor Milicic, Kody Stattman, or Carson McCorkle. Maybe it’s a combination of a couple of them, a sort of Woldetensae-by-committee type thing. Who knows. But it has to come from somewhere.
Virginia compares well with the 2019-20 team, the Hoos are just missing that final ingredient of three-point shooting. Mix it in, and they’ll surprise a lot of people.
Image – Virginia Athletics
1 comment
Very good post
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