Dear Old U.Va.

On the Upswing

Friday, October 10 2008 by Ben

Since our last melancholy jaunt together, life has really picked up, hasn't it?  The football team opened up a can of how-do-you-do on those feisty Terps, Holly Madison is single again, and the stock market is... well, two out of three ain't half bad.

To carry on that positive drumbeat, let's take a look at a little more of Virginia basketball's conference schedule.

We have Florida State, at Duke, Boston College, at Carolina, at Florida State.  That's a club sandwich of winnable games right there.

Leonard Hamilton Florida State's teams always manage to underwhelm.  The guy pulls down the top-ranked recruiting class in 2003 and parlays that into... what?  One NCAA Tourney victory?  I just don't get it.  Save for the occasional home Duke victory on  some Sunday night in February, which most people have forgotten about by Tuesday afternoon, the Seminoles really haven't done much since Pat Kennedy roamed the sidelines.

If it sounds like I'm being hard on Hamilton, I am. This is a team Virginia can and should beat, twice.  Hamilton's teams have no identity as far as I can tell.  His MO appears to be, "recruit the best I can and let the chips fall where they may."  For a coach, one that's been in the NBA no less, to fritter away good players, I think that attitude stinks and I can't think of any reason Virginia can't win both the home and away game against these guys.  Sure, Toney Douglas can play some and Uche Echefu sounds like Nigiri, but again, this is an opportunity to nab two wins.  If Leitao and company can't grab those two, they may struggle to get to the NIT and that, my friends, is when the boo-birds come out.

As for the game against Duke, it'd be great to see a win at Cameron Indoor this season - Virginia hasn't won there since 1995.  The guys at Storming the Floor have even dubbed Duke "the Olympic Hangover Team." 

Furthermore, I've begun to question Coach K's strategy as of late.  I mean, the guy continues to start Greg Paulus, (not to mention the whole Jason Kidd starting in the Olympics ordeal) who is an unmitigated disaster at point guard.  Certainly he can shoot (42% from three), but there's no way he can stay with a guy like Ty Lawson.  Why isn't he coming off the bench or starting as a two guard?

Also, last year, before Christmas, his "spread the floor" offense was humming.  The drive and kick to shooters like Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler, and Taylor King destroyed teams.

Then, K appeared to get bored with it.  When Zoubek returned from injury, they abandoned that strategy and returned to a status quo-type offense.  Taylor fell out of favor with K.  The offensive output faltered.  Why? Why? Why is this not mentioned?  Say what you want about those threes not falling in February/March (check out the comments on that STF article) - the only reason they stopped falling is because they weren't the same looks from outside.  The shooters weren't as open because they were running something entirely different.

Anyhow, despite all of these quips about Coach K, the Wahoos have a snowball's chance in hell of winning at Cameron with such a young team.  Oh well.  Now, next year...

Fans are always tempted to say, "There'll never be another so-and-so."  As Virginia fans, we're ready and willing to apply that tag to Sean Singletary.  SS was unlike any player I've ever seen in a Virginia uniform.  He is, however, remarkably like one in a Boston College uniform, Tyrese Rice.

Rice is short combo guard who takes about 30% of his team's shots, dishes out a goodly amount of assists (SS had more, but also had a higher TO percentage), and will be the primary focus any game plan hatched against BC. He draws a lot of fouls and shoots a very high free throw percentage.  He's serviceable but not spectacular behind the arc. 

Just like SS's squad last year, there's no reason why BC can't be a complete disaster as well.  It doesn't appear they've recruited anyone to step up and play roni to the their Rice.  That's good news for Virginia which, by my count, may be 1-5 at this point.

Finally, we come to UNC.  I won't dismiss it like I did last week.  OK - it'll be semi-dismissal, if only because, they should be freaking awesome.  The Heels will be one of the best teams in recent memory.  They probably won't run the table in the ACC, Roy Williams' sacrifice of defense for offensive efficiency usually comes back to bite him at least once (maybe it'll be the home game against UVa! No, not really.).  So, they should and will be considered the prohibitive favorites for a national championship, which is great for the ACC, but a real drawback for those slated to play them twice.