Dear Old U.Va.

Virginia Outlasts VMI; Barns Burn Everywhere

Monday, November 17 2008 by Ben

Whew! That was exciting!

Tiki and won't say we told you so (we did, though).

I listened to it on the radio as my cable "provider" did a poor job providing this game.  I felt badly for Dave Koehn who, as luck would have it, had to broadcast VMI and their fast-paced for his first regular season contest.  He and Cory Alexander did an admirable job keeping up with Cavs and Keydets.  However, they both seemed rather worn out by the second half.  Justifiably so.

This game featured 90 possessions for the Wahoos and 94 for the Keydets.  That pace would put both teams ahead of all Div-I - or whatever they call that top division these days - teams last season by a ridiculous 20 possessions.  The Wahoos picked up 107 points and 118 points per 100 possessions (PPP, for those of you that enjoy division), two marks that they're unlikely to match again during the regular season.  The 118 PPP mark would've put them at the top of college basketball last season. However, I just don't think that they're going to be able to score like this again in the future. 

The game also featured a bunch of turnovers - more than 20% of the possessions in this game would end up in the other team's hands.  One major difference between the teams was free throws.  The Wahoos got 13 more freebies in this one.  Unfortunately, it only had a small difference in the final score as they shot 18 for 28, while VMI was 14 for 15.

Landesburg might get a lion's share of the pub for this one.  Dropping 28 points (on 17 shots) in your freshman debut is certainly note-worthy, but Mike Scott deserves huge, huge accolades for this victory.  He scored 26 points on 13 FGA and had 18 boards.  Jeff Jones hit two crucial threes down the stretch, which kind of saved him from an otherwise poor shooting night (3 for 8).  Diane was meh from the field (6 of 15), but he didn't turn the ball over, which helped UVa weather VMI's press.  Others did not weather it so well: Scott and Baker had 4 and 5 turnovers, respectively.

Bonus points to Dave Leitao for doing his homework on the UK upset and starting with a smaller ball-handling oriented line-up.

Anyhow, good start to the season.   Remember, so was last year, too.

UPDATE: My father attended the game.  Here are his comments:

We went small ball and it worked pretty well.  VMI was behind about 10 for most of the game except for a few spurts.  The new guy, Landesburg, scored 28 and looked very poised for a freshman.  Scott was a tiger under the boards and scored 26 plus had lots of boards - especially offensive. Zeglinski is going to be the point guard of choice.  VMI tried a full court press which we had problems solving until UVA gave the ball to Zeglinski and he mostly dribbled through it.  Zeglinski is not much of an outside shooter but can take it to the hoop, at least against VMI.  Baker was shaky. Diane played OK but is still very inconsistent.  Tunji did not play (not his kind of game) so I have no comments about that.

I say from now on we call Mike Scott, "The Tiger."