Virginia Playing “Sound” Ball in Win Streak

Sunday, January 17 2010 by Tim

Around 10pm last night, I walked out of John Paul Jones arena and into the brisk weather, a smile on my face and a throng of fellow Wahoos surrounding me. The comments from the crowd were telling:

“We’re baaaack!” said an excited father to his son (who, incidentally, was probably too young to remember when we were last 3-0 in the ACC).

“Man, that was fun!” said a guy about my age to his girlfriend.

“You know, they just played a solid game. It’s as simple as that,” said an older gentleman speaking to another older gentleman.

“Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” said one clearly drunk undergrad.

OK, so maybe that last one doesn’t illustrate my point very well, but you get the picture.

Virginia (11-4, 3-0) is playing the kind of basketball right now that the fans have been yearning for for what seems like nearly half my life. They’re playing defense. They’re making their shots. They’re making good decisions. They’re not turning the ball over. And their reward for that is a seven-game winning streak and a perch alone atop the ACC standings.

Think about that for a second. Virginia hasn’t lost an ACC game this season. The team hasn’t lost a game, period, since December 7th. They’ve beaten three ranked teams – two in a span of 4 days.

So what gives? Last year we couldn’t buy a bucket or a stop. This year the ball is bouncing our way, at least for now. What’s the difference?

You can argue that it’s the new coaching staff and the new schemes. You’d have a pretty good argument. First-year coach Tony Bennett brought a proven system here and has managed to get his players to buy in. But no one really expected results that quickly, right?

Bennett is quick to minimize his role in the turnaround. When asked about it last night, his response was typical of a coach in his position. “I think they’re a year older, a little more mature, and a little hungrier,” he said. And he does have a point. Of the ten players on the roster that receive significant playing time this season (Evans, Farrakhan, Baker, Sene, Zeglinski, Landesberg, Sherrill, Jones, Scott and Meyinsse), nine of them were on the team last year and eight of them had significant minutes. Jontel Evans, a true freshman, is a defensive stopper who must have had Bennett salivating when looking at the recruiting class he inherited. Will Sherrill is a walk-on junior who barely played last year (10 games, 19 minutes total), but clearly embodies the work ethic that Bennett is after.

But all that said, I think the older gentleman I quoted above had a point. Whatever the reason, whatever the driving force, this team is playing sound basketball. Mistakes are made, sure, but they’re often corrected on the very next possession.

Let’s look at some statistics, shall we (I think I just got Ben’s attention)?

  • Virginia had fewer than 10 turnovers for the tenth time this season against Miami and the team is averaging just a hair over 10 turnovers per game (less than 9 per game in ACC play). Compare that with nearly 15 turnovers per game last year. Virginia is third in the nation and first in the ACC in turnovers per game.
  • Virginia is shooting 46.4% from the floor, including 41.9% from three and also 75.7% from the free throw line. That last number looks especially good compared with our opponents free throw percentage of just 57.6%. There’s only one team in the NCAA this year who shoots free throws at a lower clip than our opponents do (DePaul, 55.9%).
  • Virginia’s assist to turnover ratio is 1.4. That’s good enough for about 15th in the nation, as well as a significant improvement over last year’s 0.8. That ratio was 2.1 in last night’s game, for the record, with Virginia tallying an assist on 19 of its 29 buckets. And those assists are coming from all over the floor too – six from Zeglinski, four from Evans, three from Landesberg and two each from Scott, Farrakhan and Baker.

I’ll leave the rest of the statistics to Ben, but those numbers mean a lot to me.

But you know what the best part is? You can actually see it on the court. You can feel it in the arena. The team is confident and they believe in Bennett’s system. A quote from Jeff Jones last night really sums it up: "Everybody’s confident out there. Everybody's playing free and confident."  That can go a long way all on it’s own, but toss in some talent (our cupboard isn’t exactly bare) and it makes for one exciting basketball season with lots of potential.

I’m not letting myself get too excited yet. Talk to me again when we enter February, having taken on Wake, Virginia Tech and UNC as well.

But for now, I have to say – it’s really… really… really nice to truly enjoy a U.Va. basketball game again.