HOKIES HOOPS CENTRAL: #8 VIRGINIA WAHOOS (11-2, 7-0) AT #20 VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (12-3, 6-2) 6PM ACCN

HOKIES HOOPS CENTRAL: #8 VIRGINIA WAHOOS (11-2, 7-0) AT #20 VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (12-3, 6-2) 6PM ACCN

SGA Maroon Out Effect Game

It's gameday!#StoneByStone | #Hokies 🦃(» @CarilionClinic)— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) January 30, 2021

GAME INFORMATION
Date/Time: Jan 30 2021 6 PM
Opponent: Virginia
Site: Cassell Coliseum
ACCN, Jay Alter (play-by-play) and Malcolm Huckbay (analyst)
Virginia Tech Sports Network. Jon Laaser (play-by-play) and Mike Burnop (analyst)

#BeatUVA 😊 pic.twitter.com/bx5i4LkV6R— Justin Robinson (@5Alive_) January 30, 2021

BooHoo Tears....

The Hokies are finally going to take on the Virginia Wahoos after one postponement and another duck job when a make-up date presented itself. The Hokies are coming off their second win over Notre Dame, after beating the Fighting Irish 62-51 with double-doubles by Justyn Mutts and Keve Aluma. Naheim Alleyne came up one rebound short of giving the Hokies their third double-double. They showed the tenacity, especially defensively, to overcome being without guard Tyrece Radford after he was suspended this week before the Notre Dame game.

The Hokies are 56-95 against Virginia going into their 152nd meeting. This game is relegated to the ACCN in favor of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, with #15 Kansas vs #18 Tennessee on ESPN and unranked Iowa State vs unranked Miss St on ESPN2.

"This big"

The Wahoos are coached by Tony Bennett, who has been at Virginia since 2009. The Wahoos are 288-98 under Bennett, who is now 354-131 as a Head coach with his only other stop was three seasons at Washington State. The Wahoos have reached the post season eight of his eleven seasons so far with seven NCAA appearances, one tournament cancelled, one National Championship and another NCAA appearance locked in for this season.

This is a team that plays defense first second and third and this season seems to have found an offense to match.

Coach Bennett's Wahoos come in 11-2 and 7-0 in the ACC. They lost early in the season to San Francisco and seemed in disarray with only Sam Hauser as a reliable offensive option. They then won games over Towson, Saint Francis, and Kent State. Virginia then went into a three game pause due to Covid precautions, returned to beat William and Mary and then gave up the most points in almost ten years under Tony Bennett to Gonzaga, without question the best team in the NCAA this season, losing 98-75. Virginia took one more pause after beating Notre Dame and then figured things out and have gone undefeated so far in ACC play with three games scoring more than 80 points. They beat Wake Forest, Boston College, Notre Dame again, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Syracuse in ACC play.

The Wahoo's brought in the 18th ranked recruiting class in the form of two Guards, four star Reece Beekman and three star Carson McCorkle along with four star Forward Jabri Abdur-Rahim. Only Beekman has had a significant impact of the three freshman. Also new to the Wahoo Zoo, Trey Murphy transferred in from Rice and is a major reason this team is so good offensively. Sam Hauser is also new after sitting out last season after transferring from Marquette. Portal Lottery winners, the Cavaliers are getting 25.5 points per game and ten rebounds from their two transfers.

Gone from the Wahoo's are Braxton Keys and Mamadi Diakite. Both are on NBA G-League contracts, Keys is teammates with Justin Robinson in Delaware and Diakite is a two-way player between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Wisconsin Herd.

Defensively, Virginia is one of the best at executing the "Pack Line Defense". It is a high pressure, man to man defense that sags to the middle of the court. It is designed to prevent penetration by driving the basketball. The "pack line" is an imaginary line two feet inside the three-point line that all defenders not guarding the current ball handler are never supposed to be outside of. The defender that is on the ball handler is expected to be up close, hand in face to create turnovers on the outside.

One other critical aspect of this defense is that it's designed to deny the baseline. Defenders are taught to position themselves to not allow any baseline penetration, relying on help defense to close an adjusted drive to the center of the lane. At the top of the post, expect to see defenders attempt to position themselves somewhat in front of the opposing offensive player to prevent the easy pass to the top of the lane.

The key weakness of this defense is if a team can find open shooters on the perimeter AND hit those shots, the integrity of this defense begins to fall apart. The best way to attack this defense is not allow it to get set by beating the defense down in transition.

After that though, employing a four out – one in offense, initiatially sending shooters to both corners with the ball handler and a second post player or fourth guard at the top of the key evenly spaced to either side, with a post player establishing to the ball handler side of the lane. Then the shooters need to begin constantly rotating around the baseline. This allows the offense to create opportunities either to find an initial open shooter or dribble penetration with the intent to kick out.

Another aspect that can help in attacking this defense are two quick perimeter passes across the top to get the defense moving their feet side to side, and then employing the dribble penetration back across the lane to force defenders to try to reverse their hips. If done quickly you either find open lanes or reaching defenders. Ideally with this roster the dribble penetration is done by Alleyne or Bede.

Employing blur screens under a teammate after passing them the ball opens gaps as well at the side, drawing a defender deep into the corner.

Offensively, Bennett has his team running what is called a Blocker Mover Offense on the other end of the court. This is a variation of the Motion Offense, allowing the primary ball handler at the top of the key to attempt to use a screen provided by one of two lane personnel near the top of the key. At the point of the screen, the ball handler decides either to drive the lane, kick out to an open shooter or attempt a down low pass to their second lane player, who usually moves across the basket down at the baseline block to create space for the driving guard. The defensive rotation is what drives the guard's decision-making process as he assesses what is in front of him. The guard essentially has three options coming off the pick or can spin back out to reset for another play.

The key for the Hokies will be to limit the times where we allow dribble penetration by Clark or Beekman or allow a clean pass into the lower lane player for an easy layup by Huff or Hauser. A difference this season with UVA is that they employ three players 6'8 or taller that all shoot 43% from the perimeter or better. This gives them the ability to find mismatches on the perimeter against smaller opponents in at least one spot.

The Wahoos are shooting 23 three-point attempts per game in ACC play, hitting 9.6 of them. This means the Wahoos find almost 30 points a game from behind the perimeter. The Hokies will have to be able to close out on the perimeter to keep the Wahoos from hitting their usual 42% from outside. That said, they still manage 44 more points per game between the line and inside the arc. Only six of those points come from the line where they are shooting 80% on the season.

The good news is that these numbers are almost identical to Notre Dame although Virginia has much better athletes this season than the Fighting Irish. Virginia has five Top 100 players making contributions this season. The Hokies were able to limit Notre Dame to 16.7% from the perimeter and 35.7% overall. Hopefully they can mirror that defensive effort here.

Wahoos Backcourt

Trey Murphy
# 25, JR, G, 6-9, 206 lbs
Durham, NC - Cary Academy
10.8 Pts, 3.0 Reb, 1.4 Ast

Shoots 52% from the floor, 49% from the perimeter and 82% from the line. Goodwin is their best perimeter shooter, averaging almost five attempts a game. Preventing him from getting in a rhythm is a major defensive concern.

CAPTION THIS
Kihei Clark
#0, JR, G, 5-9, 160 lbs
Woodland Hills, CA - Taft Charter HS
9.7 Pts, 1.7 Reb, 4.5 Ast

Shoots 48% from the floor, 23% from the perimeter and 75% from the line. Clark is the primary Point Guard for this offense but much like Bede is not really effective shooting. Unlike Bede, he attempts a much larger number of shots. Considering his shooting percentages, funneling him to take perimeter shots works in favor of the Hokies.

Reece Beekman
#2, FR, G, 6-3, 174 lbs
Baton Rouge, LA - Scotlandville Magnet HS #57 (2020)
5.8 Pts, 3.0 Reb, 2.8 Ast

Shoots 47% from the floor, 35% from the perimeter and is 80% from the line. Has been more involved as the season progressed and has started nine of thirteen games. Now averaging over 28 minutes per game so a key to their stability after early issues.

Casey Morsell
#13, SO, G, 6-3, 196 lbs
Fort Washington, MD - Saint John's College HS (DC) #58 (2019)
6.9 Pts, 1.9 Reb, 0.6 Ast

Shoots 48% from the floor, 35% from the perimeter and 83% from the line. He started early in the season but is now their first man off the bench.

Thomas Woldetensae
#53, SR, G, 6-5, 197 lbs
Bologna, Italy - Victory Rock (FL)
4.0 Pts, 1.4 Reb, 1.0 Ast

Shoots 41% from the floor, 38% from the perimeter and 4 of 4 from the line. Woldetensae is almost exclusively a perimeter shooter and his role is very similar to Cone's early in the season. A quick pop of scoring off the bench.

Wahoos Frontcourt

Sam Hauser
#10, SR, F, 6-8, 218 lbs
Stevens Point, WI - Stevens Point High School #94 (2016)
15.0 Pts, 7.4 Reb, 1.8 Ast

Shoots 51% from the floor, 43% from the perimeter and 73% from the line. Hauser, much like Laszewski for Notre Dame definitely shoots from the perimeter extremely well for a big and attempts nearly six threes per game. He averages 7.5 of his 15 points per game from the perimeter.

Jay Huff
#30, SR, F, 7-1, 240 lbs
Durham, NC - Voyager Academy #61 (2016)
13.8 Pts, 6.3 Reb, 1.1 Ast

Shoots 63% from the floor, 46% from the perimeter and 88% from the line. Huff finally has figured it out and although he isn't the leading scorer, he definitely poses the greatest challenge to defend. Fortunately the Hokies have shown they can disrupt a player like Huff defensively.

Justin McKoy
#4, SO, F, 6-8, 215 lbs
Cary, NC Panther Creek HS
3.8 Pts, 3.1 Reb, 0.7 Ast

Shoots 43% from the floor, 29% from the perimeter and 89% from the line. McKoy next season will have a monster year if Huff and Hauser both move on to the pros. He is very efficient considering he only averages 11.4 minutes per game. As a starter he likely would be a double-double machine.

Kadin Shedrick
#21, R-FR, F, 6-11, 216
Raleigh, NC Holly Springs HS #65 (2019)
3.5 Pts, 2.9 Reb, 0.4 Ast

Shoots 52% from the floor, doesnt from the perimeter and 67% from the line. Has been out since early January with an undisclosed health issue. Its not known whether he will play here. The same applies to guard Kody Stattman.

What to expect from Virginia?

The Wahoos come in with four players averaging 9.7 or more points per game but the Wahoos go extremely deep on the bench for significant minutes or contributions. Those four players take over 63% of the Wahoos shots. That said, the Virginia bench has averaged nearly 25 points per game so the Hokies need to maintain their defensive intensity even when Virginia substitutes.

Virginia's assist ratio is better than 50%. Kihei Clark leads Virginia's passing game with Beekman as the only other Wahoo averaging more than two per game.

ACC opponents are averaging a measly 57.9 points per game against this defense, which is the best in the ACC. ACC opponents are shooting 40% from the floor and only 31% from the perimeter against the Wahoos.

The Wahoos commit only 11.3 fouls per game, the fewest fouls per game in the ACC. Opponents have only shot 12.4 free throw attempts in ACC play. The Hokies average 23.2 attempts per ACC game, so expect somewhere in the middle in this game. UVA opponents are only whistled for 10 fouls per game, the fewest in ACC play. A big part of this sets of statistics is that Virginia strives to shorten the game by limiting overall possessions per game, which means they have fewer opportunities to foul or be fouled.

As a team the Wahoos are shooting 42% from the perimeter on 23 attempts per game. Only Huff, Hauser and Murphy shoot better than 40% but they also shoot 13.2 of the teams 23 attempts. Forcing these three inside is a key to this game.

Virginia holds a rebounding edge in ACC play but the Hokies are the second best rebounding team that Virginia will have faced. They average 32 rebounds to opponents 27.6 in seven ACC contests. Hauser and Huff are the only Wahoos averaging more than four rebounds per contest.

The Hokies

The Hokies showed mental toughness taking down Notre Dame after recent struggles and Radford's suspension. Now they must show if they can apply that same intensity to a much stronger opponent. If they can slow the Wahoo's offensive attack then they have the shooters to be successful on the other end. This is unfortunately the type of game you likely live or die by the three.

The Hokies will have their hands full with the trio of Huff, Hauser and Murphy, who present a size challenge the Hokies haven't seen this year, with three players 6'8 or taller on the floor together. Aluma was able to guard Laszewski alone last game and will likely be called upon to guard Hauser for most of tis game. Mutts will have the unenviable task of battling Jay Huff. The real dilemma will be guarding Trey Murphy, which likely goes to Bede and Cattoor.

While Virginia plays stifling defense, they do not create many turnovers at only 9.3 per contest. The Hokies though will find it difficult to gain extra possessions as the Wahoos only commit 7.9 turnovers, the fewest in the ACC.

The one area the Hokies excel that they must be able to continue is in offensive rebounds. The Hokies being able to create additional opportunities is critical to beating Virginia. Opponents right now average fewer than six offensive rebounds per game on thirty-five missed shot attempts. This leads into another key point

YOU HAVE TO HIT YOUR FIRST SHOT. Even if the Hokies manage to pull down a few extra offensive rebounds, it still wont be enough to overcome Virginia's average margin of victory. The Hokies need to shoot much better than there ACC averages of 43% from the floor (11th in ACC) and their 30.9% from the perimeter (12th in ACC).
For a team highlighted for shooting threes, they really are successful due to volume. Against an opponent that limits volume they must be more selective in when and who shoots the ball. In this game only Alleyne (38%), Cone (36%) and Cattoor (47%) have any business shooting outside. The good news there is that these three shoot 15.5 of the teams 22 attempts per game.

YOU HAVE TO HIT YOUR FREE THROWS. Virginia opponents so far only make 9.4 free throws per game, or about 16% of opponent scoring. The Hokies usually make 13.9 free throws per game. Those four points could be huge in determining the final result.

Highlight of the Syracuse Game

𝙈𝙞𝙠𝙚'𝙙 𝙐𝙥 🍿Brought that energy on the road 👋#StoneByStone | #Hokies 🦃 pic.twitter.com/K1bASKiJ7W— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) January 29, 2021

The Team showing resilience amidst several challenges.

What it's all about 🤝Talk about a play, truly a team effort#StoneByStone | #Hokies 🦃 pic.twitter.com/MG5intkqMY— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) January 28, 2021

In Closing

This game is going to come down to four things, hit your first shot, rebound if you don't, dribble penetration for both teams, and execution at the free throw line by the Hokies. If the Hokies are the better team at these four areas, than they could put Coach Young's losing streak to the Cavaliers behind them. Get the better of the Wahoos in two out of four areas and give yourself a chance. Let UVA win these areas and it is another long night.

The Hokies will definitely need to win the offensive rebounding battle to get more shots and second chance points against the Wahoos to keep up in this game. Whichever team gets to the rim more consistently with the ball will do one of two things, run up the score on baskets or ramp up the free throw attempts, which could go a long way in deciding this contest.

One last thing that will be critical for the Hokies is that at least two of three of Jalen Cone, Naheim Alleyne and Hunter Cattoor need to find their shot from outside to keep the Wahoos honest in guarding the perimeter. This could be a key factor in allowing Aluma, Mutts and N'Guessan the needed space to score inside against the Cavaliers.

Hokies win in dramatic fashion, 63-62.

Confidence Factor: Two Popcorns, its UVA, the best team in the ACC this season. So many things have to go just right to beat this team.

Confidence Factor:

Good to see Bamisile make his ACC debut. Nothing spectacular but also nothing that hurt the team and allowed a good breather for a coupe starters midway through the second half.

We were able to rebound well last night & @rexjoee was a big part of that 💪#StoneByStone | #Hokies 🦃 pic.twitter.com/k0wfMV4pfV— Virginia Tech Men's Basketball (@HokiesMBB) January 28, 2021

Also good to see Coach Young supporting one of his guys in a difficult situation

Mike Young's response when asked about @Tyreceradford23 on Tech Talk Live last night. pic.twitter.com/WSbHdCGZIn— Will Stewart (@WillStewartTSL) January 29, 2021