04/16/24
March 14, 2014
SportsFilter: The Friday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
They've been sloooooowly building up the last few years. Last year was pretty sketchy, but we (alumni speaking here) knew we'd be really good this year, but not the kind of good they've been since the start of the conference season. Other than a couple guys transferring because they were never going to get off the bench, the only guy we lost from last year was Jontel Evans, who played amazing defense and could handle the ball but was a total liability on offense. He was replaced with London Perrantes, who's just a first year (<--UVa style guide requirement) who makes very few mistakes, but can also knock down a bunch of 3s. Additionally, they got Brogdon back after he was out injured last year, a pretty good transfer in Gill, and the rest of the team matured a bit. For the first part of the season, we were probably leaning too heavily on Harris to score, but we eventually figured out that we go 8 or 9 deep with guys that can put up double digits any given night, and that's quite an obstacle for an opponent to overcome when UVa also only allows 55 points a game.
posted by LionIndex at 05:48 PM on March 14, 2014
And the outlook for next year is still good! We lose Harris and Mitchell, but that just means that Anderson and Gill start.
posted by LionIndex at 05:50 PM on March 14, 2014
Virginia has been the only team in the ACC that has played consistently well all year. Carolina either plays like the best team in the country or like a division 2 team, Duke is good at home but plays well below their talent level otherwise, and Syracuse has had some bad injuries down the stretch.
posted by cixelsyd at 06:07 PM on March 14, 2014
They have been making slight improvements every year under Bennett, which is really all you can ask for. I guess I'll be ok if they plateau from here on out though.
posted by LionIndex at 06:43 PM on March 14, 2014
Nice old guard ACC match-up for the league championship: Duke v Virginia. The ACC is better for it when schools like The Landed Gentry are relevant.
posted by NoMich at 11:27 PM on March 15, 2014
Yeah, I'm sort of glad none of these Johnny-come-lately Big East guys made it. I'm also kind of embarrassed to be glad about that.
posted by LionIndex at 12:28 PM on March 16, 2014
No Big East or ex-Big East team has a top notch squad this year. Louisville might have garnered consideration if Chane Behanan hadn't got kicked out of the program.
Still not surprising that the most of the teams from last year's Big East are at the top of their conferences.
posted by cixelsyd at 02:11 PM on March 16, 2014
It's a mixed bag in the ACC. Syracuse obviously did pretty well, and Pitt did OK, but they were the only former Big East teams in the top half of the league - BC, Miami, Virginia Tech and Notre Dame were all pretty lousy, with BC, VT, and ND filling out the bottom end. BC is an odd case - given the way they played last year and how many guys they were bringing back, I thought they'd do pretty well.
posted by LionIndex at 03:29 PM on March 16, 2014
Where the hell did Virginia come from this college basketball season? It's like, they're good again. WTF?