Game Preview: Virginia Tech at Virginia - SCACCHoops.com

Game Preview: Virginia Tech at Virginia

by UniversityBall.org

Posted: 2/9/2016 11:38:13 AM


There was some chatter about Virginia Tech maybe sneaking into the bottom of the NCAA Tournament season after they opened conference play by winning four of five games, a stretch that included an upset of Virginia in Cassell Coliseum. That chatter has quieted some as Tech has lost five of six to fall below .500 in the conference — perhaps the NIT is a more likely destination — but this is essentially the same Tech team that started so well in January.

The difference between Tech in January and Tech now is that they’re losing the close games that they were winning before. That happens. The Hokies’ four wins to open ACC play were by a total of 10 points. They’ve since hung tight before falling to UNC (by five), Louisville (by eight), Notre Dame (by two) and Syracuse (by eight in overtime). Aside from two blowout losses — one during the good stretch, one during the current one — the Hokies have been consistently competitive up to the final horn.

The first meeting with Tech feels like a bad dream to me. We lost power at my house that night and I followed the play by play on my couch in the dark as my family slept. It felt like a scene from some bad post-apocalyptic disaster movie: a man huddled in the dark, powerless to stop the crumbling of civilization as he knows it (or his favorite team’s ability to take their tenets on the road). Waking up and watching some of the tape, I felt gross and embarrassed, like a hungover 25-year old waking up and reading through his sent text messages.

Things have thankfully reverted to the much-more-exciting mean since those early road stumbles, but I will not be fooled by Virginia Tech again. Thankfully, we appear to have sorted out the malaise that plagued us in early January. It’s hard to use the first game to forecast what will happen tonight, because we’re operating on such a different level than we were that night.

Tech can be confusing. They have — and Coach Soderberg referred to it in Jeff White’s piece this week — a bazillion offensive sets, and they’re willing to break any of them out at the slightest provocation. What that thick playbook boils down to, however, is a lot of high screen action between Seth Allen (14.4 ppg) and Zach LeDay (16ppg), designed to either propel Allen into the lane with a head of steam or allow him to hit LeDay rolling to the rim or popping out for a three (LeDay used his 3-4 three-point display against us in Blacksburg as a launching pad — he’s now 13-25 overall in ACC games). Justin Bibbs (12.2 ppg), who dinged us for four threes and has made 36% of his treys in conference games, lurks on the wing or in the corner during all of this, waiting for his man to stray too close to one of their first two options, and the mercurial Jalen Hudson will either rise up for a monster game (he scored 27 vs. Louisville) or disappear completely (he attempted one shot in the first meeting with us). Allen and LeDay generate a lot of contact on their rim dives — they’re 3rd and 8th in the ACC in FT rate, respectively — and they’ve powered the Hokies to the highest rate in the league.

It’s unclear how well it’s working. While Tech has been competitive, the Hokies are 13th in the ACC in offensive efficiency (1.03 points per possession) because they can’t consistently make shots (46.6% on twos, 35.6% on threes), and don’t get second chances (24.4% OREB in league games, 14th). They’re surviving thanks to the aforementioned free throws (they took 32 against UNC and 38 against Louisville) and by not beating themselves — their 16.4% turnover rate has them in the top half of the conference.

Tech’s D is allowing ACC foes 1.1 points per possession, which is good for 10th in the league. They surrender a ton of offensive boards (35.8%, dead last in the league), which may or may not help us, since we seem unwilling or unable to rack those in of late. With a tendency to go small, Tech doesn’t really block shots and gives up a high percentage (51.6%) on twos.

It’s hard to foresee a repeat of the debacle from Blacksburg. Tech diced us up with ball screens in that game, taking advantage of our lethargic and disorganized defense to zip the ball around the floor (17 assists and a 69.2% assist rate) for easy looks. Tech ranks toward the bottom of the ACC in assist rate (49.2%, 11th) and we sit toward the top in opponents’ assist rate (48.3%, 4th), so those numbers from the first meeting are a testament to how lax our perimeter D was. We’ve been defending high screens much, much better of late — see the tape from Louisville or Pitt for examples — so it’s hard to imagine the Hokies finding similar successes tonight.

Defensively, Tech swarmed Anthony Gill and we didn’t adjust, forcing it into him anyway and trying to turn him into a playmaker — not his best look. Our attitude on offense has since shifted back toward the aggressive stance from November and December that saw us taking good looks when presented instead of reshuffling the deck and burning clock, and it’s paid off, especially for Malcolm. Brogdon is on an unholy tear of late, and it’ll be interesting to see what Williams — the type of basketball lifer liable to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking of Diamond-and-Ones  — cooks up to try to stop him.

Verdict:
We turned the ball over on a quarter of our possessions in Blacksburg, a number we’ve passed only once this season: in Madison Square Garden against Press Virginia. With a repeat of our sloppiness unlikely, Tech’s going to have to out-execute us on both ends of the court and overcome what has emerged as a formidable home court advantage to win and sweep the series. I don’t see it happening.

 

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