Leave your assumptions about William & Mary at the door. The Tribe are not to be confused with the Radfords, Libertys, and such of the world — they’re good, better than your average December in-state foe.
Ken Pomeroy ranks them 76th overall, which is higher than all three of the schools (Hofstra, JMU, and Northeastern) picked ahead of them by the CAA’s media before the season started. KenPom is obviously not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a good place to start. The Tribe straight up handled NC State in their season opener (an 85-68 win in Raleigh, even!) and lost a close one to a good Dayton team in Dayton, where the Flyers always boast a solid home court advantage. A loss to Howard at Howard is a little weird (Bison G James Daniel torched them for 39), but that’s the only thing marring their resume so far.
The Tribe start four wings, running a four-out set that often ends in a mid-range jumper or dive to the rim, and they’ve been efficient (1.08 adjusted points per possession) and careful with the basketball (16.1% turnover rate). They take almost 20 threes per game, and while only guard Daniel Dixon is a volume shooter from deep (21-48 for the season), they’ve got a lot of other guys (leading scorer Omar Prewitt and reserve guards Greg Malinowski and Connor Burchfield) who can drop it in, too, and most of their regulars take at least one per game. Prewitt is a slasher, scoring his 17 points per game via a knack for getting to the rim (44% of his shots have come at the basket area, and he makes 60%) and drawing fouls (he’s taken 50 FTs to 86 shot attempts). Dixon stretches the floor, forward Terry Tarpey bangs inside at 6’5” (almost a third of his made shots are putbacks), and 6’9” Sean Sheldon is the extent of their post offerings, such as they are (he’s taken 35 shots in seven games).
W&M’s defense has been OK. They pretty much don’t force turnovers (14.7%) and have been susceptible to offensive rebounds (opponents grab 29.4% of their misses), which is something that happens when you go small. The Tribe have blocked a lot of shots this season (12.3% of opposing tries, which is a very strong number for a team without a great individual shot blocker), are terrific at switching on the perimeter to deny the three (threes are just 25.4% of opponents’ points, and they’re making 25.2%), and they don’t hurt themselves by fouling (they’re top-50 nationally in opposing free throw rate).
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s be clear. Virginia should be wary of the Tribe, but shouldn’t be scared of them. Virginia is much bigger — Sheldon is the only Tribe player taller than 6’7” to see regular minutes — and the Wahoos could either utilize a versatile guy like Isaiah Wilkins as a nominal big against W&M’s shorter, quicker forwards, or we could just rely on our usual compliment of bigs to dominate the restricted area (grab ALL of the rebounding) and count on someone like AG being able to move his feet and contest (which is a decent gamble to make since most of William and Mary’s starters play inside the arc). Either way, I think we’re going to be successful around the rim. It’s obviously going to be important to move our feet and cut off drives better than we did against Ohio State, but the Buckeyes’ quickness on the perimeter was obviously on a different level than what we’ll see on Saturday. We’re much deeper, more athletic, and not undisciplined enough to fall prey to the dumb mistakes that usually lead to upsets, and while I can make myself imagine a scenario where Prewitt lives in the lane, Dixon, Burchfield, and Malinowski rain threes, and our bigs struggle to find their footing, I don’t think it’s going to happen. The Tribe will hang for a while (maybe longer than we want, even), but I think Virginia wins by double digits.
