After losing consistent scoring leaders Malcolm Brogdon and Anthony Gill prior to last season, outside observers and television broadcasters locked on to a common narrative last season and never really moved on from it. The theme: who would be the go-to scorer and leader on offense?
The most memorable of those may have been Doug Gottlieb, who is now with Fox Sports. He called this leading or go-to concept on offense an ‘alpha scorer’ during a UVA broadcast last season. If Virginia fans who were annoyed by that phrase were hoping it – and the outside narrative – would go away this season, they may want to be patient. With London Perrantes, the team’s leading scorer at 12.7 points per game, now gone, there still will be plenty of questions about the leaders on offense early this season.
It came up within five minutes at Media Day with both coach Tony Bennett and players like Devon Hall getting the questions about a go-to scorer early in their interviews with reporters.
”I think a lot of the guys,” Hall said. ”Myself, I’ll be way more aggressive than I was before so you can look at me, you can look at [others] but it’s a night in, night out thing. It’s a whoever is hot type thing. We have a lot of guys that can do a lot of great things.”
But what about late in the game? Who would take an important shot in the final minutes? Who would a play be drawn up for on a last-second shot? Virginia’s captain didn’t flinch. That depends on what the team needs at the time, who is playing well, and who can take advantage of a good situation to make a play.
Of course, none of that is too surprising with UVA. While Brogdon got plenty of opportunities to take important shots late in his career, the Cavaliers often have gone to different players out of timeouts and on late-game calls over the years. That’s how Mike Tobey hit the tying shot against Maryland as a freshman, how Joe Harris would be the frequent target out of timeouts during his career, how Perrantes hit a big shot against California as a junior, and so on.
Even last season, the Cavaliers turned to freshman Kyle Guy out of a timeout early in the season against Florida State late in that game.
”We have certain sets we go to,” Hall said. ”Whoever has a hot hand or whoever we want to put in a good situation or a good spot on the floor to make a play.”
Analysts focus on this particular theme because so many teams do look to specific players to carry heavy scoring loads. Most teams, in fact, do have a sort of pecking order for shot selection that leads to higher usage rates for certain players than others. That’s true at Virginia too. Perrantes took 81 more shots than anyone else last season.
Rather than asking about a leading scorer or a go-to scorer, the better question to ask is whether a team has enough scoring balance, firepower, and efficiency overall to get wins? That’s ultimately what hurt the Hoos in many games last season. In the Elite Eight run of 2015-2016, the Cavaliers featured eight players that shot 45% or better from the field. Last season, however, just five players cracked 45%.
Hall thinks it’s possible to win games without a so-called alpha scorer as long as the group plays efficiently enough to get the balance needed to pile up points.
”Absolutely,” Hall said. ”You don’t have to have one guy who scores 20 points, 17, 18 every night, you can have guys split up and score 10, 12, 9 and guys off the bench that score 8, 12 or whatever – it’s collective units. You don’t have to have one guy that has to score a bunch of points.”
Anthony’s Debut
The Cavaliers’ Blue-White intrasquad scrimmage drew several thousand fans to the John Paul Jones Arena on Sunday. Those fans, and anyone watching via the Watch ESPN app, got a chance to see freshman Marco Anthony in his debut for the Cavaliers.
The 6’4”, 228-pound forward played throughout the scrimmage with the Blue team. Much like UVA’s other youngsters Jay Huff and De’Andre Hunter discussed in this impressions article, he showed flashes of what he can do on offense during the game but he will need to build consistency over the long haul.
The biggest impression from Anthony is that he’s already got a fairly strong frame that allows him to be physical in order to gain angles offensively and create off the dribble that way. He did initiate the offense Sunday with only walk-on Trevon Gross Jr. on his team as a point guard for most of the day. He also had the tough assignment of chasing around Kyle Guy defensively.
Bennett mentioned on Media Day how challenging the step up to college basketball can be for young players like Anthony.
”It’s a big adjustment,” Bennett said. ”I mean everything’s faster, everything is at a different pace. We’re asking him to remember a lot of things system wise offensively and defensively. … The ability to think less and not have a divided mind and just play, that’s still coming for Marco, even Jay and De’Andre. That’s going to be real important.”
Preseason Poll Musings
First and last impressions can influence preseason projections in college basketball significantly. The Virginia basketball team is a good example of that.
The first impression can come from a quick glance at a the ‘Who’s returning’ column and then finding the season scoring averages for those players. In UVA’s case, it’s easy to see that no double-digit scorers return from last season’s 23-game winner. The last impression came when Virginia walked off the NCAA Tournament floor with a 65-39 loss.
In other words, it’s easy for someone to look at those surface facts and think ‘Who is going to score for this team?’ and by extension ‘How good can this team be?’ That led to Virginia being just outside the top 25 in the USA Today/ESPN preseason coaches’ poll and usually in the fifth to 10th place window in early ACC projections from varying sources like Athlon. The ACC media will vote on the preseason standings this week.
I suspect the Hoos will be outside of The Associated Press top 25 rankings and likely no higher than fifth in the league standings through voting at ACC Operation Basketball.
Virginia Basketball Notables & Quotables
- On Media Day, Coach Bennett confirmed that freshman Francesco Badocchi will redshirt this season. Badocchi elected to have knee surgery earlier this summer and he is working his way back from that. He should be available for full practice soon.”He’s starting to shoot and move and do things. Hopefully [he’ll practice] pretty soon,” Bennett said. ”He’s recovering well and it will be nice to get him out there with another body because he’s athletic. The plan is to redshirt Frankie. That was kind of established when he decided to have the corrective procedure.”
- Guard Kyle Guy had this to say about the team’s potential this season: “I know we lost a lot of good guys, but the improvements that we’ve made in the past six months have been uncanny so I think it’s going to be an interesting team and maybe a higher scoring team than normal. Defensively, we should be able to be about where we were last year.”
- Guard Ty Jerome didn’t play in the scrimmage so fans didn’t get to see how he looked without London Perrantes on the team. Perrantes, of course, has signed a two-way deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA. Jerome missed the Virginia scrimmage with an unspecified left foot injury of some sort, but he mentioned on Media Day that growing confidence will allow him to be more assertive this season as well.“I think it just depends on how’s the game is going, who’s hot, and so many different factors,” Jerome said. “I think my confidence is at a new level so I’ll definitely be more assertive and aggressive than I was last year.”
- Walk-on junior guard Justice Bartley fell to the floor with an injury at the end of the Blue-White Scrimmage on Sunday, but it is not a serious injury and he will return to practice soon.
- ACC Operation Basketball, the league’s Media Day, is scheduled for Wednesday. Seniors Devon Hall and Isaiah Wilkins will be the player representatives for UVA. The press conference room interviews will be carried live on ACC Network Extra via the ESPN app and theACC.com (click here for this feed).
