Fans made North Carolina feel like home for the Hoos for the second straight weekend. This time, the pro-Virginia crowd rocked Raleigh to help the Cavaliers reach the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1995. The Double Bonus looks back at that Memphis win.

Screening Is The Key

Virginia has added a lot of wrinkles to its offense since flipping back to a patterned motion system at the start of 2014, but there is one factor that makes everything go for the Hoos: screening. And not just once per possession or just one kind of screen. No, the Cavaliers screen opponents multiple times per possession and they do it in a variety of ways.

The base offense – something the team calls sides motion – features simultaneous screens with one player going away from the ball off a flare screen and another coming toward the ball off of a down or baseline screen. There are also options built in for on-ball screens and dribble hand-offs. That’s a lot to deal with in one possession and it puts pressure on individual defenders and team concepts to tag the right people, react in time to stop certain reads, and still be in position to rebound.

Oh and there’s the fact that you have to do it for 40 minutes too. It’s a big piece of the ‘built to outlast’ philosophy on display with UVa.

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