The Virginia basketball team grabbed its eighth win in the last nine games with a 63-50 victory against NC State on Tuesday. UVA led for the final 37:57 of the game. The Double Bonus returns for a closer look.
Attack The Baseline
Part of NC State’s style defensively is to pressure the ball to either increase the tempo, generate turnovers, or both. The Pack didn’t have much success in that realm against Virginia, though. The Hoos had just 5 turnovers with the Wolfpack creating 4 steals.
On the other hand, UVA took advantage of State’s halfcourt man pressure by winning the battle toward the baseline. I counted at least 10 possessions in the game where Virginia scored directly from a baseline move or on a pass from a baseline move. In a game where the hosts only played 56 possessions, that’s where nearly 20% of the scoring came from.
The Cavaliers created that success in different ways. One consistent theme: players refusing a ball screen to drive baseline. To refuse a screen means to go the direction away from the screen vs. running off of it. Reece Beekman scored a layup early, Isaac McKneely hit a step-back jumper, and Kihei Clark earned and made two free throws all from refusing screens.
There was one more highlight from a refuse too. Midway through the second half, McKneely caught the ball on the right wing where Jayden Gardner started to move in for an on-ball screen. McKneely, however, refused the screen and drove baseline instead. The Wolfpack rotated to prevent a layup, but McKneely found Kadin Shedrick coming down the middle of the lane for an easy bucket anyway. Another Shedrick highlight came on a similar play from Clark in the first half too.
Virginia also scored twice on backdoor cuts from Beekman. This is something that brought back Trey Murphy III baseline cuts for dunks against NCSU two seasons ago. In this game, the two plays came close together in the second half. On the first just before the 17:00 mark, Clark drove from the left wing into the logo area in the paint. Beekman caught his defender watching the ball and cut along the baseline for a reverse layup. The second came just three minutes later near the 14:00 mark. Clark used a ball screen from Shedrick, drove toward Beekman on the right wing, and sold a no-look pass that found Beekman cutting along the baseline again. This time, it was a two-handed jam.
Virginia Post Traps
For much of this season, the Virginia post trap defense has not been consistent. Still, to deal with D.J. Burns Jr., a 6’9″, 275-pound graduate student forward, the Hoos knew they would need to mix in the strategy Tuesday. So did the Wolfpack. That, of course, meant it came down to which team could execute better in the game.
The Cavaliers got the better end of that mini battle. They flustered Burns early and made him uncomfortable throughout the night. Even though he made some good passes out of traps at times, he also committed 5 of his 6 turnovers in the game as a result of dealing with the UVA double team. That included an offensive foul trying to attack Kadin Shedrick after the double backed away and a travel in the second half as a couple of examples. He also picked up a flagrant foul near halfcourt immediately after a post trap turnover.
Virginia coach Tony Bennett said that the trap had to be quicker and more decisive to be effective.
“We just said be ready and be quick,” Bennett said. “You better be. If you’re going to trap, it’s got to be a quick, tough, hard trap. Legal. And don’t waste your time. Other guys better get in their spots. We didn’t mess around. We just did it. Sometimes, you can sit there and try to reason and figure stuff out, but you’ve just got to get there and do it and that’s what we tried to do.”
“Air time and vision,” Jayden Gardner said of the keys to the trap. “If I can just be there on the catch to make it difficult for him and then the guys on the backside do their job, they can get a lot of pick sixes. For me, just not lose vision.”
To counter the post trap, NC State periodically posted up Burns near the elbow instead. That’s a harder area to run a double team toward and it’s a strategy used by the Wolfpack in previous years as well. Burns hit 2 of 3 shot attempts created on moves out of that elbow area. That’s something to keep in mind if a postseason meeting pops up at the ACC Tournament.
Virginia Extras
There were a few other things that caught my attention in this game that didn’t fit into a theme.
Virginia continued to use the 3-man motion scheme that has been popular the last several weeks, but there were more times with McKneely in the middle triangle action instead of spotting up on a wing. I thought one possession that led to a McKneely 3-pointer was worth a look because it shows the options that a shooter can use within the simple motion concept.
On this trip, McKneely passed the ball out to the right wing and then cut hard into the middle of the paint. At the same time, the other two players in the 3-man motion spots slid into position as a potential screener. On McKneely’s left, Gardner is waiting if he wants to run off a baseline side exit screen. At the top, Shedrick is there for a pin-down screen to McKneely’s right. For a shooter, this is gold. All you have to do is read the defender, move them one direction, and then sprint off the opposite screen. McKneely chose the top of the key cut and hit the jumper. A screen capture of the option moment and the clip follow.
In the Virginia Tech Double Bonus earlier this week, I pulled out a clip of Ben Vander Plas missing a high-low opportunity against a switch on defense. In the second half of this game, he got the same situation and scored.
I also spotted an interesting moment defensively. Virginia appeared to run ‘ice’ coverage against on-ball screens on a couple of trips. To ice a screen, the dribbler’s defender moves into the path of the dribbler in a position to send it away from the screen instead. Think of it as forcing the ‘refuse’ concept discussed above.
In this case, Beekman appeared to turn the dribbler away from the screen intentionally. The hedger, Vander Plas in this case, also seemed to know the coverage was in play because he ran up on the side away from the screen instead of moving to the screener’s back to be in a hedge spot. Later, NC State looked like it countered the ‘ice’ with a ‘twist’ from the screener, who came up on the left side of Beekman again, but then pivoted quickly to hit Beekman’s right shoulder instead. Here are the two clips (UVA stopped any scoring action in the first, but Ryan Dunn got called for goaltending on the second).
Bonus “Double Bonus” Thoughts
- Three of the first four free throws UVA missed were the front end of 1-and-1 opportunities.
- The Kihei Clark to Reece Beekman to Jayden Gardner pass sequence for a dunk was one of my favorite plays of the game. Beekman clearly appreciated it too as he gave Clark a thumbs up on the way back down the court for the read and hockey assist that led to the Gardner slam.
- I didn’t understand the hedge foul call on Kadin Shedrick with 12:41 to go in the game, but on replay you can see him grab the dribbler’s arm.
- Any fans or coaches who like the ‘box out until the ball hits the floor’ idea must have liked the 9:52 mark of the second half.
- It’s interesting that both Reece Beekman and Casey Morsell, who struggled from 3-point range at UVA in 2020-2021, have improved their percentages from deep by greater than 17% from then until now. Beekman shot 24.3% two years ago and is at 43.1% now. Morsell shot 26.3% that year and is at 44.0% now. Sometimes, players can improve their shooting later in their career.
Nice. Interesting anaylsis.