The Virginia basketball team closed out the 2023 part of its schedule with a rough loss at Notre Dame. The Hoos trailed early and never really recovered in a defat that dropped them to 1-1 in the ACC. The Double Bonus returns for a closer look.

Notre Dame Corked Virginia Curls

The Cavaliers like to use ‘sides’ motion or the Blocker-Mover concept on offense, something well known by Virginia fans at this point in the Tony Bennett era. The idea is to get some movement and some advantages coming off of screens.

A counter to that, however, is with a specific coverage known as lock-and-trail defense. The general idea is to chase a cutter from behind and given the reads on off-ball screens, this tells the cutter to curl the screen. In this way, the defense is dictating the action to the offense. Defenses can then help the chasing defender by placing the screener’s defender in a spot to help guard the curl that everyone knows is coming.

Notre Dame used this style on Saturday. Wisconsin did it earlier this year too. The results: a 65-41 loss to the Badgers and a 76-54 loss to the Irish. UVA can’t keep running the pin-down screen actions if it can’t beat this popular coverage. Let’s look at it from ND.

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