The Virginia basketball team continued its strong play at the John Paul Jones Arena on Wednesday night with a convincing 77-53 win against Louisville. The Hoos are 9-0 at the JPJ this season and have won 19 straight games in the building.

The victory against the Cardinals marked UVA’s eighth straight in the series and the 17th in the last 18 meetings between the two programs. The Double Bonus returns for a closer look.

Virginia Counters With Modified Sides

After the Cavaliers’ loss at Notre Dame last weekend, this space featured a lot of clips with the Irish defending UVA’s base ‘sides’ motion offense with lock-and-trail coverage paired with curl protection. As a reminder, lock-and-trail defense means that the defender stays attached to the cutter and then follows that cutter around the same side of the screen. Based on off-ball screening reads, this triggers a curl cut by the cutter to wrap closely around the screen and toward the basket. To counter that, team sometimes use the screener’s defender to protect the path the basket, thus the term curl protection.

The Irish really disrupted the Virginia offense with that strategy, which Wisconsin had some success with as well back in November. There was one inbounds play during the game though where the screening angle changed. UVA had the screener facing the corner instead of facing the paint and had the cutter, Isaac McKneely in this case, coming off the screen from that angle instead. McKneely scored on the play. From the last Double Bonus: “Is this a small adjustment that could be made to the base offense to get him a similar angle at times? Maybe.”

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