It was kind of a release to watch our guys just rear back and kick Norfolk State’s rear after they gave us two pretty hard-fought games in the last couple of times we met.
This one showed signs of becoming more of the same when the Spartans took a 6-5 lead just over five minutes in, but Malcolm Brogdon woke up the team and a pretty big crowd that was just waiting for something to cheer for by sandwiching a pretty dish to Tobey for a dunk between two threes for a quick 8-0 run. London Perrantes, Marial Shayok, and Evan Nolte added threes of their own over the next few minutes to blow the game open at 22-10 and remove any hint of doubt. This year’s Spartans are still a well-coached, scrappy group, but they’re still figuring out who stands where after losing pretty much everyone who scored meaningful points for them in recent years. Not being able to hang is forgivable.
The nice thing about this year’s Virginia team – well, one of them – is that a lot of guys can score meaningful points. Justin Anderson and Mike Tobey both hit double figures (11 and 10, respectively), but two guys scored nine, and one each put up eight, seven, six and five, with nine of the 10 guys currently in CTB’s rotation scoring. A different guy could lead this team in scoring every night, especially in early season mismatches like last night where buckets come without a lot of effort.
Threes were the real catalyst last night. We made 10 of our 21 tries for the game, including eight of 11 in the first half. Justin Anderson continued to flip the double bird to the haters by making three of five (and missing all four twos, continuing his strange metamorphosis into 2012 Evan Nolte) but Malcolm (2-3), London (2-3) and Marial Shayok (2-5) all chipped in as well. The three-pointers were almost always set up by patient, crisp ball movement: we logged assists on 19 of our 23 made shots in this game, and eight of the 10 guys who played before things got out of hand chipped in at least one. This team isn’t going to blow you away from behind the arc on most nights (and shouldn’t, for their own good), but showing that they’re capable of taking and making good looks is nice to see.
Defensively, we largely did what we want to do. Norfolk State made just five two point baskets in the game (on 34 tries), struggling to finish inside (we blocked 11 shots, one game after sending back seven), and might not have scored 25 points if it weren’t for the effort of Jeff Short, who went nuts on long balls (4-7) and made half of their 12 baskets. We’re still allowing opponents into the lane more than I would like (and we’re really missing Akil’s defense against the pick and roll), but the blocked shots have forgiven some of those sins. NSU grabbed 12 offensive rebounds (bad, and a symptom of not always finding someone to box out after helping), but converted them into only five second chance points (good).
There were two things I wanted to see improvement on after JMU — better perimeter D, and fewer turnovers by our bigs — and we largely knocked those out of the park (the bigs committed four of our 11 turnovers after being responsible for nine of 16 against the Dukes). The overall turnover percentage (21.9%) is still too high, but at least it’s trending downward. SC State is up next.
Notes:
- Justin’s hot start (hitting seven of 10 threes) will eventually regress to the mean, but I plan on just enjoying the ride until it does. He’s taking good shots (almost all from the corner), and he seems to be sticking with the changes to his form (elbow in, lower, quicker release, less floating on the jump). It’s very strange to see him head for the corner on a fast break, but I don’t mind.
- London Perrantes’s debut: seven points and four assists without a turnover in 28 minutes. A typical box for him.
- It is not coincidental that Tobey’s consecutive baskets in the second half came when we were actually throwing the ball to him. I know that there are many mouths to feed, but it makes sense to me to at least get our seven footer a touch on every possession, because how many teams have seven footers with his touch and arsenal of moves? Not many. We need to at least present him as a threat.
- I really enjoyed the hockey line-change substitions CTB made in the second half, because I really like the second unit and our depth makes me feel like this
