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Game Thread [2022-23] at Virginia Tech

What's your prediction?

  • Total voters
    16
  • Poll closed .
I can make excuses for Scheyer through next season. But now that the writing is on the wall, he needs to adjust and not go so heavy on OADs for 2024-25, unless the Boozers and Flagg reclass. Top transfers aren’t going to want to come to a team with OADs up and down the roster.

It’s time to get off the mindless OAD treadmill that started in 2014-15, unless there are actually great OADs in the class. With no sitting out a year for transfers now, it’s very easy to pivot from year to year. You don’t absolutely need to keep cycling the top freshmen into the starting lineup as if there’s still no other option. Next year’s freshmen probably aren’t going to be much better than this year, and Scheyer is stuck with that. He’s not stuck after next year, though. No more excuses for terrible rosters.
 
It’s not like we’re camping Flip and Lively in the paint like they’re McHale and Parish or w/e. Flip starts plenty of possessions from the perimeter or 15ft or more from the basket. the guards not being respected one bit to hit from deep is also contributing to how clogged the lane is, with our opponents. No defender is going over a screen for them. I don’t recall Nolan and Scheyer struggling to get to the basket with Zoubek and Thomas clogging the floor, nor Curry and Cook when it was Plumlee and Kelly?

In an ideal world I would in fact support DNP’ng Lively and giving his minutes to guards, who is just not making up for being an offensive zero, whereas at least Young is hitting the board so hard it’s keeping our defense respectable. But again we’re trapped by roster construction since no coach is going to DNP their #1 recruit and destroy their reputation in AAU
 
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We will know whether Scheyer is the guy or not by 2025 or 2026. The trajectory of a coaching tenure is clear by year 3 or 4, occasionally 5 if it’s a massive rebuild (which this isn’t, unlike with Cutcliffe for football).

If he fails, we could certainly end up with something much worse, as Patrick Ewing at Georgetown and Kenny Payne at Louisville prove.
 
DurhamSon said:
It’s not like we’re camping Flip and Lively in the paint like they’re McHale and Parish or w/e. Flip starts plenty of possessions from the perimeter or 15ft or more from the basket. the guards not being respected one bit to hit from deep is also contributing to how clogged the lane is, with our opponents. I don’t recall Nolan and Scheyer struggling to get to the basket with Zoubek and Thomas clogging the floor, nor Curry and Cook when it was Plumlee and Kelly?

In an ideal world I would in fact support DNP’ng Lively and giving his minutes to guards, who is just not making up for being an offensive zero, whereas at least Young is hitting the board so hard it’s keeping our defense respectable. But again we’re trapped by roster construction since no coach is going to DNP their #1 recruit and destroy their reputation in AAU
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The Zoubek/Thomas front court worked in a different era of basketball and we had way more motion in our offense back then from my recollection.
I don’t think the Plumlee/Kelly comparison works. Kelly was a way better shooter than Flip from mid range and 3.

also if you are going to do these comparisons it also has to be with the 3. Mitchell is way more of a misfit there than Singler for instance.

I don’t agree with your DNP #1 recruit. We basically did that with Jalen Johnson and it had no impact on our recruiting. Anyway I think we all agree the importance of OAD will diminish.
 
bdotling said:
The Zoubek/Thomas front court worked in a different era of basketball and we had way more motion in our offense back then from my recollection.
I don’t think the Plumlee/Kelly comparison works. Kelly was a way better shooter than Flip from mid range and 3.

also if you are going to do these comparisons it also has to be with the 3. Mitchell is way more of a misfit there than Singler for instance.
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The 3 is the only issue. Flip is not only "passable" at 4, he's probably one of the five best PFs in the country. He does all the stretch 4 things, really, other than it would be nice if he shot like 7% higher from 3.

I think having a big guy to rebound and finish is useful on a team with so many bricklayers, and (mostly) Young but aspirationally Lively can do that.

I think the spacing would be more fixed by having a guy who is more of a creator/passer/midrange shooter than Mitchell is at the 3.
 
With respect to Zoubek/Thomas and spacing on that team, I seem to recall also that one of the key reasons we shot well was because those guys rebounded the ball at an elite rate, so spacing, as we’re thinking of it, was less of an issue. So many of those rebounds were passed back to an open shooter. So it was less about driving to attract an extra defender to create spacing and more about get something up on the rim, let Zoubek/Thomas grab it and kick back out and that created the spacing.
 
I do think that the bottom line is if we're going to go with the big lineups, we have to rebound better than we have been. Tonight was another sub-30% OREB night. If we're not even consistently getting an advantage there, what exactly are we making the sacrifices of big ball lineup for?
 
Pantone287 said:
The most depressing part about this is that this was a team that had lost their last seven games, yet was expected to bust their slump against shitty Duke, and did just that. Woof.
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In a vacuum it's hard to be really angry about losing a game in Blacksburg with VT shooting over 50% from three and with our most talented perimeter guy exploding his achilles in the second half, but this hits the nail on the head. Such a horribly predictable loss that confirms our mediocrity.
 
best4heisman said:
By the way, the Whitehead injury is a huge blow to an already shitty offense. He hasn't exactly come on strong post-injury but he's shooting 43% from three in conference play.
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Sports-reference has it at 44% on 4.5 attempts per game in conference. Clearly trending toward being our best shooter.

He really was the best path to get toward something resembling a more modern lineup. I don't care about the loss. But this blows. He was sort of the beacon of hope for in-season improvement for me.
 
I've only read a tweet (from TDD account, IIRC) which suggested the injury not as bad as initially feared. So only rumour.
 
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