Probably goes without saying but Tre didn’t play more than a few minutes in Game 1 so we have yet to play the Orange at full strength. While we won’t have Bolden, it will be nice to finally see our 4 freshmen together against the zone with plenty of time to prepare (barring an upset prior to our first game).
Thanks Jim, of course, I had forgotten that. Considering how many Syracuse family and friends I have it’ll be nice to play them at mostly full strength although there’s no guarantee they win that first ACC Tourney game. They looked pretty bad against Clemson this weekend.
Javin is an enigma to me. He's 6-11 and clearly a really good athlete. That combination should be unstoppable. But his hands remain very weak, and he commits the Tony Lang soft fouls and sometimes he goes for rebounds soft. And he has no offensive game but dunks and lay ups apparently.
UVA doesn’t have guards who can blow by you one on one. The biggest way that they can hurt you is by hitting the three, so it makes sense to switch on screens and not allow them the split second of an opening to get a clean look. For more conventional lineups, switching everything doesn’t make as much sense. You wind up with Javin guarding Coby White in isolation, leading to an open three and an easy drive for an and-one on consecutive possessions.
IIRC, this was the justification for switching everything against unc too... they have an uncharacteristically good three point shooting team this year.
Either way, switching or not, you give up something on defense.
I've noticed that with the switching-on-everything-defense, if an opposing team's guard drives to the basket against a Duke big, we have the defender under the basket rotate over to help, but there is often late help to cover the original help defender's assignment... which leads to a pass and a dunk to a dude just standing under the basket. That is my problem with switching everything.
I trust Jack White to cover all five positions on a switch, FWIW. Tre is more of a concern for me, getting stuck with Maye, Salt et al under the rim.
Get well soon big fella.
Whatever the hell "it" is, Jabari found it.
-Roy "Ole Huck" Williams
Javin is more like 6'9" and more lightly built than Bolden. He has trouble handling bigs like Blackshear (doesn't everybody?). He also has issues catching and holding the ball. Javin plays hard and he's our guy and we need him, even with his issues of fouling. He did a nice job in the UNC game although found himself in bad matchups at times, such as defending Colby White.
When can we expect a post MRI report on Bolden? i.e. the severity of his injury. Monday evening?
Nope. That would be the one who took 4 or 5 steps/shuffles as he butt-backed JD (IIRC) into the lane and took 5-6 second in the process, made the bunny and got a FT as a reward. Oh, yea, he also slid under Cam as he went up for a lay-up causing him to land hard on his hip/butt AND get called for a charge in the process.
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
I caught that ! Good one.