The Plus/Minus: Notre Dame Pummels Virginia
Virginia went on the road in ACC play for the first time this season on Saturday and came away with a dreadful 76-54 loss to Notre Dame. Val has the Plus/Minus to break down what happened in UVA's atrocious defeat.
Minus
Notre Dame obliterated Virginia. The Fighting Irish jumped out to a 13-0 lead, were cruising 41-24 at halftime, and never looked back. If you had things to do this New Year’s Eve weekend, well, you would have been warranted to switch off the game and get around to doing something, anything, more productive.
Minus
There’s not a single highlight on the men’s official Twitter site (and no, we’re not calling it X.) Maybe there were some posted, and out of embarrassment, the athletic department scrubbed them. But I don’t think so. This game was effectively over early and no one covered themselves in glory. There was not a single play that made me think Virginia deserved to win this game.
Minus
Notre Dame entered the game as the 344th best three-point shooting team in the country. Bear in mind there are only 360 Division I men’s hoops programs. Their best three-point shooter? J.R. Konieczny, who was connecting on just 26% of his long range attempts. So what the heck happened? Notre Dame came out of fire, making 4/4 from deep en route to that 13-0 lead. They were 7/10 at the half before cooling down a bit to end up at 11/23 on the day. Konieczny made three of those first four treys including this one at the buzzer.
How do you compete against that?
Minus
Virginia for their part, responded by going 2/11 from deep.
Oh, what the heck, let’s just get all the bad news out of the way. Virginia shot 38% from the floor as Reece Beekman, Andrew Rohde and Isaac McKneely combined to go 7/30. As a team, Virginia was 10/18 or 56% from the free throw line. (Coming in, the Hoos had been shooting 65% from the charity stripe, and somehow they managed to lower that percentage.)
There’s only one shooter on this team, and that’s McKneely. Since the opening minutes of the first game against Tarleton State, when a walk-on was assigned to guard McKneely, the rest of the world has woken up to the notion that McKneely can shoot, and they are guarding him. Surprising notion, right? The problem is that McKneely is very static. As coach Tony Bennett has returned to his continuity ball screen offense it is Andrew Rohde who is running around the screens, not McKneely. And McKneely needs the motion because over the last three games, mostly catching the ball flat-footed on the perimeter, he’s gone 5/27 from the field and 4/17 from deep.
Related: Matt's take on this debacle.
Minus
Reece Beekman got outplayed by a freshman guard who came into the contest with more turnovers than assists. That would be Markus Burton who finished with 15 points on 6/10 shooting and had 8 assists. Burton, far more than Beekman, dictated the tempo. More surprisingly, Burton blew by Beekman to get into the lane almost at will. It was Reece’s worst game defensively that I can remember. If it’s just a one-off poor performance, then maybe this game is just embarrassing. But if Beekman is wearing down on the defensive end because of the heavy load he’s shouldering trying to get this team past 55 points/game, this is going to be a long ugly season.
Minus
Oh, wait, it already is.
Our friends over at Streaking the Lawn have published a poll to assess Cavalier Nation’s pessimism.
This team has three losses and none of them have been remotely competitive. 65-41 against Wisconsin. 77-54 vs Memphis and now, by the shockingly similar score of 76-54, losers to Notre Dame. This is getting ugly. Fast. Ryan Dunn had the best looking stat line of the game – 6/9 shooting for 13 points – but he let the ball slip out of his fingers three times for what should have been easy finishes at the rim. Jordan Minor and Blake Buchanan each fumbled away nice entry passes from Beekman, that again, should have been converted. If you can’t shoot from deep, can’t convert at the pin stripe, and get outrebounded 40-27, there aren’t many avenues left for winning games.
The good news is that the ACC schedule is kind of soft for January: Louisville twice, Wake Forest, the two Techs (Georgia and Virginia) and a rematch against Notre Dame.
The bad news? If the team plays like this, it will not matter.
Next Up: Virginia hosts Louisville on Wednesday, January 3rd. Game time is 7pm and the game will be on ESPN2.
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