The Virginia basketball team closed out the road portion of its schedule with a win on Monday night when it ran away from Syracuse in the last 15 minutes for a 79-53 victory. The Cavaliers finished the year with just one road loss, which is also the only road loss in two years of ACC play.
Monday’s result also moved UVA to within one win of another ACC Regular Season Championship. With a victory Saturday against Louisville in the home finale, the Hoos would secure at least a share of the regular season title and the No. 1 seed in the upcoming ACC Tournament. It would also give the program its fourth regular season title in the past six seasons.
So, yeah, it’s a great time to be a Hoo fan. On to the Double Bonus.
The 3-Point Barrage
By the end of the game with Syracuse, Virginia had knocked down an absurd 18 of 25 3-pointers for 72% shooting. Cuse coach Jim Boeheim said that shooting display was “as good as I’ve ever seen it shot, put it that way.” UVA’s performance broke the records by a Syracuse opponent in the Carrier Dome for 3-pointers made and 3-point shooting percentage.
If you saw Virginia’s first 3-point shot of the game, it certainly wasn’t a case of foreshadowing. Kyle Guy not only missed, but the ball went completely past the rim and smacked the backboard. That shot was so bad that my son said something along the lines of ‘What was that? Kyle Guy is a good 3-point shooter.’
UVA started with that miss and ended with a missed 3-point attempt from Kody Stattmann in the final minute. Just about everything in between went in as the Hoos made 18 of the other 23 3-pointers attempted. Certainly, the Cavaliers had a lot to do with that. Guy rolled to an 8-of-10 shooting night after his first miss, Ty Jerome hit 5 of 6, and De’Andre Hunter knocked down 5 of 7.
Syracuse, however, struggled to provide much resistance on many of those shots as the Hoos confused the 2-3 zone assignments with excellent spacing, movement, eye fakes, and accurate passing. I counted 15 made 3-pointers that I charted as either wide open or semi open shots. That broke down as 7 wide open looks - including the first make for Guy when the Orange inexplicably let him cut straight toward the ball on an inbounds play and the first make for Jerome when the zone didn’t even rotate to him at the top of the key - and 8 semi open looks.
So how did the Hoos stretch out that zone to create so many clean looks? Obviously, there were some blown rotations in there but the visitors did some things to challenge the decisions of the zone defenders. The most discussed one, at least on the message boards and social media, was putting Ty Jerome in the high post and having him retreat dribble while moving the shooters on the wings. More on that one in a moment. Here are a couple of others.
Draw The Bottom, Screen The Middle
The Syracuse zone morphs and changes based on what alignments the opponents present, but at the core of the defense is a ‘bump’ scheme with the four outside defenders. A ‘bump’ in the case of the 2-3 zone is when a forward on the bottom of the zone picks up a wing assignment until a defender at the top of the zone rotates over and bumps that forward back down toward the baseline.
UVA challenged that rotation on two of its 3-pointers by reversing the ball across the floor early in the shot clock and putting a shooter in the corner on that side of the floor. By reversing the ball, it brings a lower forward up to take the pass initially but that leaves the corner uncovered for a moment. Either the center has to rotate out and challenge a potential shot or the forward needs to help on the reversal pass and then recover to the corner shooter. In both cases, looking for this early in the shot clock ran a little against tendency for the Hoos and, perhaps, caught Cuse out of sync.
Here’s a look at the first one. Out of a timeout in the first half, UVA put De’Andre Hunter in the left corner and Kyle Guy on the left wing. The reversal pass from Ty Jerome to Kyle Guy essentially guarantees at least a momentary rotation from the bottom forward in the zone because Guy has to be accounted for by defenses. Paschal Chukwu is keeping an eye on Mamadi Diakite behind the zone on the opposite side as that reversal pass happens so a rotation all the way to Hunter is a long one to make.
Guy immediately converted a pass to Hunter in the corner and he made the wide open look just four seconds into the shot clock.
In the second half, Virginia did it again. This time, Hunter and Guy switched spots. Jerome made the early reversal to Hunter and the Cuse forward rotated that direction, but tried to pass it off quickly to a guard at the top. Not quick enough. Hunter immediately threw the ball up the sideline to Guy alone in the corner and he scored against a desperate rotation attempt back from Oshae Brissett.
Virginia further complicated Chukwu’s potential rotation this time by screening him on the baseline. Diakite pinned him on the block to make sure he could not head for the corner to help on that triple. That’s a personnel based thing to account for the zone. In the first example above, Kihei Clark is on the opposite wing as a guard. In this case, Jay Huff is on the opposite side in the short corner so the bottom forward on the opposite side can account for Huff and Chukwu could be closer to the corner rotation.
Early in the first half, UVA tried to pin both potential corner rotations like it did a year earlier in the dome. In that case, Guy was again set up in the corner with Diakite shielding Chukwu in the post and Hunter attempting to back screen forward Elijah Hughes. Hughes was well prepared for that one and got around the screen quickly to prevent the corner pass. The Hoos scored on that exact look on the opening possession a year ago (here's that Double Bonus). Both looks follow.
Screen the zone look for Virginia.
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