—That was a Gardner-Webb home game today. They were loud and plentiful. There were lots more UVA fans at that arena when we there in December which surprised me. Hopefully more fans show up Sunday.
—Clark and Salt playing together is not good. I wish we wouldn’t start Salt and get behind like this. Slow starts will eventually come back to burn us.
—Lots of UMBC nerves out there today. Our fans were quiet, tight, and scared and so were our players. It took us well into the second half to shake that. Losing to 16’s back to back would have been devastating to our program. Glad that 16-seed monkey is off our back.
—Clark played poorly in the first half, but he redeemed himself in the second half. FWIW, he was the only Virginia player consistently knocking down threes in both warmup sessions today. Probably should have looked for his jumper more.
—Huff played well enough today, but five minutes total PT counting with the scrubs is not enough. But I agree with riding the hot hand of Diakite in the second half. Our guards really need to look for our bigs rolling to the basket more.
—UMBC (I mean GW) had no answer for Diakite inside. There’s no reason it should have taken a full half to start going inside. Inside is where to win the game when you can’t make a three. Huff literally was head and shoulders above everyone on GW (not to mention Mamadi). If we had put MD and JH together in the post like we did at Syracuse, they would have rolled GW early. No way they could stop that, I wish we made them match up with us. We didn’t even try that lineup.
-Proud of our team today. They could have folded, but prevailed going away. Hoping that new found confidence carries over to OU. They won’t score 95 on us like they did vs Ole Miss. By the way, Ole Miss deserved to lose just for that horrible looking land shark mascot they have.
—Our defense really picked up in the second half. GW fans didn’t understand it and were going crazy. They thought we were fouling every possession as they had never seen D like that. Refs did a good job of letting us guard.
—Our players finally started having fun towards the end. We need to carry that over, so our guys will play loose and have fun. That’s how you take off NCAA pressure.
—Clark and Salt playing together is not good. I wish we wouldn’t start Salt and get behind like this. Slow starts will eventually come back to burn us.
—Lots of UMBC nerves out there today. Our fans were quiet, tight, and scared and so were our players. It took us well into the second half to shake that. Losing to 16’s back to back would have been devastating to our program. Glad that 16-seed monkey is off our back.
—Clark played poorly in the first half, but he redeemed himself in the second half. FWIW, he was the only Virginia player consistently knocking down threes in both warmup sessions today. Probably should have looked for his jumper more.
—Huff played well enough today, but five minutes total PT counting with the scrubs is not enough. But I agree with riding the hot hand of Diakite in the second half. Our guards really need to look for our bigs rolling to the basket more.
—UMBC (I mean GW) had no answer for Diakite inside. There’s no reason it should have taken a full half to start going inside. Inside is where to win the game when you can’t make a three. Huff literally was head and shoulders above everyone on GW (not to mention Mamadi). If we had put MD and JH together in the post like we did at Syracuse, they would have rolled GW early. No way they could stop that, I wish we made them match up with us. We didn’t even try that lineup.
-Proud of our team today. They could have folded, but prevailed going away. Hoping that new found confidence carries over to OU. They won’t score 95 on us like they did vs Ole Miss. By the way, Ole Miss deserved to lose just for that horrible looking land shark mascot they have.
—Our defense really picked up in the second half. GW fans didn’t understand it and were going crazy. They thought we were fouling every possession as they had never seen D like that. Refs did a good job of letting us guard.
—Our players finally started having fun towards the end. We need to carry that over, so our guys will play loose and have fun. That’s how you take off NCAA pressure.
