The Good, the VPI, and the Ugly: UVA at Clemson
Streaking the lawn is on hold thanks to a winter storm, so the Hoos elected to start an ACC winning streak instead
The Good: Jayden Gardner is for real
If the Hoos hadn’t had such an inconspicuous (by their standards) start to the season, it’s easy to imagine Jayden Gardner beginning to garner some national media attention. Entering tonight’s game at Clemson, he was averaging 14.8 points per game and 7.8 rebounds per game, both team highs by pretty significant margins.
Then, he came out of the gate and absolutely bullied the Tigers from the opening tip, scoring 13 points in less than 13 minutes of game time while missing just one shot in that span to open the contest. He finished with 23 points on a very-efficient 7-11 from the field as well as 9-10 from the free throw line, and looked more solid defensively than he has all year.
Much ado was made of how Gardner would transition from East Carolina to the ACC on both ends of the floor. Would he be able to play his post-scoring style against increased athleticism in the ACC? Would he be able to figure out Tony Bennett’s notorious defensive scheme?
Offensively, Gardner’s raw numbers are down from ECU. But a closer look at the data reveals that he’s actually having the best offensive year of his career.
If you switch from his raw stat totals to Gardner’s per-100-possessions data, which eliminates the chilling effects of Virginia’s glacial pace, Gardner’s averaging a career high in points (33.5) and rebounds (17.6). He’s also shooting a career-high 57.5% from the field this year, despite taking more threes than he ever has before.
Defensively, there aren’t any great catch-all defensive stats (though it’s worth noting that he’s averaging a career high in blocks per 100 possessions), but Virginia allows .90 points per possession with him on the floor and 1.09 PPP with him off the floor entering tonight’s game, per Hoop-Reference.
And don’t forget about his Kawhi-esque game-winner, which I had the chance to watch live at JPJ and sent a small earthquake through the student section bleachers when it bounced into the basket.
Fourteen games in, we have a verdict: Jayden Gardner can hoop.
The VPI: Not much to complain about, but another down year in the ACC?
To be honest, I was ready to complain about Virginia struggling here — after what I thought was a pretty solid first half on both ends, the Hoos still trailed 37-36 at the break, and I texted one of my friends that I was pretty sure we were going to lose.
Lo and behold, Virginia played a tremendous half of basketball, held Clemson to just 28 points, hit a bunch of timely jump shots and free throws, and ended the Tigers’ 12-game home winning streak with a double-digit defeat.
The Hoos are 3-1 in the ACC and looked the best they have all season in that second half. Somehow, they continue to jury-rig efficient offense despite a total refusal to shoot threes (they were just 4-14 from the arc tonight), thanks in no small part to their dominant post players: tonight, Jayden Gardner, Francisco Caffaro, and Kadin Shedrick combined for 39 points on just 16 shots. Going 21-24 as a team from the line also helps. The defense looked like a true UVA suffocating defense for the first time all year late in the second half, as Clemson’s guards looked totally flummoxed by the Hoos’ perimeter pressure. Quite frankly, I have nothing bad to say about this team after tonight’s performance. We even got a ferocious Francisco Caffaro poster over Clemson’s Alex Hemenway.
We can turn elsewhere for a brief negative. What’s wrong with the ACC this year?
Aside from Duke, who looks head-and-shoulders better than everyone else in the league and will go as far as Paolo Banchero — cramps and all — can take them, there’s not an elite team in this conference. North Carolina has established themselves in the second tier with some solid wins after a shaky start.
Beyond that, are there any tournament locks? There’s just a quagmire of mediocrity below those two squads, and I fear that the ACC is going to cannibalize itself due to a wealth of parity and lack of overall talent, with only one or two teams from the rest of the conference sneaking into the NCAAT and everyone else left without even an invitation to the dance. Fingers crossed that lucky team is Virginia, but still: come on, ACC. Do better.
The Ugly: A COVID-era scheduling quirk
Clemson played what I’ll call a belated back-to-back: a road game against Virginia, followed by a fifteen-day break, followed by a home game against Virginia. Those snowstorms in Virgnia must’ve really slowed down travel, huh?
Just kidding. Clemson did technically have a game scheduled in between against Duke, but it was postponed due to the Blue Devils entering COVID protocols. Nothing too terrible — honestly, it was good for the Hoos to face the same opponent twice early in the year, because it’s a great benchmark for where they are as a team — but certainly something weird, which is why it goes in this category.
Add it to the long list of things people are going to look back at thirty years from now who didn’t live through this pandemic and wonder “huh?”
Looking Ahead: Jan. 8 @ North Carolina
There’s a good quote from James Bond author Ian Fleming: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” Replace “enemy action” with “a genuinely good basketball team,” and you can make that quote apply to Virginia’s upcoming date with UNC.
The Hoos are on a two-game win streak right now, with two pretty convincing road wins over middle-tier ACC teams. North Carolina is pretty clearly the second-best team in the conference right now, and if the Hoos can go into the Dean Dome and extend this winning streak to three road ACC games? It might be time to start drinking the Kool-Aid.