season at UVA, about the same time, the game we got our teeth kicked in.
Sadly, it looks like the same thing this year. We were going into a 5 game stretch that 1-4 seemed the likely outcome, and it won't be even that now.
The Syracuse game, while disappointing, did seem like a moral victory, despite the loss, by having a shot. It had the feeling this stretch could feel like 1.5-3.5, instead of 1-4.
I wasn't able to start watching until the mid 3rd quarter, when wd were up 41-22, so what I saw looked atrocious, to say the least. But, it's what we've seen every year under Brooks, overachievers in OOC play, and unraveling in ACC play.
What I saw was a bunch of very undisciplined play tonight. Mabry chucked up an unnecessary 3 on one possession from farther than I've seen a guy shoot all year, Brooks does nothing but run around outside the arc, seemingly afraid to cross it, I assume for fear of not shooting her beloved 3's, and a lot of really sloppy ball handling by whomever had the ball.
In looking at the play by play, in the time before I could tune in, it seemed only Emery had things going on, and were it not for her, we'd have been run out of the gym earlier. Late, she seemed to press, to pick up for everyone else, and just couldn't carry the load.
On D, while I hate the arc under the basket, and the arbitrariness of it being a "no charge zone," we seem to not know it even exists, and were trying to draw the charge in there anyway. We got caught flat footed, particularly late, giving up easy, uncontested layups from UVA's half court offense.
Barring a huge reset, and winning the 50/50 games (which now are all of them we aren'ta huge underdog in), this team may not even pull a .500 record to get an NIT bid, because they are going to be fragile mentally, now, going into a couple of truly unwinnable games. If they get hammered in those, they may not recover mentally.
On the bench, I think we held on to timeouts that we should have used to stop the momentum UVA was obviously building.
I was neither excited nor disappointed with the Brooks hire, but I am starting to get the feeling, you hire a CAA coach, you get a CAA coach. He seems to be good at winning against that level, out of conference, but doesn't pass muster in the ACC.
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