Friends.
I say friends because I’ve come to know many of you over the past couple of years doing this and have very much enjoyed sharing a mutual bonding over a common passion:
UVa Basketball.
When I started doing this it was right after the NIT season, which was one of the lower points of CTB’s 15 year run. I didn’t start writing about the team because it was good – certainly at least not at the time I started (although we’d trade that now) – but because of the passion the program sparked and wanting to talk about the strategic highs and lows we were navigating at the time.
I told myself then that I couldn’t lose determination to write about the team if it began playing poorly. That in both the good and the bad there’s always something to take away from the game and to learn about the future of the team. What are we building toward and around? What lessons can we learn about how we coach and operate the team?
Through that, I’ve diligently written about almost every game over the past 2.5 years. And not just short blurbs and talking points – typically between 25 video clips and thousands of thousands of words about each. There were some exceptions, though. After extreme blowouts about which it just seemed like the team didn’t show up and there wasn’t a ton to take away from it – like the Virginia Tech loss @ Tech last year. I also didn’t recap the final loss of the season – the Furman game nor the Colorado State game. The reason being, it felt like piling on and wasn’t fun to revisit – sure, but also because it wasn’t clear how similar the team would be next time it played. The review wouldn’t be toward that something that would exist, like that, again.
In many ways, this season feels like both of those scenarios. Many of the games are not competitive and have been played and coached poorly – and so analyzing them feels a bit like piling on while saying much of the same thing over and over again. But, after watching the last three games, I also don’t know what this team is building toward nor what good analyzing it does. For the first time since CTB took over the program, the effort isn’t there on the court – some players are quiet-quitting (and one isn’t getting on the floor at all). More, it doesn’t appear like there’s much of a future there toward which this team is playing/building. I will be shocked if there aren’t wholesale changes to the program this offseason; which should usher in new leadership and, in all likelihood, many new players (although there are a couple I hope will stay – if they do, it’ll be under a different system).
Furthermore, it also appears like this offseason will be the busiest ever since I’ve started the site. If there is a new coach (and I’ll probably do something later this year about my thoughts on this more concretely), I’ll get to do deep dives on their offensive and defensive systems, and there will probably be more Tracking A Transfer pieces than we’ve ever had (by a lot) in one offseason. So, I’m going to need to have the batteries fully charged.
Because of all of this, I am going to discontinue the individual game recaps for the remainder of this season. I’ll still be watching the games (probably a couple of times, just not a crazy number of times) and will be active on social media about them; and I’ll still write the occasional broader high-level piece – but I’m going to ease up on the day-to-day grind so that I’m fresh and ready to tackle the new, new at a blistering pace (which, who knows, might be the pace we play at next season) headed into this offseason. To that point, it’ll probably feel more like the Summer schedule of posting than an in-season one. The game recaps will resume next year and, should things start off, or even go poorly all year (shudder to think) I’ll still cover the team as doggedly as I’ve done for the past few years.
I’ll just say thanks, again, for those of you who have been following the site and discussing the content with me throughout this journey. Some since I started writing before the 2022 season, some more recently. The site isn’t going anywhere, and neither am I; it’ll just be a slightly different cadence in the short-term.
Go Hoos!
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