Author: Cuts from The Corner

Well, after a little time to sit and regroup, and for the first time in a couple of years since there was a coaching search last offseason, it’s time to dive into the first “State of The Program” under Ryan Odom. This comes on the heels of a narrow loss against an under-seeded Tennessee team…

Year one of Ryan Odom as Head Coach of the Virginia Men’s Basketball Team is in the books and I must say that I’m very encouraged! Of course, I’d much rather we still be playing and heading into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, but it wasn’t meant to be this year. Still, a…

Three games in one – we made a run to the ACC Tournament final before a four-point loss against Duke. For games bunched together like this, I’m going to write about the whole event and relevant things heading into the NCAA Tournament – so that means games against Duke, Miami, and N.C. State all incorporated.…

Beating Tech is always a nice way to close a season, especially a 27-4 one. With the regular season in the rearview mirror and the ACC Tournament already underway as of this writing, it seems fitting to say what a fun and resounding success year one of the Ryan Odom tenure was. Of course, every…

I was hoping that this game would represent a bounce back after Saturday’s struggle in Durham. Fortunately, we emerged victorious and locked up the #2 seed in the ACC Tournament. Unfortunately, it was a sleepy performance of sorts where we did just enough, but were never able to put our foot on the gas entirely.…

We got run out of the gym. It happens to most teams across most seasons at some point; but this was the first time this year that I was disappointed in the team. It wasn’t the 26-point margin, either… it was that we played scared. Not everyone. I thought De Ridder played pretty well considering…

Allow me to regale you with a story about something that I thought was going to be a trap game and turned out to be a drubbing. It was a game in which we scored .94 points per possession in the first half… but held the Wolfpack to .59! Then we turned around and scored…

This was a heck of a game. A deceptive Q2 victory against the #35 ranked team in the NET at home… I’ll be surprised if that doesn’t upgrade before season’s end. There are close games against teams, like Notre Dame and B.C., where it’s clear that we should be doing better. That wasn’t the case…

Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes during the time I’ve been writing about the team, there’s been a loss that’s felt so uninformative and so just… everything fell apart… that it just hasn’t seemed productive to write about it. The game in Blacksburg two years ago, for example. This game, on the other hand, almost feels like…

Over the years, I have kind of enjoyed it when over half of a piece is about one thing. It really allows us to sink our teeth in. That’s what we’re going to do in this one – a churn through our defense on Bruce Thornton from the Buckeyes; what we tried and what we…

“This team has too many good shooters to all go cold at once,” I wrote in what seems like a distant life. Whoops. Technically, thanks to some Jacari White heroics, it was true in this game… but I’m shocked at how much it’s become a pretty consistent issue on a game-to-game basis during the latter…

Who even played well, by their set standard in this game? Sam Lewis and Ugonna Onyenso most would confidently say? I’d say Ugo for sure. Sam played quite well offensively but not the most complete game on defense. Point being, it still wasn’t even close to one of our most polished games this season, we…

We’re still not on our “A game” at the moment, despite winning this game by 20-points. The 67-47 contest seemed like another frustration in shooting… heck, the announcers got the memo and were talking about it all game in weird and nonsensical ways, but I won’t examine that too closely. Yet, we ended up finishing…

It’s fair to say that the team has entered a bit of a mid-season slump, of sorts. Fortunately, while doing so, they’ve managed to still win two (more challenging than they should have been) more games after the UNC defeat. The “slump” can be taken quite literally; after shooting 30% from deep against UNC and…

Working double duty between this game and the B.C. game, it seems. Hopefully that one won’t be nearly as interesting as these last two! In many ways, this game felt a lot like a continuation of the UNC game – from the opposition’s hot shooting, to some of the team’s struggles, to who had their…

Alright, this is a drive-by Cuts. I’ve never done this before – doing a game recap after a different game happened… but we’re going to. Partly, because I’m a bit of an obsessive completionist… but not FULLY! There have been times in the past where my schedule hasn’t allowed a write up and we’ve just…

Hello, Cuts Readers! That feels so formal, but Jim Nantz already took, “Hello, friends!” Ah well, we’ll noodle on it. The point is, if you’re reading these, then I am not only appreciative but feel like we’re on this fandom journey together. So, thanks for your attention and thoughts and your willingness to engage with…

As an organization, we’re still kind of navigating the fallout from the end of the CTB era. The success Coach Odom is having so quickly and how well the team is playing on both sides of the ball is helping to mitigate that; but it was always going to be a little messy if we…

Another dominant win over a fringe bubble team who, previously, had been undefeated in Q1 games. This one against the 8th highest scoring player in the country, the 6’2″ Ebuka Okorie. In holding him to 14 points on 5-20 shooting, we kept him 8-points under his season average; and he’s exactly the kind of guard…

Why do we write? Is it to share knowledge and ideas? Is it to be remembered for a longer period of time? Is it to validate and test our own ideas or to shape/steer the dialogue… or both? Is it to create something that we care about or find enjoyable… or think is important? Is…

I love a good debate, as you’re probably aware if you’ve read the site throughout the years. So far, through this young season, there haven’t been too many polarizing topics, though. The closest seems to have centered around the use of Dallin Hall (spoiler: while I don’t think he needs this many minutes, especially when…

Insane turnaround for a game with so much content. I thought about how best to do this one and decided, we’re just going to go narrative of the game again, talk about the key issues, and then show a few highlights of each as we get there. This was a wild triple OT loss in…

Well hello again, friends! I hope you have been having a splendid holiday season. I figured it time to get this review in prior to kicking off conference play at VT – perhaps it will serve to remind everyone of the recent game and get us ready. Keep in mind, though, that all of these…

Hey everyone, really tough turn around with the next game just two days removed, and I wasn’t able to watch/record live… plus, it’s the holidays, so there really isn’t time to grind out the same game review in the way I normally do, broken down into categories of areas with the same number of clips.…

I pondered what I was going to do for this one because it’s another game against one of the worst teams in college basketball… after having just done well against two real tests. And we played… completely dominantly at times and pretty poorly at others. I do think the team has a potential concern keeping…

Fun thought exercise: If I told you that we would turn the ball over 21 times against Dayton, Malik Thomas would play 13 minutes, and TDR would struggle from the floor/finish with 7 points… what would your prediction of the score have been? Well, all of those things happened, and we still won a quasi-comfortable…

Well, we beat the Q1 out of Texas… and bumped ourselves up to #15 in the NET in the process. I was confident we had the ability to win coming in; but I wasn’t expecting the absolute shellacking. It didn’t even feel as close as the 19-point final differential. This is the kind of game…

Let’s do a little level-setting here. Queens became a Division I school for the first time this year. That being said, they’re much closer to Marshall in terms of quality of competition (if you believe KenPom) than they are Rider or NCCU. This was a game we should have won comfortably… and did… but there…

I was travelling this weekend, the games were on CBS, it’s two in a short window of time, and we’re headed into Thanksgiving. All of these factors converged into this piece unfortunately including no video clips. No Cuts in a Cuts piece? Sadly. I did want to give some initial thoughts and musings over the…

104 points! The first time we’ve scored 100 points in a game since, well, the last time we played Marshall. This game was a tale of two-halves. The first half, in which we scored 61 points and held the Thundering Herd to 33, was a complete thing of beauty. This was the first game of…

I would call this our best and most intentional performance of the season so far… and we were still pretty sloppy for the first 6-7 minutes of the game or so, and seemed to have some fatigue later. We also got the deep bench into the game with three full minutes left to go… all…

Hey everyone – let’s shake off those football blues with some Cuts! This was an odd game in which we led 36-10 after the first 13 minutes of the game and 70-40 with about 7 minutes left in the game… and ended up winning by 19. There’s going to be a tendency to look at,…

Well, well, well… after a long offseason with the most transfer pieces ever, and a half-season hiatus due to all that was… last season, we’re back with a piece on a game that counts! I’m going to try to make these a little shorter this year on a game-by-game basis, especially prior to conference play,…

Ahhhhh! An actual televised scrimmage! Something I can Cut up without bootleg vibes! We’re doing it!!!!! Ahem. There would have been even more to review if Mark Byington hadn’t gone full villain mode by blacking out the scrimmage in Nashville, including the WWE miced up during the game move. Coach Odom had a few comments…

Well, hello! We’re into October, which is not far off from scrimmage season… which means that we’re probably overdue for this piece. Welcome to the 2025-2026 version of “Hopes” where I break down what I’d like to see from the team during the upcoming season, including playing time and minutes distribution for our roster. As…

Hallo, and welcome to the second ever installation of the Cuts From The Corner “International Series” in which we’ll focus on the 7-footer from Deutschland, Johann Grünloh. Feel free to check out Part 1 for some thoughts on Thijs De Ridder. As a reminder, the key difference in this series from “Tracking A Transfer” is…

Welcome to the first installation in my “International Series.” Unlike “Tracking A Transfer” where I do a deep dive on all impactful incoming portal transfers, this series will be reserved for international players, outside of the typical high school recruitment process, who have already been playing professionally overseas. I’m also going to name each of…

We’ve done it, all! The sixth and final (pending figuring out what to do about the international players) installment in this offseason’s Tracking A Transfer. This one will feature Malik Thomas, the 5th year Senior who required a waiver to play for us this year and who, allegedly we just made such a competitive offer…

Ugonna get sick of how often I make this joke over the next year! Hello, my Prime Cuts. If you’re an avid reader of these and enjoy getting into the weeds with me, or if this is your first time and you’re thinking “wait, this is how long?” I appreciate you! It can be read…

Oh, hello! Funny seeing you there. Thanks for joining me for Part 4 of my never-ending 2025 Tracking A Transfer series in which I break down all of our incoming transfers (who have tape at least at the collegiate level). Part 1 on Sam Lewis can be found here. Part 2 on Jacari White can…

Welcome to Part 3 of 2025’s Tracking A Transfer series; this one featuring Devin Tillis, a PF from UC Irvine (the Anteaters is an awesome mascot). For previous installments, please feel free to check out Part 1 on Sam Lewis and Part 2 on Jacari White. Chronologically, Dallin Hall would have been next (and I’ll…

Welcome to Part 2 of 2025’s Tracking A Transfer series; this one featuring Jacari White, a SG from North Dakota State. Part 1 on Sam Lewis can be found following that link. We will have several more to come and I’ll continue trying to pump these out in, give or take, two-week intervals throughout the…

Hello and welcome to Part 1 of 2025’s Tracking A Transfer; a series that’s going to be more of a lift this year than in those prior as we’re turning over (almost – big shout out to Elijah Gertrude) basically the entire roster. I’m going to attempt to “streamline” these some by Cuts standards, but…

Navigating change is a tricky thing as a fan; especially when it’s transitioning from a time that was so objectively great. Even at a time when improvement was clearly needed. Tony Bennett retired just before the start of last season because he no longer felt like he was the person for the job in the…

Hi, there, remember me? Okay, so maybe it’s only been one game. My intention was not to jump back in – and this is NOT a game recap, nor will it have any clips. I wanted to jump in to discuss that SMU game and, especially, the ending, though. Firstly, absolutely fantastic to see Blake…