Gardner-Webb Runnin Bulldogs

Virginia opens up the 2019 NCAA Tournament in Columbia, South Carolina, against the Big South tournament-winner Gardner-Webb. The Runnin’ Bulldogs, like most low- and mid-majors, are coming to the Big Dance not just merely happy to be there, but instead intending to make their own Cinderella moment against a UVA team that has historically struggled against double-digit seeds (more on this in the Keys). Virginia will come into this game not taking the 16-seed lightly, but will the Hoos instead be wound too tight? How dangerous are the Bulldogs, the small private college of under 3,000 students, traveling a scant 2-hour bus ride from just across the North Carolina border, going to be?

Game Details:

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

The ABC’s of Gardner-Webb:

A) This is another small, spread lineup. The joy of the mid-major, where competent big men are a rare find, is that the good teams instead have been on the forefront of the small ball revolution to survive. Gardner-Webb, like mid-majors we’ve faced in previous tournaments (Coastal Carolina, Belmont, UNC-Wilmington, and UMBC all included), will deploy a very guard-dominant, perimeter-oriented roster. Starters 1-4 are all arguably guards, including their small-4, and second leading scorer, Perez, who took 133 3’s on the season. Regarding their 5-spot, they rotate a trio of 6’6″ players in that position. Two are capable of being bangers, starter Laster and reserve Miller, though while Miller is strictly a paint-oriented post a la Reuter, Laster has some Bonzie Colson to his game in the way he uses his size and strength to play downhill from the perimeter. They pull off this small lineup because they all can shoot; every starter plus Jamison shot at least 37% from 3 in conference play, many of them better than 40%. They led the Big South in 3P% at a team clip of 38.8%, though like UVA, just because they can shoot doesn’t mean they bomb away.

Only 39% of their shots were from behind the arc, a rate that was 10th in the 11-team league. They spread things out not to shoot the lights out, but instead to open up the lane for primarily the dribble-drive and the occasional post up. Virginia’s defense will have to strike a balance between respecting the shooters but protecting the lane. While the Bulldogs aren’t elite across the board offensively (they’re not that tight with the ball, for instance, and terrible on the offensive glass), they are elite shooting the ball, with a Big South-best eFG% of 55%.

B) They’re a cohesive, experienced club. The Bulldogs benefit from an element of veteran stability. Head coach Tim Craft is wrapping his 6th season in Boiling Springs, so this is entirely his program with his players at this point. He’s only had one losing season in his tenure, which began in 2013 after five seasons assisting at Auburn and East Carolina (all under head coach Jeff Lebo). He’s also got a roster full of organically developed players, not a single high-major castoff or other transfer among them. They’ve got a 5th-year senior as the team leader in 2-guard Efianayi, another 5th year in backup center Miller, and a true senior anchoring the post in DJ Laster. Reserve forward Jamison is a 4th-year junior, and starting wing Johnson and backup PG Turner are in their 3rd year in the program. That’s 6 of their Top 8 with at least 3 years of experience playing for Craft.

C) They run a very conservative defense. The Bulldogs are not a gimmicky defensive team, nor do they have a very strong defensive identity. They won’t full court press, or try and feast off UVA turnovers in the half court (they ranked 9th of 11 in the Big South in defensive turnover rate). They’ll throw in occasional zone looks to mix things up but mostly play a condensed man defense to try and limit the liability their lack of size creates. Even with that condensed (dare I say, packed?) man defense, they still struggle to keep teams off the boards. They’re very diligent about not fouling, but sometimes that means they give up poorly contested looks. Against Big South foes, they do tend to push their defense out to challenge shooters, but against the bigger Hoos (even if we go “small” we’re still going to have a size advantage at the 4 and 5), the Dogs are going to dare UVA to beat them with the long ball and gamble on us having a cold-shooting night.

Their Season To Date

Gardner-Webb is 23-11 on the season. They went 11-6 in the Big South (3rd place, regular season) before winning 3 games in the Big South Tournament. UVA and G-W share four common opponents, all of whom UVA beat. They lost at VCU by 12 and at VT by 28. They also won at GT by 10 and at Wake Forest by 4. Most recently they won at Radford for the conference title (true road game) on Sunday, March 10th by 11 points.

The Big South was ranked by KenPom as the nation’s 19th best conference (out of 32), and G-W finished behind Radford and Campbell in the regular season standings. Radford was a giant-killer in its own right, owning wins at Notre Dame and Texas. Getting the Big South champ is not the gimme it was to get, say, the MEAC champ like UVA did in 2016.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Pound the lane. Gardner-Webb is going to want UVA to take a lot of 3’s. Yes, that’s a risk, as we know UVA is capable of some hot-shooting nights (between the wins over GT to NCSU, UVA shot at least 43% as a team in every game, over 50% on 3 occasions). But neither is UVA immune to a cold shooting night contributing to a loss. We shot just 21% from 3 in the ACCT loss to FSU, 18% in the loss at Cameron, and 28% in a scare at VCU. And of course, in previous tournaments, we shot 18% from 3 in getting knocked out last year and 7% (not a typo) in losing to UF in 2017. Coach Craft may choose to roll the dice that the key to beating UVA is to play for a similar off night.

There will be nights where UVA needs to warm up from 3 to surive and advance. This game should not be one of those nights. Their 2P% defense was only mediocre in the undersized Big South, and UVA will have size advantages in most every lineup it throws out there, especially when one of our guards sits and we go with Hunter at the 3. Refuse to be cowed by a packed-in defense. The scheme must emphasize either continuity ball screens or a high-Sides formation to generate downhill action, enable drive-and-dump opportunities, or just let our forwards and centers score over undersized defenders. Oh, and big bodies congregating at the rim also lend themselves to offensive rebounding over the 6’5″ and 6’6″ G-W “bigs,” meaning putbacks and kickouts for second chance points. Take what the tournament draw has given us… an undersized opponent that UVA should not be afraid to attack at the rim.

2) Avoid dumb whistles. One statistical area where G-W jumps off the page is in getting to the free throw line. They led the Big South in team FT rate, with Efianayi, Perez, Miller, and Laster all among the league leaders in whistles drawn and individual FT rate. We talked above about how they shoot primarily with the intention of setting up the inside game, and while they do like to score at the rim, they like to draw whistles even more. In their league title win over Radford, the Dogs racked up an insane 28-3 advantage in FT attempts. In their win over Wake Forest in December, G-W went to the line an astounding 40 times!

Virginia is one of the better teams in the ACC and nation at minimizing the FTA damage, ranking 45th nationally and 4th in the league in defensive FT rate, so there’s room for some optimism here. But playing in the NCAAT is a different beast. The refs call an incredibly tight game in the 1st round, and early fouls by Devon and Wilkins last year took UVA out of its starting lineup prematurely. Virginia is going to want to play physical, aggressive defense out of the gate to set a tone, but bang-bang plays at the rim, anything that looks questionable, is going to have the refs erring on the side of whistling the defense. Those early calls going against UVA is not only going to take UVA starters off the floor (though at least our reserves in Key, Diakite, and Huff are a step up from the reserves we leaned on last year), but embue the underdogs with confidence and momentum.

3) Fast start. Virginia hasn’t had a dominant first half since the Pitt game, and arguably hasn’t had a dominant first half against a good team since beating VT in January. The Hoos have been making hay lately as a 2nd half team, playing a see-saw first half before making a run in the 2nd. But this is exactly the type of game where that can’t happen.

Some numbers for you:

16-seed Coastal Carolina (2014): Tied at 10:00 of 1H, max CC lead of 10 (3:17 to go in 1H), CC led by 5 at halftime, only lost by 11.

15-seed Belmont (2015): Belmont led by 6 early (14:06 to go 1H), down only 1 at 10:00, down 8 at halftime, only lost by 12.

12-seed UNC-W (2017): UNC-G led by 4 at 10:00 of 1H, max lead of 15 (7:25 to go 1H), down 1 at halftime, only lost by 5.

16-seed UMBC (2018): Led by 1 at 10:00, tied at halftime, and we know how it ended.

With the exception of Hampton in 2016 (4 point UVA lead after 10 minutes, widened to 19 at halftime… coincidentally the only year UVA got near the Final Four), UVA has had some ugly first halves against its double-digit-seeded openers in NCAAT in the recent peak era, leading to UVA going 1-4 ATS in its NCAAT first round games in that span. That’s a troubling trend.

If Virginia hasn’t assumed control of this game by the time we go into the locker room at halftime, I’ll be very disappointed. Doesn’t mean we won’t win, but it really won’t bode well for the team’s tournament chances.

Predictions:

The (justifiably) paranoid Hoo fans are going to look at Gardner-Webb and see a veteran team with a solid record and some particular strengths that should worry UVA. Well… yeah. Mid-majors rarely win their conferences without that stereotypical profile, and it describes most mid-majors that get to the Dance. Don’t think that the Bulldogs are any better or worse than any other teen-seeded, upset-minded Cinderella candidate.

Yes UVA must absolutely take them seriously. Even leaving aside last year, 16 seeds have put scares into 1 seeds on other occasions, and 2 seeds have lost to 15 seeds plenty of times. But honestly, there’s no excuse not to expect UVA to win this one.

Virginia may finally, hopefully be healthy this year (knocking on every piece of wood in reach), and hasn’t lost to a team outside KenPom’s Top 15 this year. The metrics put Gardner-Webb on par, difficulty-wise, with Wake Forest and Marshall, teams UVA beat by 23 and 36, respectively, each win being well in hand in the first half. So again, no excuse for the Hoos not to similarly get out of this game with a 20+ point win. With a talent and size advantage at a number of spots on the floor, the Hoos should be able to dictate the flow of the game. Don’t get cute, don’t take the bait into taking contested jumpers, and play a power game to dominate at the rim. I do think some tightness will plague the Hoos in the first half which will ultimately depress the win margin (meaning I’m predicting us to fail to cover the spread), but in the end Wahoo nation will breathe a sigh of relief and move on to Sunday.

Hoos Win 66-54