It’s baby steps for the Hoos as they learn the 5-out offense that Coach Tony Bennett has just installed. But given that they’d presumably been practicing against it all pre-season, the Hoos did a particularly appalling job of handling the spacing of San Francisco’s own spread offense.

Virginia           60
San Francisco  61

Positive

Justin McKoy.  Last season McKoy took 13 shots. In the past two games he has already taken 12 and he has shown the energy that enamored him with Cavalier Nation. But let us not forget that he only played 104 minutes, so this really is his freshman year. While he was not alone, he did blow several coverages. We’re still in the baby-steps territory for McKoy, but he was the leading scorer for the Hoos along with….

Positive

Reece Beekman.  Beekman is smooth and he’s going to justify Bennett’s now-famous assertion that “he’s special” all season. Beekman looks confident on the floor but he’s not trying to do too much. He’s not a natural defender and going forward his four fouls in 27 minutes might cause rotation problems. But for now he looks like another successful Bennett find at point guard.

Negative

Depth.  Not every coach wants the luxury of a 10 deep bench and I would include Bennett in that group. He is using these early out of conference games to tinker with the lineups – at one point he had Kody Stattmann defending the post – and we have to remember that we are playing for March. On this day, the rotations appeared shaky.

Negative

Slashing to the rim. Only we didn’t slash so much as lumber into the paint. Part of the 5-out offense is that it clears out the lane for the offense to attack on the dribble. And we did that, only not very well. The San Francisco defense was always able to stay in between the ball and the bucket as Sam Hauser, Trey Murphy, McKoy, Kihei Clark and Casey Morsell all barreled into the lane only to be bodied and failed to convert.

Positive

Tomas Woldetensae. The other part of the 5-out drive to the hoop is the kick out for the three. Only Woldetensae over the past two games has shown any inclination to collapse the defense and then kick out for the open 3.  Everybody needs to do a better job on this.

Negative

Three point shooting.  Holy Cow, Batman, this team couldn’t buy a three as the team went 3 – 12 and brought back scary nightmares of last year’s Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.  After combining to go 9 – 11 from deep against Towson, Hauser and Murphy went 0 – 4.

Negative

Kihei Clark.  Something is not right with Clark. I’m going to blame his hair, which looks horrid, but that is how he has played these past two games. He didn’t get any separation when he went to the rim, his threes were short, he missed his first three free throws (though he redeemed himself by making his last 7,) and he gave SF a four-point play by fouling on a three-pointer. It was a soft foul, but still.

Negative

Effort.  Credit where credit is due, but San Francisco just played harder than Virginia. To quote analyst Jay Bilas:  San Francisco is playing harder that Virginia, they’re just quicker to the ball.”  Hard to argue with that assessment.