Virginia looks to rebound from a heartbreaking home loss to Iowa in the ACC-B1G Challenge as it welcomes Pitt. The Panthers similarly lost their Challenge game by 1 point at home, as both teams look to recapture momentum as they open ACC play. Pitt has struggled to get on track this season, but they’ll still enter JPJ upset-minded.

Game Details:

Date/Time: Friday, December 3rd, 8:00 PM Eastern
Location: John Paul Jones Arena, Charlottesville, VA
TV: ACC Network

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

Starters

Key Reserves

The ABC’s of Pitt:

A) They had a brutal offseason. Pitt didn’t have a lot of room for error after last year’s 10-12 (6-10) finish. But they saw two key starters transfer out in Xavier Johnson and Au’Diese Toney, followed by the NBA departure of star big man Justin Champagnie. But it got worse this fall, first when fifth year guard Nike Sibande tore an ACL and then when redshirt junior shooter Ithiel Horton was arrested for assaulting a police officer. It left the Panthers desperately short of experience, especially in the backcourt, pushing transfers, underclassmen, and even a walk-on into major roles.

B) They’ve got a huge lineup. There arguably isn’t a true point guard on this roster aside from former walk-on Ezeakudo. The guard losses discussed above have left the Panthers with only two recruited scholarship guards to work with, Odukale and Burton, and both of them are natural wings. The rest of the roster is a collection of forwards and bigs, six rotation players standing between 6’7″ and 6’9″. The roster construct means that many times Santos or Jeffress play as a jumbo 2-guard. UVA will be the smaller team at 3 or 4 positions mostly throughout the game, and Pitt will look to leverage that size advantage on both ends of the floor.

C) Their offense reflects their size, for better or worse. Pitt’s jumbo lineup features very few stretch options. Oladapo and Collier haven’t taken a 3 all season, and while Hugley, Gueye, Jeffress and Santos do attempt them to varying degrees, all hit between 17-29%. As such, they rarely take 3’s, only 28.7% of their shots coming from deep (328th nationally) and only 19% of their points coming from 3 (349th). They look to pound inside where they can leverage their size on the offensive glass, where they grab a solid 1/3 of their own misses (65th in the country, or just outside the top 20th percentile), and they draw a ton of fouls at the rim. But the lack of guards and the condensed nature of their offense does leave them very turnover prone, in the bottom 20% of the country in both live- and dead-ball turnover rate.

Their season to date:

Pitt is 2-5 on the season. Their lone wins are over UNC-Wilmington and Towson. They have bad losses to the Citadel and UMBC (yep, them) along with high major losses to WVU and Vanderbilt. Most recently they lost to Minnesota at home in the ACC-B1G Challenge 54-53.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Run deliberate, disciplined motion and zone offense. Lacking a lot of speed and versatility on the defensive end with so few guards at their disposal, Pitt is prone to defensive breakdowns in man sets when a team can run offense that gets them into switches and help rotations. Their zone defense isn’t much better. There are mismatches to be had if UVA can keep the ball moving throughout the shotclock, touching paint and moving the rock between a number of players. The size of Pitt on defense, especially where are guards are going to be towered over by the likes of Burton, Odukale, and Santos, will require creativity in creating open looks. But Pitt’s defense is conservative, they don’t force a ton of turnovers, so good ball movement should create good looks.

2) Frustrate Hugley. The sophomore big man has become Pitt’s breakout star this season, the lone bright spot on an otherwise disappointing club. Over the last two games he’s averaging 23 ppg and 10.5 rpg. It will be important for Shedrick and Caffaro to use their size to stay between Hugley and the basket. Hugley is built like an offensive lineman, and uses that size well both on the glass and around the rim to draw fouls, but can disappear when defended well as Vanderbilt was able to do in holding him to 0-6 shooting, 4 rebounds, and only one trip to the FT line.

3) Run off turnovers. Pitt’s sloppy with the ball this year, coughing it up at by far the worst rate in the league. UVA’s defense is tailored to be more opportunistic than we’re used to seeing, our steal rate a healthy 10.5 percent and this game could prove to be a big one for our ballhawks. Pitt won’t likely have the speed or discipline to get back in transition, so guys like Franklin and Beekman could be opportunistic off lost Pitt balls.

Predictions:

Which UVA team shows up to the opening tip? The one from the first half against Iowa or the second half? I think either would beat Pitt, but this could either be a game that’s way closer than it should be given Pitt’s odious start to the season, or an opportunity for UVA to get a comfortable start to league play with a 20-point blowout.

Despite Pitt’s bad losses to The Citadel and UMBC, they actually played undefeated Minnesota pretty tough, the game being decided on the final shot. That does indicate they’re fighting hard to salvage their season, and the size could pose trouble for UVA. Virginia will have to ensure that Pitt’s 3-Point shooting isn’t anomalously lights-out like Navy, Houston, and Iowa were in their wins (52%, 55%, and 48% respectively) over UVA, and the Panthers hew closer to their average of just 26.7% as a team. Similarly, Virginia’s defense which as a rule doesn’t put teams on the FT line too often has to play clean again against a Panther team looking to use the FT line to stay close.

I’m going to bet Tony has those two fundamental keys drilled into the team, along with good discipline on the glass (only Georgia has grabbed double-digit OR’s against us). And I’m going to trust in our offense to continue to build upon Monday’s 2nd half momentum, though it may not happen right from the opening tip as I do worry that UVA’s slow starts are just something we have to live with right now.

But if UVA can’t handle business against a team the computers think is closer in difficulty to Radford than most of the rest of the ACC, then we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Look for the Hoos to start the weekend off with an uneven but ultimately comfortable victory.

Hoos Win – 64-48