NCAA Basketball: Virginia’s potential, conference tourneys and other big questions
The Virginia Cavaliers are on the rise but how good are they really? We ask that and more in the biggest NCAA Basketball questions of the week.
Less than two weeks left before Selection Sunday, we’re currently at the beginning stages of the 2019-20 NCAA Basketball conference tournament stages. They are plenty of questions to be asked for this week’s roundtable, including some big predictions about what’ll happen this upcoming week. Here are the contributors participating for this week’s answers to five burning questions:
Mychal Hunter – @ACCBR1
Holden Walter-Warner – @hwalterwarner
Joe Weidenburner – @DubzonHoops
Trevor Sinodhinos – sino.homework@gmail.com
1. Does Virginia have the potential to make another Final Four run?
Hunter
No, they have the ability to win a first-round game and make life difficult for second-round teams, but they just don’t have the offense, specifically the shooting, to make a deep run.
Walter-Warner
The Cavaliers are playing their best basketball of the season right now and momentum is a real thing entering the NCAA Tournament. That being said, they’re not quite good enough to make a Final Four run this year. Never count out a team with an elite defense, but the Cavs will need some shot-making at some point and outside of the play of Kihei Clark, it’s hard to see where that will come from.
Weidenburner
The short answer is no. The Hoos are hot having won six in a row and firmly entrenching themselves in the NCAA Tournament field. But this is still a bad offensive team ranking 221st in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency according to KenPom, and no matter how stout they are defensively, they won’t score enough to win four games in the Big Dance.
Sinodhinos
Even after their big win versus Duke, the Cavaliers are ranked No. 51 in the NET and still not a lock to get an at-large bid. With the lack of desire on the part of some teams to win the conference tournament when they should, too many teams unexpectedly get automatic bids. With this in mind, I would hate to put too much stock into Virginia.
Let us say they do make the tournament, the fact that they average the least amount of points in the ACC, seven less than Boston College, is not a good sign. Even with their incredible defense, when Mamadi Diakitie is your leading scorer and Kihei Clark’s six assists per game makes him the only Cavalier to average over 2 assists, it is not enough to make it to the Final Four this year.