Bones Hyland will lead VCU Basketball to an upset win over Oregon Ducks

Bones Trusting His Teammates

Considering how little these two teams had previously known about each other coming into the Tournament, it’s pretty clear who the Ducks will spend the bulk of their time focusing on in the film room. Bones Hyland was strong as a freshman, but he was simply electric as a Sophomore.

The A10 Player of the Year and first-round NBA draft-prospect is averaging 19.5 points on a worthy 37.5% shooting from three (considering the degree of difficulty on most of his attempts, that’s a surprisingly impressive number). He’s almost certainly going to have to play well if VCU is to come out on top, but he can’t get reckless with the ball and attempt to win the game by himself.

He’ll need to trust in his help  — guys like Ace Baldwin, Vince Williams, Jamir Watkins, and Hason Ward — to knock down their open looks, because they should get plenty of them with so many double-teams thrown in Hyland’s direction

The casual fan and armchair bracketologist might tell you that “Bones will need to go off” for the Rams to have a chance, but that’s not the case; he doesn’t need to go for 30 for the upset to happen, so he shouldn’t be trying to reach that mark by any means necessary.

If he is able to score an efficient 15 points and the Rams are able to do what they normally do on the defensive end of the floor, they will have a good chance to win if the rest of the team can just be their normal selves from an FG% standpoint.

Hyland scoring 30 on 11/31 shooting is not going to be a recipe for success against a team that can control the pace of a game like Oregon. In fact, that’s exactly the outcome the Ducks are hoping for.