NCAA Basketball: Ohio State and George Mason headlines latest Sunday Mailbag

Name a team who looks awful right now, but will be in the thick of their conference race come February? – Rocco Miller (@RoccoMiller8)

There were two teams who came to mind when I went to answer this question. Those two teams that came to mind were the Nevada Wolf Pack and the Virginia Cavaliers. After watching more of Nevada it doesn’t appear that they are nearly as good as everyone thought and they look like a middle-of-the-pack Mountain West team.

Virginia is a team that is currently playing terribly and they don’t look like they have much of a chance in the ACC but head coach Tony Bennett is a fantastic coach and is going to get his team playing at a much higher level soon.

Virginia already lost a home game to Navy and they were dismantled by a good Houston team. The Cavaliers are still playing their pack-line defense and it still causes opponents to go stagnant on the offensive end and work their entire possession to get a great shot. The problem for Virginia lies on the offensive end of the ball. The Cavaliers have struggled mightily early in the season putting the ball in the basket. They are not passing the ball, they are shooting the lowest amount of threes they have taken under Bennett in quite some time and they are playing extremely slow.

In spite of all that Virginia is the one team that likely isn’t going to be terrible all year. They do have two players who have been good on offense before in East Carolina transfer Jayden Gardner and Indiana transfer Armann Franklin. Virginia needs role definition and a lot of the players in the rotation have never played in coach Bennett’s system before.

As the season wears on and new players get more comfortable with their added minutes and playing in the system Virginia should take off. They are one team primed to make a huge run after the calendar hits 2022.