Virginia gets one last mid-major tune up before power conference play begins next week. MAC middleweight Kent State visits UVA to kickstart their D-1 season, hoping an influx of new faces gels quickly enough to challenge the heavyweight Hoos.

Game Details:

Date/Time: Friday, Dec 4th, 6:00 PM EST
Location: John Paul Jones Arena, Charlottesville, VA
TV: ACC Network

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

**Using 2019-20 Stats, D-1 only

Starters

Key Reserves

The ABC’s of Kent State:

A) We’re their first D-1 game of the season. COVID’s screwing with everyone’s scheduling right now. Kent State is no exception. They were originally supposed to open against Cleveland State before CSU paused their basketball activities mid-November. This past Saturday they were scheduled to play Alcorn State but the Bravehawk had their own COVID pause. And then for a third time Kent State was forced to suffer a postponement when Monday’s schedule opponent, Purdue-Fort Wayne, backed out as well. It means Kent State’s first scheduled action of the year was a Wednesday contest against NAIA Point Park University, a 90-41 blowout that’s so poorly representative I chose to use last season’s statistics above rather than stats from that game.

B) They’re debuting a totally rebuilt roster. Head coach Rob Senderoff, entering his 10th season in charge of the Golden Flashes, typically fields a competitive team in the MAC, where he’s never had a losing overall record and finished worse than .500 in MAC play only once, way back in 2014. Last year they won 20 games behind a veteran lineup, but unfortunately most of that roster moved on. They featured five now-graduated seniors in their rotation, and then lost starting guard Anthony Roberts (12.7 ppg, 2.4 apg, 36% 3P%) to a transfer to St Bonaventure. It means they only return three rotation players, only one of whom (senior Danny Pippen, no apparent relation to Scottie) played more than 13 mpg last year. They now feature six transfers in an effort to field a veteran lineup, though four of those arrive from the Junior College ranks and will be making their D-1 debut in Charlottesville.

C) Michael Nuga seems to be their new alpha guard. On a team lacking D-1 experience and time under coach Senderoff, Nuga is a name to watch. He transferred to Kent State in 2019 as a sit-out senior, having played 1 season at Portland State after two years in junior college. In his one season in the Big Sky conference, he scored 10.5 ppg, hit a respectable 34% on his 3’s and a highly efficient 56% on his 2’s. Nuga soaked up the Kent State program knowledge over his redshirt year and dominated in his start against Point Park, scoring 17 points, grabbing 5 steals and 5 rebounds. His 3-point shot didn’t get going, but he clearly has the coaching staff’s green light as the closest thing to an experienced system vet in the Flash’s backcourt.

Their season to date:

Kent State is 1-0 on the year, their lone win coming Wednesday against NAIA Point Park.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Keep Pippen out of the lane. Pippen is the lone returning star of the Golden Flashes, and proved a dominant force in his junior season, a highly effective downhill player who scored all over the floor and got to the free throw line at the highest rate on the team. He’s a threat to score from anywhere, but he’s far more dangerous when attacking the rim than he is shooting from 3. He’s a career 48% shooter on his 2’s plus his bonus scoring from earned free throws. But behind the arc, he’s far less efficient, only 32% for his career and went 0-of-7 from range against Point Park in the opener. Pippen will play both the 4 and the 5, and the goal for whoever’s covering him, McKoy, Huff, Murphy, or Hauser, will be to stay in front of him and make him a jump shooter.

2) Don’t let up with a lead. Virginia got comfortable when up 30-40 points on Saint Francis. Too comfortable. Not that the outcome was ever in doubt, but it wasn’t pretty watching the Red Flash get into a rhythm in the second half, cutting into the lead late to make the final margin more respectable. Going into next week’s game against Michigan State, where we’re going to need to be sharp for 40 full minutes to win, UVA needs to lock in mentally today to play its best ball throughout both halves, even if they’re able to build up a “safe” lead.

3) Get comfortable from 3. Virginia’s shooting 36.5% as a team from 3 so far this season, right around the 80th percentile nationally. But that’s mostly thanks to a 15-of-29 outing against Towson; since then over two games we’re just 8-of-34 (23.5%). Do we need to drain a bunch of threes to beat Kent State? Probably not. But it’s going to make life a whole lot easier, and you want our guys to find a comfort zone on these JPJ rims prior to welcoming Michigan State and other tough P5 teams. Maybe we need to run better offense to get guys good looks, or maybe we just need to see a few go in to get the ball rolling. But we’ve got good shooters on this team, and we need to see an offense utilize them effectively to truly unlock our potential.

Predictions:

It’s hard to say a lot definitively about Kent State right now; only two of their main rotation players were on the team last year, only one at a major level, and the only numbers we have on them to date are a doubling-up of an NAIA scrub team. We know Pippen is good, we know Nuga was good a couple years ago as a sophomore at Portland State and had the benefit of a redshirt year. And otherwise?

This is going to be a long year in the MAC for Kent State with this many new pieces, few of whom are homegrown. That all lines up poorly for them coming into JPJ, even if UVA still has their own kinks to work out (and certainly there are a few). If Virginia is at all locked in, it should be an ugly first half, although we’ll once again run the risk of letting a chippy opponent come back on a big second half lead if we take our foot off the gas.

I think we see a little bit of the opposite of the Saint Francis game, Kent State hits us hard early but we weather it and pull away late in the first half, this time keeping our foot down well through the second half before the Green Team comes in at the final media timeout.

Hoos Win – 75-48