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Virginia's offensive woes continue in a fourth-straight ugly, worrying loss

Minutes before Virginia tipped off against Miami Monday night in Charlottesville, fans at John Paul Jones Arena rose to their feet to salute a hero. It was Malcolm Brogdon jersey retirement night, and Brogdon, now a point guard for the Milwaukee Bucks, made his triumphant return to rapturous applause.

Brogdon starred at Virginia for three straight years on teams that lost a combined nine ACC games. But after the pregame ceremony, he and those adoring fans settled in to watch a team that would go on to lose its seventh conference game this year alone. And boy did they wish number 15 still had some eligibility left.

To say the Cavs struggled offensively is one of the understatements of the year. They bricked and clanged their way to a pathetic 48 points in a 54-48 overtime loss to Miami at home. A team that has hovered in and around the top 10 for much of the season has now dropped five of its last six and six of its last eight, and those aren’t even the most worrying numbers.

The most worrying numbers, along with simple observation, warn that there may not be much improvement in sight.

London Perrantes scored just four points in another discouraging loss for the Cavaliers. (Getty)

Virginia, a team that has built an identity on being really hard to play against, has instead become really hard to watch. Onlookers cringe as the Cavaliers grind through offensive possessions, and whereas the offense used to grind opponents into the floor, it now simply grinds to a halt.

Monday night, it stumbled to 0.77 points per possession, and outside of a three-and-a-half-minute second-half spurt that gave the home team a 35-26 lead, it was disheveled, hesitant and ineffective. It dug up just 19 first-half points, and made just two field goals over the final 12 minutes of the game as the Hurricanes came back to force overtime.

Point guard London Perrantes scored four points on 2-of-15 shooting. He’s 5 for 26 from beyond the arc in Virginia’s last four games, all losses. Without their catalyst firing, the Cavaliers have scored 144 points over their last 125 minutes of basketball.

That’s a pace of 46 points per 40 minutes.

That’s horrendous.

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While Virginia’s overall offensive numbers on the season are still decent — more than 1.1 points per possession, 33rd nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency coming into Monday night — it has struggled all season against teams that match or overmatch it athletically. Miami, a team with four starters 6-foot-5 or taller, overwhelmed the Cavs with its length, just as North Carolina had done on Saturday, and just as other physically superior teams have done all season long. Against teams that rank in the top 100 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, Virginia has averaged under a point per possession.

The problems are wide-ranging, but many of them boil down to a lack of polished offensive talent to complement Perrantes. Devon Hall and Darius Thompson are rather ordinary ACC off-guards. Marial Shayok is more talented, but is overly aggressive, and has never seen a one-dribble pull-up 18-footer he didn’t like.

Virginia loves to run Perrantes off down screens or baseline screens to jumpstart its halfcourt offense, but opponents trail him tightly coming off those screens, and swarm him if he curls towards the foul line. They can help and rotate at will because the danger outside of Perrantes is minimal.

Perrantes’ offensive rating was under 100 Monday night for the fourth straight game. Never before in his career, not even as a freshman, has he had a similar four-game run. There’s more onus on the senior, and fewer threats around him, a formula for inefficiency for a player who isn’t an elite athlete, and is more comfortable creating for others than for himself. Because of the increased attention and lack of other options, Perrantes’ assist rate this season is the lowest of his career.

Without his consistent shot creation, and without a second lead guard to initiate the offense, Virginia’s offense often devolves into contested midrange jumpers. The Cavaliers have always relied a decent amount on their midrange game, but a higher percentage of those jumpers have been unassisted this season than in the recent past, and over the past few weeks, they’ve been extremely low-percentage looks.

Virginia also rarely gets to the free throw line, which eliminates a lifeline that most teams have when jump shots aren’t falling.

And whereas past Tony Bennett teams have been able to throw the ball to players like Mike Scott and Anthony Gill on the block, the 2016-17 Cavs have no post threat. Austin Nichols, a graduate transfer from Memphis, was supposed to be that guy; he, however, was dismissed from the program after one game in November.

The result is a stagnant offense that always seems to have defenders draped on its back. These stretches of ineptitude are never as drab and dismal as they seem, because poor shooting has played its role in the Cavs’ offensive decline. If reserve guards Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome suddenly get hot, Virginia could return to its midseason form in an instant.

But it’s become clear that this Cavs team just doesn’t have the offensive talent that past Bennett teams have had. There’s no Justin Anderson, no Joe Harris, no Gill and no Brogdon to pull the team out of its funk. And suddenly, these Cavs look like the first Virginia team since 2012-13 that won’t be capable of contending for a Final Four.