Many people on this board playd high school basketball back in the day and for the most part, the regular season ran from right after Thanksgiving till the end of February for most teams. We played games for three short months. Today at the college level, games start in very early November and end in the second week in March. That's a long season. A break from travel and getting home at hours of the morning plus the less intense pressure of 20 some games vs. 30 had to have a positive effect on this team.

We certainly looked fresher up in Cleveland than the other teams, so it absolutely helped in that regard. I'm not sure how you improve a defense with such a long layoff, but maybe the guys finally bought in and "locked down" what they were trying to do. The break definitely didn't hurt us.

That's why I'm extremely skeptical about Virginia being rusty after their Covid layoff. Who knows, they could be really good.

I’m laughing thinking about if real life were a simplistic disingenuous cable news chyron: JSF SAYS COVID WAS POSSIBLY A GOOD THING


I think a mental health break would be good for anybody this year., basketball team included.

Were we a bad defensive team before February? Or did we just have a brutal stretch of bad defensive basketball (against some good offensive teams)? From a 1000 foot view/analysis, seemed like we were playing some pretty good defense early in the season against teams like Illinois and Cleveland State (extreme examples the other way).

Maybe some early MAC games exposed some weaknesses that other teams didn't figure out yet and we were able to adjust back.
We were also without Jason Preston for a stretch of time.
Also, Toledo when they get rolling is a freaking dynamite offensive team. Seems like they can all shoot. BG had that freakish day at the FT line and Kent just absolutely embarrassed us on the glass in our own gym.

I think the Kent game might have been the best thing to happen to us because we have been a much better rebounding team the rest of the way. So, yeah some time off probably benefitted us when trying to make adjustments. Were things as good as we thought when we nearly knocked off Illinois? Most likely no. And despite the panic of the fanatics on this board, Jean Dixon included, things probably weren't as bad as they looked when we hit that lull.

I have read that the data shows that teams do play worse coming off of a COVID stoppage. I cannot remember where. This might be due to missing players and if Virginia is not missing any important players there may not be a huge effect.