Gillen tries new strategy
By JERRY RATCLIFFE
Daily Progress sports editor

I had the opportunity to sit down with Pete Gillen recently to talk about Virginia’s basketball program, what went wrong, how Pete intends to fix it, what’s good, who’s gone, who’s coming back. Over the next couple of weeks we will touch on that conversation in this column.
Today, the Cavaliers’ coach reveals how he has changed his philosophy on recruiting shooters and what Wahoo fans can expect in that phase of the game in the coming seasons.
UVa was one of the ACC’s worst perimeter shooting teams last season, one of the weaknesses that led to their collapse once the Cavs began conference play. They weren’t particularly blessed with great shooters to begin with.
Roger Mason Jr. was the chief threat and even he struggled at times because defenses knew he was the man they had to shut down. The fact that point guard Keith Jenifer was not a threat to shoot the 3-pointer only added to Virginia’s woes.
Jenifer, whose strength was his jet-like quickness, made only two 3-point baskets all season long. You can’t do that and survive in the ACC. Not only did that hurt from his personal standpoint but it allowed defenses to cheat off him and run at Mason or double-team Travis Watson down in the post.
When senior Chris Williams was off his mark and Mason was covered up by defenders, there was little else that Gillen could count on from bonusphere. Senior Adam Hall, although having a penchant for hitting a big three over his career, was not a good outside shooter. Sometimes it appeared that Hall couldn’t throw a beachball into the ocean.
Freshmen Jermaine Harper and Elton Brown showed potential to become good outside shooters but have some maturing to do.
“You’ve got to have 3-point shooters these days,” said Gillen. “I always appreciated Keith Friel, but I appreciated him more this year, honestly, than I did when we had him.”
Friel was Gillen’s first hired gun at Virginia. He lured the sharpshooter to Charlottesville from Notre Dame, where the New Hampshire native had grown restless. Friel could turn a game around so quickly, it was scary. Sportswriters and Gillen never saw eye-to-eye on the way he used Friel. The writers believed Friel should have started and played more minutes every game. Gillen used him to spark the team off the bench, to come in and be a Zone Buster.
“As I get older, I say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get guys who can shoot the ball,’” said Gillen of his newfound recruiting philosophy. “That’s what I’m looking for now, guys who can put it in the basket. We’ve got to put four guys on the court who can score, can shoot. And the fifth guy had better be a threat, too.
“I’m leaning that way now. I always recruited quickness, which I still believe in, but I’m starting to lean now toward guys who can shoot it,” said the coach.
While Gillen is critical of the current length for three-pointers (“I don’t think it’s worth three points from that distance,” he has said for years), he recognizes the impact the shot has had on the game. In the NCAA Tournament it seemed that teams that were hot from the 3-point line were pulling off upsets or making things interesting.
Shooting the trey may have been a weakness for last year’s group of Wahoos, but Gillen doesn’t believe that will be the
case next season due to the addition of Todd Billet, Devin Smith and Derrick Byers. If point guard Majestic Mapp can return from back-to-back knee injuries, he could also add some firepower into a lineup that could also include outside shooting by Harper and Brown.
“I think we’ll be a better perimeter shooting team with Billet and Smith,” said Gillen. “That gives us two very good shooters. Last year we had one with Roger, who they keyed on so much.
“You need two, good 3-point shooters to spread teams out. Two years ago, we had Donald Hand, who was streaky, and Friel, Mason and Williams. If you can put two or three guys in who can shoot, then defenses have to really stretch out,” said the coach. “Friel made such a difference because teams wouldn’t zone us. They were scared stiff of him because he could change a game in a second. So, that gave better driving lanes for Hand and Mason and better passing lanes into the post.”
Billet was a 3-point specialist at Rutgers, where he started 58 games his freshman and sophomore seasons, establishing the Scarlet Knights’ record for treys in a season with 82 in 2000-2001.
“He can really shoot the ball,” said Gillen of Billet, who is a product of Christian Brothers Academy in Middletown, N.J., the same school that produced former UVa point guard John Crotty.
And then there’s Devin Smith, a junior college All-American, who was bypassed by everyone his senior year of high school in Delaware, but blossomed into a solid player in one season of juco ball. While attracting no offers after high school, look at the list of colleges chasing Smith after his first year of college ball: Kansas, Virginia, Iowa and Illinois.
Our insiders said the Kansas coaching staff was very upset when it lost Smith to Virginia.
“They wanted him badly,” said a recruiting source. “Kansas thought they were the frontrunners for Smith all along and thought they had him locked up. They couldn’t believe they lost him to Virginia.”
Most folks are a little skeptical of junior college transfers into the ACC. There’s a good reason.
Only three have ever made first team All-ACC and only three others, including former Wahoo Drew Kennedy, have made second team all-conference. Smith could be an exception.
“He’s the real deal,” said Gillen. “He can play. He can shoot it. I think he was 45 percent on his 3’s. Now matter how you cut it, that’s pretty good. He hit 108 [treys].
“I don’t want to put extra pressure on him, but he’s the real deal, and Billet is the real deal. Those two guys can play. He has to earn it like anybody else, but Devin should be an impact player. It’s a big jump from junior college but he played at a high level.”
Smith’s team played in the national junior college finals, won 30 games and he was a first-team juco All-American. Not your normal junior college transfer.
“Ironically, Devin’s nickname is ‘Smooth,’” said Gillen, which brought to mind departed Chris Williams’ moniker of the “Big Smooth.”
If that’s too much familiarity for Wahoo fans, then Smith has a backup nickname. He is also called “Iceman.”
“He just kind of glides out there and he’s not afraid,” said Gillen.
That’s exactly what Virginia needs, some fearless shooters who can move and make shots. That’s exactly what Billet and Smith bring to the team and those are two reasons that the Cavaliers should be better next year even with the loss of Mason.
Next: Gillen talks “Deeee-fense.”