Following Monday afternoon's media day in Charlottesville and ahead of the season opener coming on Monday night against Tarelton State (7 p.m., ACCNX), the 3-2-1 is back with a preseason hoops addition outlining three things we know, outlining a couple of questions, and picking one prediction as the Wahoos head into the 2023-24 season.

1. UVa rallied in its scrimmages against UConn and Maryland.

Virginia, like most top programs across the country, gave itself a few opportunities to simulate game situations before the season opener next week. For the Hoos that meant the annual Blue-White Scrimmage open to the public and a pair of scrimmages held behind closed doors over the past two weekends. UVa took on reigning national champion UConn at home before traveling to College Park for a second matchup with Maryland. These are also the same two programs UVa scrimmaged prior to last season.

Tony Bennett said on Monday that the games were a bit of a reality check when it came to pace and physicality, which has to be a good thing for any team still coming together ahead of the season opener. Bennett also revealed that UVa rallied from slow starts in both games and called that development encouraging. He did note that UConn was without star big man Donovan Clingan, and that the Wahoos didn’t have guard Dante Harris for their second scrimmage at Maryland.

These two simulated games certainly helped Bennett get a sense of what lineups work together and gave him opportunities to experiment against two talented, well-coached opponents.

2. Virginia’s starting lineup might be a work-in-progress to start the season.

It’s probably fair to say that there’s more unknown about this year’s UVa team with the season about to start than we’ve had in recent years. The Cavaliers lost a bunch of key players from last year’s roster, including guards Kihei Clark and Armaan Franklin, as well as most of their frontcourt, with Jayden Gardner, Francisco Caffaro, Isaac Traudt and Kadin Shedrick all moving on.

UVa has a new-look group with plenty of mystery in regards to playing time, rotations; and lineup combinations. Bennett said Monday that the lineups may require some tinkering as the season begins, something that he has done in the past, but could be more frequent this year given the amount of turnover on the roster and new pieces added across the various positions.

3. Bennett is still working through finalizing redshirt decisions for three freshmen.

The roster has seven new players with three transfers joined by four freshmen. UVa made a couple of late additions to its 2023 signing class, and now Bennett and Co. have a few decisions to make around both playing time and who will sit this year out.

Last year, Leon Bond and Traudt redshirted for the Hoos, and this year it seems likely that the program will redshirt at least two more players.

Christian Bliss reclassified from the 2024 class to 2023 and joined the program in the summer a year early. The plan seems to be to redshirt him as he gets acclimated to the program and the college game, which makes sense given UVa’s depth at the guard spots. Anthony Robinson flipped from USF to UVa late in the recruiting process and he is a redshirt candidate as well, though there isn’t as much depth in the frontcourt, so perhaps there’s more of a path for him than there is for Bliss. Finally, Elijah Gertrude seems the most likely to play, but is coming off of an ACL injury during his senior season, and is still working his way back. Bennett made it clear that the redshirt decisions for all players are still “wait and see,” for now, but it does seem likely that Bliss and Robinson will sit out at this point.

1. Can Blake Buchanan break the trend of big men not playing much in Year 1?

It may come as a surprise to UVa fans, but the program has redshirted every post player in their true freshmen year since Jarred Reuter played as a first-year in 2015-16. There have been several bigger wing players, like Igor Milicic and Ryan Dunn that played in Year 1 but no old-school, back-to-the-basket bigs have done it. Virginia has redshirted Jay Huff, Caffaro, Shedrick, and Traudt since Reuter’s debut.

Buchanan seems like a very long shot to redshirt, and maybe even a longer shot to be a seldom-used bench player at this point. The Idaho native appears to have what it takes to play early for Bennett, who has praised his competitiveness and ability to move around since arriving on Grounds. Virginia is thin in the post too, so Buchanan’s playing time may be as much related to that as his talent, but if he can come along as a first-year and be a competitive post player that can see significant minutes, it raises the ceiling for this team.

2. Will the Hoos make 3s more consistently this season?

Bennett got a question in Monday’s presser about the program’s increase in two-point field goals in recent years and whether they’ll revert back to shooting more threes in 2023-24. He correctly called out that the team was inconsistent from deep last year, starting the season hot before cooling off considerably as the campaign wore on. UVa finished the season 35 percent from deep, 120th-best nationally, after leading the nation in 3-point shooting in November. UVa was also 241st nationally in 3-point field goal percentage, meaning that the Hoos did in fact take quite a few two-point shots.

This year’s roster may have more options at the perimeter than last year’s team, but that is up for debate. Basically, Andrew Rohde, Jake Groves, and Harris replace Clark, Franklin and Ben Vander Plas, as well as the hope that players like Isaac McKneely, Dunn, and others improve their averages this year.

UVa needs to shoot the ball more consistently from deep to be better than it was in 2022-23, and it will be interesting to see if the Cavaliers shoot a higher percentage of them this year or if they continue to slash and shoot in the mid-range as they did the last couple of seasons.

UVa will have opportunities to run with this group, but will continue to be a half-court team.

Every year media and fans alike wonder if this is the year UVa will pick up the pace and play at a faster tempo. And every year, UVa is near the bottom nationally in pace.

That’s not to say the Wahoos need to speed things up. If the halfcourt approach is working, they should stick with it. And the question isn’t unwarranted, either. They have players like Reece Beekman and Harris who are quick guards that can push the pace off of turnovers and try to create run-outs for easy buckets.

Still, we’ll believe it when we see it. Bennett has said many times that he’s comfortable with the team playing faster and getting in transition if it creates good opportunities on the offensive end. But this program continues to play slow and it has translated to a lot of wins.

So until we see UVa start picking up the pace and running more, something that has been brought up annually, we expect that the Hoos will once again control the tempo and play in the half court almost all of the time.