As a huge Virginia basketball fan, I’ve been gathering a growing set of resources I use to track the Hoos. This page aims to share the best of those with my fellow Hoo fans. My intention is to highlight the best and filter out the lower quality stuff. Feedback is welcome! Just post a comment at the bottom of the page. I’m sure I’ve missed some things.
Some of these are specific to the Hoos while others are focused on college basketball in general. But since UVA is regularly in the AP poll, they often make the national discussions as well. There are surely more worthy links that haven’t been included, so feel free to leave a comment below to add your favorites.
This list of focused on free resources rather than paid/premium content, but there may be a followup post for premium content if there’s interest. Resources below that also contain premium content have been noted.
There is a lot of lively banter on Twitter for UVA hoops fans. It’s also the best place to be for in-game updates. Below are my favorite twitter handles to follow loosely ordered with favorites and Hoo focus at the top and national (less Hoo-focus) on the bottom. I prefer to follow those who don’t venture too far off college hoops into other topics. There’s likely some prominent national personalities that have been excluded because following them fills your timeline with other stuff.
- Phony Bennett – Phony is my favorite person to follow on Twitter. Phony’s humor is spot on. You can also read about the real person behind the Twitter persona in the UVA Today article about him. Phony also participates in the Hard Hedge podcast, which unfortunately seems to be on hiatus.
- Jerry Ratcliffe – Jerry had been reporting on Hoos sports for decades and has recently ventured out on his own with a new premium site jerryratcliffe.com.
- David Teel – Reports on the ACC sports for the Daily Press.
- Ahmad Hawkins – “Ball Hawk” is a former UVA football player, and he has a ton of hoops knowledge. I love his podcast because he does great post-game analysis of the games (both football and basketball).
- Danny Neckel – Danny provides some great stats for UVA basketball. He’s like the Ken Pomerey of UVA hoops. He also contributes to Streaking The Lawn.
- Virginia Men’s Basketball – The official account for the men’s basketball team.
- Matt Riley – Matt is the photographer for UVA Athletics. He has taken some beautiful photos. You can look at his media page on Twitter to see some of them. (The photo at the top of this post is one of his.)
- Hooz Got Next – Provides updates on basketball recruits and prospects.
- ACC Men’s Basketball – The official ACC account for men’s basketball. It’s always interesting to see what the ACC thinks is important even if it is a little too focused on Tobacco Road.
- Jordan Sperber – Jordan explains basketball really well. Check out his Youtube channel listed below.
- CBS Sports CBB – I like the duo of Matt Norlandar and Gary Parrish who happen to be on CBS. Their a podcast is mentioned below.
- Andy Katz – Andy covered college basketball for ESPN until their large layoffs in 2017. His new position at NCAA.com includes a podcast (listed below).
- /r/CollegeBasketball – It’s described as the “official college basketball subreddit condensed into bite-sized news, notes, and bad jokes” and I can’t describe it any better.
- Ken Pomeroy – The stats guru of college basketball.
- NCAA March Madness – The official account of the NCAA tournament.
- AP Top 25 – Catch the weekly AP poll updates on Mondays around noon.
Youtube
Youtube is the place to go after the game is over. This is where you find your highlights, game analysis, etc.
- Virginia Sports TV – The official channel for UVA sports. This is where you find the Hoo-focused highlights from each game. Note that this typically video from UVA’s own cameras which are often court-side rather than your typical view you see on TV. Highlights usually show up a few hours after the game, sometimes longer for away games.
- ACC Digital Network – The official ACC channel posts a variety of good videos. This includes 30 second dunk highlights and 2 minute full game highlights. But in 2018 they’ve started including “condensed game” videos. You can watch all the scoring of a basketball game in around 10 minutes. This is probably great for Duke and UNC fans since it focuses solely on scoring. You won’t see many shot clock violations in these videos. But, it’s still pretty awesome.
- Jordan Sperber (hoopvision68) – Great video breakdown of the X’s and O’s of college basketball. There’s been some good UVA content on this channel including their Pros and Cons of Virginia’s Blocker-Mover Offense video.
- NCAA March Madness – The official channel for the NCAA Tournament. In some ways this channel is a bit of an advertisement for the tournament but it occasionally has some good stuff.
Podcasts
Podcasts are great to listen to in between games. They are perfect for a long drive in to work or when you’re stuck doing hours of yard work. The links below are for the Overcast app, which is my preferred podcast player, but most of these podcasts can be found on iTunes, etc. Note that links to the Twitter handles are also included for some of the podcast hosts below.
- The CavsCorner Podcast – Brad Franklin runs the CavsCorner website on Rivals (mostly premium with some free content). Brad hosts this podcast with David Spence and Justin Ferber. They cover hoops and football and do predictions, analysis, discussions, etc.
- The Ball Hawk Show Podcast – Hawkins provides great post-game analysis. He covers hoops and football. Plus, he’s got the greatest positive attitude of anyone I’ve listened to. Great stuff.
- Streaking the Lawn Podcast – A Hoo-focused podcast to go along with their Hoo-focused website at streakingthelawn.com. A rotating cast that typically includes writers Caroline Darney and Jay Pierce.
- ACC Basketball Degenerates – This group covers the entire ACC (and occasionally ventures out of the ACC).
- Teel Time with David Teel – Weekly podcast with Daily Press columnist David Teel that covers UVA and VT sports. David has been covering the Hoos for decades and provides some great insights.
- Hoos Place – Honest, unfiltered commentary and analysis on UVA athletics. New for the 2018-19 season, this one may move up higher on the list. Good game previews and game analysis from Seattle Hoo.
- One Shining Podcast with Titus and Tate – Mark Titus and Tate Frazier host this podcast one or twice per week. This is probably the funniest on the list. Both these guys have a good sense of humor, and Mark has some love for the Hoos and their style of play.
- CBS Sports Eye On College Basketball Podcast – Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander host this podcast 2 or 3 times per week during the season. It’s one of the best national college hoops podcasts.
- College Basketball Talk on NBC Sports Podcast – Rob Dauster hosts this NBC podcast on college hoops twice per week during the season. His “Monday Overreaction” bit is usually pretty entertaining.
- The Kenpom Podcast – Ken Pomeroy‘s analytics are the industry standard for many. His podcast (new in 2018) is not quite as polished as some of the others yet, but hey… it’s Ken Pomeroy and you have to listen.
- March Madness 365 with Andy Katz – Andy’s weekly podcast is typically an interview with one or more people relevant to college basketball (players, coaches, etc.)
- The Hard Hedge – This would be at the top of the list, but it seems to be on hiatus. Hosted by WahooBasketball and Phony Bennett, it often features great guests. Former Hoo Isaiah Wilkins was on their last episode in October 2018.
Websites
My list of website is smaller for a handful of reasons. Most sites aren’t quite as mobile-friendly as the social media sites, so they end up with less traffic. Let’s face it… the younger generation goes to Twitter or Instagram before opening up a browser. Further, the links to many popular sites end up posted on Twitter anyway, so you don’t need to go their website directly to discover new content.
So the content below either (1) may not be found if you just hang out exclusively on Twitter or (2) is so awesome it deserves to be mentioned.
- The Sabre – This site for UVA sports has two great things. First. the daily UVA sports update provides links to recents posts about Hoo sports teams. Second, the basketball discussion forum is very active and can connect you to like-minded UVA hoop fanatics. The site has both free and premium content.
- Streaking The Lawn – Covers UVA sports of all kinds.
- CavsCorner – Covers UVA sports with both free and premium content.
- Hoos Place – Site for UVA hoops with game previews, post-game analysis and great information on recruiting. Kudos for their top-notch recruiting coverage.
- Kenpom.com – The best place for basketball analytics with free and premium content.
I’m not on FB nearly as much as Twitter, so I’m only including unique content here. Much of FB content is also posted on Twitter by the same people, so you end up with redundant content (also true for Instagram).
- UVA Hoops – This is a closed Facebook group that has a good amount of discussion on UVA basketball. Join the group to view and participate in the conversations.
There is generally of two types of UVA hoops content on Instagram:
- Cross postings that can be found on Twitter
- Short videos…. sorry “stories” is the correct term for Instagram… Many of these are from team players, former team players, etc.
I’m not going to list individual Instagram accounts here. It’s not hard to find if you start with the UVA Men’s Basketball account. If you want to follow team players on Instagram, you can see some behind-the-scenes and personal content that you don’t see anywhere else.
Other Apps
You can follow the Hoos with more than just the big social media apps. You can watch the games live on WatchESPN and track scores and stats on various other apps.
- WatchESPN (iOS, Android) – If you have a subscription to ESPN through your cable company (or purchased separately), you can watch the games live here. This includes all those games that can’t be found on TV. You can watch the games later as well. Note that some games are blacked out live, but you can watch them later. The video also includes the commercials, but you can skip over them. This is not a five-star app. There’s no “skip 30 seconds” button, so you have to drag a scrollbar to fast forward… with often unpredictable results.
- ESPN (iOS, Android)- Track the score and stats during the game. To get the most out of this app, you’ll need to create a user profile and set your favorite teams. You can set it up to notify you of half-time and final scores for your favorite teams.
- NCAA March Madness (iOS, Android) – I’ve really only used this during the tournament. You can follow and watch all the games right in the app. There are some restrictions on how much you can watch, but it’s most useful for tracking the scores for all the games as they happen and catching highlights.
- Overcast (iOS, Desktop) – This is my personal favorite for listening to podcasts. Sorry, there’s no Android version. It does the best job of speeding up podcasts (e.g. 1.25x speed), and it does a great job of keeping your podcasts in sync between various devices. You can also configure rules for streaming vs. downloading each podcast with different settings for different devices.
