Amid all of the excitement of the NCAA Tournament, the UVA basketball season quietly came to a close with a 96-85 loss to Bradley in the semi finals of the inaugural College Basketball Invitational. Ryan “Pett” Pettinella’s season long flirtation with the points-fouls Mendoza line finished anything but quietly however. Heading into the ACC Tournament quarterfinals against Georgia Tech, Pett was languishing in a spectacular minus 15 differential between points and fouls. Thus, what unfolded in the next 4 games can only be described as a miracle. Pett went on to go four straight games with more points than fouls. To put this in perspective, Pett had never gone more than two games in a row in this entire season with more points than fouls. But not only was it four straight games with more points than fouls, it was by a significant margin. Pett went an astounding plus 12 in those last 4 games to cut his season deficit to only 3! As unbelievable as is it to say, Pett had a really good chance to get into positive numbers if the Cavs had made it to the CBI final. Pett went for 17 points in those last four games, which is a mind boggling 22% of his season total. But it had to come to an end at some point. And with the season officially over, we can close the books on the first Oceanliner original feature.
Pett points in 2007-2008: 77
Pett fouls in 2007-2008: 80
But as we delve into his entire seasons statistics, more crazy shit comes to light:
For one, I also should have been following Pett’s fouls to rebounds ratio. Incredibly, Pett finished the season with 81 rebounds, just one more than the amount of fouls he committed. Hey, at least you can say his scoring/fouling/rebounding were consistent. Whether this was consistently terrible or not is a whole other discussion.
For the season, Pett averaged .19 fouls per minute. Or put another way, Pett committed a foul every 5 minutes and 9 seconds he was on the floor. That means in theory Pett could never play an entire game, and its not even close. He should foul out in just over 25 minutes, which is hilarious. People wonder about his minutes, but Pett couldn’t have played more if he wanted to because he’d be out of the game.
As an astounding rejoinder to the last example, Pett only fouled out of a game twice on the entire season! What’s even more ridiculous is that Pett committed 4 fouls in a game 10 times. Either Pett was just stupidly good at not picking up that last foul or Leitao had a policy of yanking Pett every time he reached that threshold.
I don’t know if this is telling of Pett’s remarkable nose for the offensive glass or atrocious overall rebounding but he finished the season with 42 defensive rebounds and 39 offensive rebounds. Perplexing.
This was obvious anyway, but Pett would make a horrible point guard. He finished the season with 21 turnovers to just 5 assists for a stunning .23 assist to turnover ratio.
We have reached the most remarkable stats of all, hidden gems that define why Pett finished the season with more fouls than points. First a good stat: Pett shot 59% from the field this year, which is superb. Seriously, that’s really good. Pett’s performance from the free throw line however, would make Rick Barry have nightmares. Dude shot 25.7% from the charity stripe this year. This is not a misprint. Memphis as a team shot more than double Pett’s percentage on free throws and they were lambasted for poor performance at the line. 25.7%. Good. God. What’s even more hilarious is that you can say this true sentence about Pett’s season:
Man, if Pett had managed to shoot 38% from the line this season, he would have finished with more points than fouls
People who have never seen Pett shoot a free throw have to appalled by his historically bad performance at the line. But for those of us who are unfortunate enough to have witnessed Pett’s train-wreck of a free throw, it’s amazing that 25.7% of them went in at all. Still, when you are lamenting the fact that a 40% free throw percentage would have gotten you over a major hump, its time to go back to the drawing board.
Ryan Pettinella’s UVA career is thankfully over after two years. And while it may seem like UVA basketball will be in a free fall mode with the departure of Singletary, we do have some good talent coming in, highlighted by McDonald’s All-American small forward Sylven Landesberg. So there is some hope on the horizon with Diane (if he can finally be consistent), Calvin Baker (a solid ball handler and confident player), Jamil Tucker (who really started playing well and getting comfortable towards the end of the season. In the last 8 games of the season, Tucker scored in double figured 4 times and averaged just over 5 rebounds a game), Mike Scott (who also played better as the season went on) and of course Lars anchoring the middle as a senior. If Jeff Jones can become a reliable shooter at the 2 spot, the Cavs can have a pretty good season next year. Of course, everything could go to hell and we could suck. But hopefully that’s what this season was and we are on our way back up.
Well, that’s it for this week folks. I went to Nationals Park last Sunday and saw the Nats take down the Bravos, which was awesome. The stadium is simply amazing. Anyone that has the time needs to come to DC and go to a game with the Oceanliner. And if you are in the area, give me a call because I will go anytime. It’s gorgeous. Until next time then, stay safe, keep it real and fire up those grills.
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