I heard from a good UVA Basketball source that Jalen Warley went to Tony Bennett in October and demanded more money, and that is the nail that got Bennett to retire from coaching.
Makes sense after the FSU-Leonard Hamilton lawsuit debacle.
Any truth to that rumor?
Russ
Several readers have asked me about this one, so I finally ran it up the flagpole, as they say, and what I’ve found is: no, there’s no truth to this.
I can see why people would make that connection.
Because I was there with you, at the outset.
When the news got out about the lawsuit filed in Florida a couple of weeks ago alleging that FSU basketball coach Leonard Hamilton had reneged on promised $250,000 payments to the guys on his 2023-2024 roster, with Warley among the plaintiffs in that suit, it made some sense that maybe there was some sort of connection between what went into that suit, namely, money, and Warley leaving UVA.
ICYMI
Starting with, it was odd to me back in the spring that Virginia even recruited Warley, a junior, in the first place, given what we know about how difficult it is to get junior student-athlete transfers into UVA academically, and considering that Warley was a good, but not great, get.
Fast forward to the fall, we had Bennett announcing his retirement on Oct. 18; on Oct. 28, Warley was at the program’s media day, taking questions like nothing was imminent; a day later, he entered the portal.
Warley’s father, Jason, emailed me that week to share that Jalen had been playing through fall practice at UVA with an injured hand, and that he intended to sit out the 2024-2025 season to rest the injury before suiting up next year for his final season of college eligibility.
Jalen Warley eventually landed at Gonzaga, where he will ostensibly suit up next fall.
I’m hedging because I can’t rule out that he could try the NBA Draft, or given how things go with multiple-time transfers, that he’d put himself back out to the highest bidder again.
All that said, nobody that I’ve talked to about Warley’s decision to leave UVA has said it had anything to do with money.
ICYMI
- UVA Basketball: Combo guard Jalen Warley hitting the transfer portal again
- UVA Basketball: Jalen Warley’s dad emailed me about his son’s transfer decision
What we have here, then, methinks, is, people are still having trouble processing why Tony Bennett decided on the eve of the season to step down, and a kid who left his previous school over money was presenting himself as a logical scapegoat.
The truth is, Tony had been thinking about getting out of coaching for three years, because he had come to the realization that he’s not cut out for putting together a roster and leading a program in the new NIL/transfer portal era.
The higher-ups at UVA convinced him to keep hanging on, with the idea that the NCAA would be able to figure out a way to put some new rules in place to provide structure to the college sports business, and Bennett hung on, until he just decided that he couldn’t do it anymore, and more to the point, that the NCAA wasn’t going to do anything to fix the system anytime soon.
From what I’ve come to know about the college coaching business over the years of reporting on the business, I can’t say that I blame him for thinking that way, and for doing what he did.
I wouldn’t want the job, at any amount of money.
Mailbag: Jalen Warley and Tony Bennett
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Chris Graham
