Stuff shows up in your feed, like the article from Brendan Marks at The Athletic, with a headline starting with “Ranking ACC Basketball programs,” and you figure, whatever, I like ACC Basketball, I’ll bite.
Where the ranking started to go off the rails was … Louisville, third? They did a literal housecleaning there – the coach and the roster from last year’s historically bad team are all gone.
All new guys, a new coach and staff.
Sure, they’re going to roll the ball out there and finish third in the ACC.
(Eye roll.)
UVA Basketball
- The first task for Kyle Guy as a basketball coach: ‘Fixing’ Isaac McKneely
- UVA Basketball: I like this nonconference schedule; Tony must think he has a team
- The latest ‘final look’ at the UVA Basketball roster for the 2024-2025 season
- Mailbag: Next year’s UVA Basketball team feels a lot like that talented 2016-2017 group
- Podcast: How does the UVA Basketball roster look post-transfer portal?
Then I had to scroll all the way down to … ninth (!) … to see where Marks has Virginia.
Um, OK.
“While UVA leaned into the transfer portal more fully this offseason, it still feels like the Cavaliers might be a player or two short,” Marks wrote, by way of offering critical analysis.
Huh.
Marks, turns out, isn’t a fan of what Tony Bennett did on the transfer portal, which, I mean, I can see it.
All TB did was pick up a former five-star (TJ Power from Duke) and a perimeter-shooting big from a recent Final Four team (Elijah Saunders from San Diego State).
And a Power 4 starting point guard (Dai Dai Ames from Kansas State), and a big, long, defensive-minded three guard (Jalen Warley from Florida State).
I know it’s weird (word of the day) to even think this, much less say it out loud, but Virginia will be better on offense with first-round pick Ryan Dunn gone; Dunn was as much a liability on offense as he was a stone wall on defense.
The projected starting frontcourt of Power and Saunders will be able to put the ball in the hole, and Saunders, at 6’8”, 240, will be a big body to counter opposing bigs down low.
Ames, Warley, redshirt freshman Christian Bliss and junior Andrew Rohde can all play point.
Isaac McKneely averaged 12.3 points per game and shot 44.5 percent from three, and I think he will be the biggest beneficiary of Bennett’s addition of former UVA great Kyle Guy to the staff.
And I’m expecting that Guy could figure out Rohde and get him back to being closer to the 17-ppg scorer he was a freshman than the replacement-level player he was last season.
There’s depth in the frontcourt with sophomore Blake Buchanan, redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson, Vanderbilt transfer Carter Lang and incoming four-star recruit Jacob Cofie.
Bennett has perimeter shooting (McKneely, Power, Saunders), which was hit-or-miss last season, when it was up to McKneely and the occasional contribution of Jake Groves.
And he’s got size and length – outside of Ames at 6’1”, the rest of the rotation is 6’4” and bigger.
This is Bennett’s most talented roster since, dare I say it, his 2018-2019 team.
I’m not saying that’s the ceiling for this team, but it’s not a middle-of-the-pack ACC team, either.
The issue for Marks: “There’s a lot of projecting fit here.”
Interesting.
He doesn’t seem to have the same issue with Louisville, which is all new guys and a new coaching staff, or Duke, which has two returning rotation guys, and the usual infusion of a bunch of freshmen who will be checked out by February, with their eyes on the NBA Draft eval process.
Underestimate Tony Bennett at your peril, is all I can say.
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Chris Graham
