Virginia coach Tony Bennett appears to be done rebuilding the roster for 2023-2024 with the addition of Jake Groves, a 6’9” stretch four picked up off the transfer portal from Oklahoma.
Barring something unexpected, namely, Hunter Dickinson transferring in from Michigan, or five-star prep recruit Jarin Stevenson committing and then reclassifying, Bennett has the makings of his rotation in place.
Yes, there is still one wild card out there, in the form of Reece Beekman, the three-year starting point guard who is still, at the moment, in the NBA Draft pool.
It’s expected that Beekman, the 2023 ACC Defensive Player of the Year, will return – though we were saying the same this time two years ago of Trey Murphy III, who went on to become a first-round pick.
Assuming Beekman does return, it’s looking like, at worst, Bennett will have a team similar to what we had in 2022-2023, which is to say, a team similar to the one that shared the ACC regular-season title with Miami, which went on to earn a Final Four berth.
Key losses, and the guys who will replace them
Bennett loses his top three scorers, but I’m going to go with the keyest of the key guys being Kihei Clark (see what I did there?), the 5’9” five-year starter at point guard.
Clark averaged 10.7 points and 5.4 assists in 2022-2023, shooting 39.9 percent from the floor and 35.2 percent from three.
Bennett nabbed Georgetown transfer Dante Harris back in December to try to fill Clark’s shoes. Harris, listed at 6’0”, averaged 11.9 points and 4.1 assists a game for GU in 2021-2022.
His shooting numbers track somewhat with Clark’s – Harris was 37.5 percent from the floor and 27.5 percent from three as a sophomore.
Harris has the advantage heading into next season of having been able to practice with the team as a redshirt in the second semester.
Word from those who were able to see him work in practice is that he’ll be a solid fit in Bennett’s system.
The leading scorer from last season was Armaan Franklin (12.4 ppg, 42.4% FG, 37.3% 3FG). Bennett worked to replace Franklin’s productivity with the pick-up of St. Thomas transfer Andrew Rohde (17.1 ppg, 44.8% FG, 32.0% 3FG in 2022-2023).
Rohde is long (6’6”) and athletic, and a big-time scorer, going for 20 or more points in 12 games, including his last five games, in which he averaged 24.6 points per game, on 46.4 percent shooting from the floor and 42.9 percent shooting from three.
The other featured guy on the offensive end last season was two-year starter Jayden Gardner (12.0 ppg, 5.8 rebounds/g, 51.0% FG), a bruising 6’6” power forward. Filling his spot in the rotation will be 6’8” Merrimack transfer Jordan Minor (17.4 ppg, 9.4 rebounds/g, 2.6 blocks/g, 51.5% FG in 2022-2023).
Minor’s offense comes almost entirely in the paint. According to SynergySports data, 81.6 percent of his shot attempts last season were layups, dunks or tips, and he shot 55.0 percent on those shots at the rim.
From those numbers, Minor would seem to be a nice fit in Tony Bennett’s mover/blocker-sides offense, which asks its bigs to set screens for guards, with the opportunities for open shots for bigs then coming on pocket passes from the guards coming off those screens for layups or lobs.
Role players lost, and their fill-ins
Bennett went with 6’11” big Kadin Shedrick (6.2 ppg, 3.8 rebounds/g, 1.4 blocks/g, 64.7% FG) as the starter at five at the beginning of the season, but changed up in mid-January with 6’8” stretch five Ben Vander Plas (7.4 ppg, 4.6 rebounds/g, 41.2% FG, 30.3% 3FG) to try to get more spacing on offense with Vander Plas’ three-point shooting.
Both are gone, with Shedrick, notably, headed to Texas via the portal.
Also gone: 7’0” sixth-year senior Francisco Caffaro (2.0 ppg, 1.8 rebounds/g, 8.2 minutes/g in 2022-2023), who transferred to Santa Clara, and 6’10” redshirt freshman Isaac Traudt, a four-star Class of 2022 signee who redshirted last season, and landed at Creighton off the portal.
It was expected that neither Caffaro nor Vander Plas, who played as a grad transfer in 2022-2023, would be back.
The losses of Shedrick and Traudt, who projects to be a Vander Plas type – good position defender, good shooter on the perimeter with size – were not necessarily in the plans.
The one-for-one replacement for Shedrick may be four-star Class of 2023 four-star Blake Buchanan, a 6’10” motor guy from Idaho.
The Vander Clone is Jake Groves, who averaged a modest 6.8 points and 2.5 rebounds in 20.5 minutes per game at Oklahoma last season, shooting 50.0 percent from the floor on twos and the aforementioned 38.1 percent on threes.
Per SynergySports, just under 60 percent of Groves’ shots from the floor were jumpers, and he had an effective field goal percentage of 56.3 percent on those, rating as “excellent” on the SynergySports scale.
Defensively, Groves had good numbers defending jump shooters (42.5% EFG, “very good,” on the SynergySports scale) and at the rim (41.9%, also “very good,” per SynergySports).
A good Vander Clone, he is.
The mix
Reece Beekman (9.5 ppg, 5.3 assists/g, 40.5% FG, 35.2% 3FG in 2022-2023), 6’4” sophomore shooting guard Isaac McKneely (6.7 ppg, 42.3% FG, 39.2% 3FG) and 6’8” motor four Ryan Dunn (2.6 ppg, 2.9 rebounds/g, 12.9 minutes/g) are the three rotation guys returning.
Actually, we could maybe also count 6’5” junior Taine Murray there as well. Murray started getting limited rotation minutes late last season, most notably, 11 minutes off the bench in the NCAA Tournament first-round loss to Furman.
One other returnee needs to be accounted for – Class of 2022 four-star guard Leon Bond III, an athletic 6’6” wing.
One more to throw in – 6’5″ combo guard Elijah Gertrude, a four-star incoming freshman coming off an injury in his senior season in high school.
Those six, seven when you count Harris, plus the newcomers – Minor stepping in for Gardner in the post, Rohde replacing Franklin at the lead guard spot, Groves being swapped in as the new Vander Plas as a stretch big, and then Buchanan competing for minutes that had been there for Shedrick – this looks like a team that we got familiar with this past season.
Bennett will have two point guards, two big guards, a bruiser at four, either a motor guy or a stretch guy at five, and plenty of competition in practice for minutes.
The talent is there for Virginia to have another successful season.
The challenge will be working all the new guys into Bennett’s Packline and motion offense.
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Chris Graham
