The barber is done with Virginia basketball’s post-season haircut, and he didn’t quite go bald with it, but the losses to the transfer portal and the NBA draft left our CavMan with a military high-and-tight look that he didn’t exactly ask for.
The program going into the offseason seemed poised to return last season’s leading scorer, Armaan Franklin, two top-flight point guards in Reece Beekman and Dante Harris, depth at guard in the form of Class of 2022 four-stars Isaac McKneely and Leon Bond III, and rising junior Taine Murray, and depth and experience in the frontcourt with Kadin Shedrick and Ryan Dunn, plus the infusion of the talented Class of 2022 four-star Isaac Traudt.
That nucleus, along with incoming four-star Class of 2023 recruits Blake Buchanan and Elijah Gertrude, would give Tony Bennett 11 guys to compete for rotation minutes.
Franklin is gone, announcing his intent to declare for the NBA draft, though he has almost no chance, and that’s being generous, of hearing his name called.
Beekman has also declared for the draft, though it’s likely he will return, but then, we thought that about Trey Murphy III two years ago, and Murphy ended up being a first-round pick.
Shedrick and Traudt entered the transfer portal, with Traudt already committing to Creighton, and Shedrick getting interest from a couple dozen schools, including some that are probably reaches (think: Justin McKoy to North Carolina).
This leaves Bennett, heading into the silly season, with Harris, the midseason transfer from Georgetown, at point guard, McKneely at the two, Bond, Murray and Gertrude competing for minutes in the backcourt, and Dunn and Buchanan competing for minutes in the frontcourt.
Yikes.
Yes, obviously, Bennett and Co. are heavily involved in the transfer market, reaching out to anybody and everybody, almost literally.
It’s safe to assume that Bennett will find two or three fits – the priority is in the frontcourt, but it wouldn’t hurt to land a shooter for the backcourt.
The question isn’t whether he’ll get some talented kids to commit; it’s, how quickly can the kids get acclimated to Bennett’s Packline and mover/blocker-sides offense?
Bennett’s system isn’t built for the transfer-portal era. He’s not a roll-the-ball-out coach; Bennett’s approach is heavy on development, and it works, when you look at how many guys he’s had who developed from being marginal prep recruits into being NBA mainstays.
Development takes time, takes years, and it’s harder to develop guys in this new environment, where the lure of playing for a roll-the-ball-out coach is but a Zoom meeting and April campus visit away.
Long term, I don’t know if Bennett will be able to navigate the AAU-ization of college basketball, or if he will even want to.
The game has changed, and it ain’t going back to the way it was.
Short term, he’s making a go at it.
No matter how it goes, I think we can set expectations for 2023-2024 to what we saw in 2021-2022 – middle of the pack in the ACC, borderline NCAA Tournament/NIT bid territory.
Share
Chris Graham
