ESPN has its first 2024 NBA mock draft out, and it has Reece Beekman at the end of the first round, but it’s the UVA baller that the Worldwide Leader has at the #21 pick, Ryan Dunn, that will get your attention.
All that wailing and gnashing of teeth from the UVA fan base over not getting 6’10” five-star forward Jarin Stevenson kinda looks silly now.
Dunn, a 6’8” rising sophomore small forward, didn’t get a lot of run at Virginia in 2022-2023 – just 12.9 minutes per game, averaging 2.6 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.
He shot 53.2 percent overall and 31.3 percent from three, respectable numbers, but it was just tough for him to get on the floor with the older guys ahead of him.
Think back to the second game of the season, though.
Monmouth. An 89-42 blowout Virginia win.
Dunn got 27 minutes off the bench that night because Francisco Caffaro had to miss that game to play with the Argentinian national team.
Dunn, that night, went for 14 minutes on 5-of-6 shooting, had six rebounds and three blocks, and afterward, Monmouth coach King Rice was having flashbacks to De’Andre Hunter.
“I told the kids I was in the building when De’Andre Hunter came off the bench and had a breakout game,” said Rice, pointing us back to a Nov. 19, 2017, game at JPJ, won by Virginia, 73-53, in which Hunter, then a redshirt freshman, went off for 23 points on 8-of-10 shooting and eight rebounds in 24 minutes off the bench against Rice and Monmouth.
“Dunn reminds me a lot of Hunter, and you can tell he’s young, but when he grows into that body with that skill set, he’ll be giving people problems for a long, long time,” Rice said.
Hunter would, as you know, go on to become the fourth pick overall in the 2019 NBA Draft.
Dre had somehow fallen under the recruiting radar as a prep, which is how he ended up at Virginia, and ended up being redshirted as a freshman, hard as that is to imagine.
Dunn, similarly, went unnoticed as a recruit, to the point that he actually committed to Virginia as a walk-on, hard as that is to imagine.
The way UVA coach Tony Bennett tells it, former Boston College coach Steve Donahue is the one who got him to take a look at Hunter as a prep recruit, and as they say, the rest is history there.
And then it was Donahue who tipped Bennett off to Dunn.
“I ran into Coach Donahue, and I said, any other De’Andre Hunters out there? He said, you know, there’s a guy, he’s not quite like De’Andre, but you should take a look. He’s not getting recruited, but I think his upside, as he grows into his body, could be really good,” Bennett said.
Bennett took a look at the kid, Dunn, decided there was potential, and offered him a scholarship, but as Dunn was weighing his options, Bennett got a commitment from another big, Isaac Traudt, who would go on to redshirt last season, and left after the season for Creighton via the transfer portal.
But going back to the time of Traudt’s prep commitment, that meant Bennett was out of scholarships for his 2022 recruiting class.
Meaning Bennett had to call Dunn and tell him that bad news.
“And his father said, called me back like an hour later, and said, if he would consider coming on a visit and walking on without a scholarship, would you still take him? I was like, let me think about that,” Bennett said.
Dunn, who had a fair number of offers from mid-majors, picks the story from there.
It was his father, Edmund, who was insistent that Ryan give UVA another look, whether there was a scholarship available or not.
“On my first Zoom call with Tony Bennett, he loved him. He just loved what he was saying, he thought this was a great place for me,” Dunn said.
So, Dunn visited Charlottesville, “and there were a lot of signs that felt like I needed to be here. It felt like home, it felt comfortable to be around the team. So, I kind of knew where I wanted to be. I just wanted to make sure make sure my heart was right,” Dunn said.
Once he got that call that Virginia had no scholarships available, “it was kind of stressful. I felt like I let an opportunity slip,” Dunn said.
“But my father and my mom also were like, you know, just we’re going to do the best we can, we think this place you need to be, so we just, hey, if we had to pay, like, we will pay,” Dunn said.
“We prayed to make sure a scholarship opened up, and by the grace of God, a scholarship opened up in the spring. So, I think it’s just a blessing, the opportunity to be here,” Dunn said.
Now Dunn is a building block for Bennett and Virginia for 2023-2024.
Listed at 208 pounds last season, he looks like he’s packed on at least 15 healthy pounds to his frame since the season ended.
Like Hunter, who is set to enter his fifth NBA season in the fall, Dunn is a Swiss army knife defensively, able to guard all five positions, and offensively, he can score at all three levels, with freaky athleticism around the rim.
The bad news for Virginia fans is, we probably only get him this one more year.
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Chris Graham
