Reece Beekman is doing all the right things to get himself ready for the NBA, but it’s looking like he’s going to have to play his way in out of the Summer League and probably a year in the G League.
The Virginia senior was, for a time last season, a late first-round pick in most of the 2023 mock drafts, and he spent a good bit of the spring, after UVA’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Furman, auditioning for teams in private workouts, before deciding to return to college for his senior season.
Beekman, the 2023 ACC Defensive Player of the Year, has raised his game on the offensive end – he made just 19.4 percent of his jumpers as a freshman back in 2020-2021, but he’s a decent 32.9 percent shooter on jumpers this year, and he’s made dramatic improvement in both getting to the rim (4.4 field goal attempts at the rim per game, up from 2.9 per game last season) and finishing on his rim runs (59.2 percent shooting at the rim, up from 46.8 percent last season).
That he’s been able to improve his numbers as the primary focal point for opponents makes what he’s doing stand out more.
“He’s been called upon to do a lot, you know, and this is really going to be beneficial for his long-term career. What he’s had to do this year, you know, sometimes the floor is getting shrunk, and he’s forced to do some things, and I think he’s done a heck of a job, and I think that will bode well for him long-term. But he’s a guy that has just continually, each year, developed and added pieces to his game, offensively and even defensively,” UVA coach Tony Bennett told reporters on his weekly ACC teleconference call on Monday.
The knock on Beekman – well, knocks – started with his limitations on offense, which were exacerbated by Bennett using him alongside another point guard, Kihei Clark, for the past three years.
Clark finished his five-year college career – the extra year coming from the COVID redshirt year – last spring, meaning, finally, it was going to be Reece Beekman’s team.
Clark wasn’t the only guy to move on from last year’s team, which won 25 games and claimed a share of the ACC regular-season title, the program’s sixth in the past 10 years.
Virginia also lost its two leading scorers, Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner, and starting center Ben Vander Plas, to graduation, then saw power forward Kadin Shedrick exit via the transfer portal, landing at Texas.
That left Bennett with just Beekman and sophomores Isaac McKneely and Ryan Dunn as guys from last year’s rotation, meaning, for Beekman, “it’s been a lot on his shoulders, but in a good way,” per Bennett.
“He’s led us to, you know, I know, we’ve had some really bad losses or big losses, but he’s led us to a spot that the one thing I always step back and say, Well, you have to appreciate, whether it’s your preference or not, he’s got us right now sitting in third place, 12 wins in the league, and trying to you know, get to postseason and, and fighting, and that’s with a group as inexperienced as we’ve had here in a long time, with some, you know, some deficiencies that we have,” Bennett said.
This year’s Virginia team, indeed, is reliant on Beekman, in good times and bad, to set the tone, not just on the defensive end, as in years past, but on the offensive side of the floor as well.
That may not put him in a position to hear his name called on draft night in a few months, but it’s hard to imagine that Reece Beekman isn’t going to play his way into an NBA career.
He’s been the heart and soul of a UVA team that has overachieved this season; that kind of thing tends not to go unnoticed by the folks who make hiring decisions at the next level.
“He’s the guy that is taking on the brunt of it and put us in this spot, which is a hard spot to be in,” Bennett said. “I give him and all the guys a lot of credit for having some tough losses, getting back up, finding ways to get wins. And I think it starts with his ability and his improvement that has happened throughout the years. And this is a huge a new role for him, but an important one.”
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Chris Graham
