Wake Forest shot 50 percent. Nine of the 10 Virginia guys who got minutes were under 50 percent; the one who wasn’t, Taine Murray, made his only shot attempt, in garbage time.
Forty-seven points on 28.1 percent shooting, outrebounded by 13, 10 points in the paint – just 4-of-14 on shots at the rim.
It’s amazing that Wake only won by 19; the Deacs (12-4, 4-1 ACC) utterly dominated.
For Virginia (11-5, 2-3 ACC), it was the fifth double-digit loss of the season, four of those coming on the road – the ‘Hoos are 0-4 in true road games.
It’s readily apparent now that this just isn’t a good Virginia team, which is shocking to me, considering the talent on the roster.
Seven of the 10 rotation guys were four-star prep prospects; two of those guys, Reece Beekman and Ryan Dunn, are projected 2024 first-round NBA Draft picks.
Two of the former three-stars who were the prize transfers in Tony Bennett’s 2023 transfer portal class, which 247Sports ranked 24th nationally, averaged 17+ points per game last season.
Those guys – Andrew Rohde and Jordan Minor – are averaging a combined 3.4 points per game this season for Bennett.
Minor, just today, in the 66-47 loss at Wake, which was not nearly as close as the score seems to suggest, made his first start of the season.
Didn’t look bad – Minor had nine points and five rebounds in 22 minutes.
Beekman, the team’s leading scorer this season, had a team-high 10 points, on 3-of-12 shooting.
Isaac McKneely had eight points on 2-of-10 shooting.
Dunn, supposedly a late lottery pick in the 2024 draft, put up a total of four shots, and had four points and one – one, as in, 1 – rebound in 23 minutes.
His selling points are defense and motor; the defense has been lacking of late, and one rebound is a blinking red light on the dashboard.
There’s been a lot of talk, generated, to be fair, by my colleague here at AFP, Scott German, who has been around the UVA Basketball program as long as anybody, certainly longer than the jock-sniffers who buy their access to Bennett and his kids with NIL money, that this year might be Bennett’s last.
Virginia, Bennett struggling to find answers
What if today’s ugly loss was about something more for Tony Bennett, Virginia? Dec. 30
Hot taek: Virginia is struggling because Tony Bennett is stepping down Jan. 1
Scott German: Is the finish line close for Virginia coach Tony Bennett? Jan. 6
Tony Bennett on lack of ‘competitive fire’: ‘Easy, you know, to sit there and say that’ Jan. 7
I’ve been pushing back against that premise, but after watching another go-through-the-motions performance in another dispiriting loss today, man, I dunno.
The defining feature of this team right now is that when it gets down, it seems to throw in the towel.
We saw that first before Thanksgiving in the loss to Wisconsin (in which the ‘Hoos scored 41 points), then in the 77-54 loss at Memphis.
At Notre Dame, where the Irish led 13-0 out of the gate, and Virginia never got closer than eight the rest of the way.
Last week at NC State, in the 76-60 loss, UVA got out to a decent start, then the Pack made 20-of-30 in a 19-minute stretch to make that one a blowout.
Today, Virginia hung close, trailing by six at the half, but a 10-2 Wake run out of the locker room got the lead to 14, and the closest it got thereafter was … 12.
There was no fight, no hunger.
Which, we’ve seen before.
What I want to see is a bunch of guys pissed off that they’re not playing well, that takes it personally that there’s talent there, and they’re not getting the job done.
What we’re seeing instead is, just resignation.
Is Tony checked out? I doubt it.
He’s a Midwestern guy, and his value system is to earn his keep, and if this is it for CTB, he wouldn’t want to go out like this.
His buddy Jay Wright up and quit college basketball after a Final Four run in 2022, making it clear that he wasn’t up for playing the game the way it needs to be played, having to recruit and re-recruit a roster every year, the AAU/EYBL way.
At least he went on his terms.
I remember thinking, leaving the floor in Minneapolis after an unforgettable Monday night in April five years ago, that we were going to experience three, four, maybe five more of those nights before Bennett was done.
Whether Bennett is done in a few months or hangs around for another 10 years, I don’t know that I see him succeeding at that level that we saw in 2019 without having to make a dramatic change to how he does things schematically, in terms of his motion offense, his Pack Line defense.
As far as him continuing to have to kiss the rings of the monied jock-sniffers who push the envelope of what’s legal and what’s not in the NIL era to get and keep players, I can’t say that I have any more insight into that than they do.
I don’t write big checks, so they don’t let me get too close.
I can tell you this – if the guy has the moral scruples that his carefully cultivated image tells us he has, he’s not long for this game.
In the meantime, he has a job ahead of him, to get this team, with way more talent than to be 11-5 with five blowout losses, to play to its potential.
We can worry about what comes later … later.
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Chris Graham
