Ryan Dunn was a late bloomer as a prep recruit, for the longest time under the radar, then started getting interest from the big boys late.
“I wish Rick Pitino (at Iona) would have got that kid. I know Rick was the only guy recruiting him, and then Tony saw him late, and he ends up at Virginia. Everybody talked about Dunn, and you can see he’s going to be a really good one,” Monmouth coach King Rice said Friday, after Dunn, in his first action at Virginia, went for 13 points, six boards, three blocks and two steals in 27 minutes off the bench in an 89-42 UVA win.
Dunn’s minutes came because Virginia was without backup center Francisco Caffaro, who scored nine points and pulled down six rebounds in 14 minutes for Team Argentina in an 80-69 loss to the Dominican Republic in a 2023 FIBA World Cup qualifier on Thursday.
Dunn, a four-star recruit from Freeport, N.Y., made the most of his minutes – connecting on 5-of-6 of his field-goal tries, including a three, and throwing down a spectacular dunk after a steal that got the crowd off its feet.
He admitted after the game to being “nervous, because it was my first time ever playing collegiate basketball.”
“But it’s a sport I play, and I love, so once I got the flow of it, it was kind of just playing to play,” Dunn said. “If I mess up, I mess up, if I make a mistake, I make a mistake. They always teach us to be able to move on and make the next play. They might get on us if it’s the first time, but you just need to keep making plays. So, throughout the game, I just kind of let everything just go and just played basketball. If I made a mistake, move to the next play, try to go back and help the team.”
Humble kid there. He didn’t make any visible mistakes – OK, he got all air on a second-half free-throw attempt after taking a hard foul, but other than that.
He still looks about 15, but at 6’8”, 208 – he was 6’6”, 190 when he signed with UVA last fall, so, still growing, still getting stronger – he’s got, let’s say, a unique skill set that might remind you of somebody else.
“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.
“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.
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Chris Graham
