Tony Bennett, you may have read this once, didn’t want to be a basketball coach. He saw how tough it was on his father, the legendary Dick Bennett, and also his mother, Anne, and decided, no, not for me.
Dick Bennett, for the record, didn’t want Tony to go into coaching, either, same reasons.
But Tony was playing professionally in New Zealand, after a three-year stint in the NBA, and his team needed a coach, so he became a player-coach, then realized that it didn’t have to be as bad as he thought it would be.
Fast forward a quarter-century later, Tony Bennett is in the media room at the John Paul Jones Arena, a few minutes from having been drenched in a Gatorade shower, after his Virginia team had finished off a 73-66 win over Syracuse that put him atop the school’s all-time wins list.
First thing you expected out of the guy who wasn’t sure he wanted to be doing what he was doing when this moment would come, he wouldn’t make it about him.
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan handed Bennett a basketball commemorating the achievement, which Bennett held, sheepishly, then casually flipped to a staffer when he was handed a microphone to address the sellout crowd.
He talked about how below the center circle at halfcourt, 12 inches down, there’s a scroll embedded that has the names of every player, every coach, every manager, every support staff, that’s ever been a part of the UVA program with him, along with his five pillars – Humility, Passion, Unity, Servanthood, Thankfulness – that he has built the program around.
“It’s all written on that piece of paper, and the whole idea with that is, first of all, these pillars are the foundation of our program, but you’re the foundation, you’re what this thing is built on, the people,” Bennett, wiping Gatorade from his sleeves, told reporters in the media room.
Bennett often cites his father, whose difficulties dealing with the life of being a coach, even with his great successes in Wisconsin as a high school, then D3, then mid-major, then University of Wisconsin coach who took a team to a Final Four, almost dissuaded the son from following in his footsteps.
The younger Bennett uses his father’s Packline defense, favors the patient motion offense that was a Dick Bennett trademark, but it’s not just x’s and o’s that Tony got from his dad.
“It’s always, if you get the people, right, most of the time, the rest takes care of itself. And so that’s, again, that piece of advice my father gave me, and also saying, don’t take a shortcut on character. You know, you might be able to quick fix it if you gamble on some things, but it never was the case,” Tony Bennett said.
Bennett felt, when he was being wooed by Virginia in 2009 to try to start a fourth rebuild to get things back to where they’d been under Terry Holland, who won 326 games as the head coach from 1974-1990, that UVA was the kind of place where he could put the both the x’s and o’s and the values that he’d learned from his father into practice and have success.
“That’s why this this position appealed to me a lot, because this is a kind of place that I think values, because of Coach Holland and the coaches that came after him, and all those kind of people, values how you do it, not just what you do, how, and so that’s why it’s been, at least for me, a pretty fortunate run,” Bennett said.
The fortunate run includes five ACC regular-season titles, two ACC Tournament championships, and the 2019 national title.
At the center of it all is a guy who wasn’t sure he wanted to be at the center of it all, and is quick to deflect the praise that comes with being a successful high-profile basketball coach.
“I meant what I said, that is a we award, not a me award, all the way,” Bennett said. “I’ve got some Day Ones that have been with me the whole time, and they asked me on the ACC Network, you know, what has it been, what’s a key part of that process, and you guys have heard me say it, it’s hire staff and recruit players that you can lose with first before you’re going to win. I’ve had guys that I’ve been able to go through the hard stuff with, and they stay true, and the players have. And then when you learn from that, and you keep staying together, good things happen.
“Again, I don’t deserve this,” Bennett said. “It’s what I told you guys before, I didn’t even know I wanted to coach this long or do this, but here I am. And you know, I kind of take a step back and say wow, because Coach Holland’s the best, and again, there’s been so many cool things that have happened, but just, you know, kind of glad now we can move on and keep trying to become a better defensive team.”
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Chris Graham
