We wrote in our preseason analyses that Virginia hoops coach Tony Bennett had 12 guys competing for playing time this season who would be automatic rotation guys for most Power 5 coaches.
It’s not much of a surprise, then, that two of those 12 guys are planning to redshirt this season.
Bennett announced before last night’s season opener with Tarleton State, an easy 80-50 win in which the overmatched opponents put up little resistance, that he would be redshirting heralded freshman recruit Elijah Gertrude, a four-star combo guard, and Anthony Robinson, a three-star power forward who was a late addition to his 2023 recruiting class.
Christian Bliss, a four-star point guard who reclassified to the Class of 2023 with the intention of redshirting this season from the get-go, is sticking with that plan, for the obvious reason that Bennett already has three capable point guards in his rotation.
Postgame last night, Bennett confirmed the redshirt moves, with a hard hedge.
“That’s the plan right now. Could something change? Sure, if any, you know, they needed to be called into action,” Bennett said.
There is a risk here, of course. In the transfer portal era, a talented guy like Gertrude, a Top 50 national recruit, can easily get homesick, as happened with four-star power forward Isaac Traudt, who redshirted last year and then decided to head back toward home, transferring out to Creighton.
Or he could, like Jabri Abdur-Rahim, a Top 50 recruit from the Class of 2020, who didn’t redshirt, but didn’t get much run in his lone season at Virginia, 4.6 minutes per game in eight garbage-time appearances, just decide to go somewhere to try to get minutes.
Abdur-Rahim, as it turns out, may have been a tad bit overrated by the recruiting services – he averaged 6.9 points per game as a sophomore at Georgia in 2021-2022, and 7.1 points per game last season.
Gertrude’s issue coming into his freshman season is the knee injury that he suffered last year as a high-school senior that set him back. Bennett told reporters after the opener that Gertrude “shows flashes,” but Bennett already has a lot going for him in a loaded and deep backcourt – with a rotation featuring projected first-round draft pick Reece Beekman, second-year shooting guard Isaac McKneely, transfer point guards Andrew Rohde and Dante Harris, and redshirt freshman Leon Bond III, who showed flashes in the opener last night, going for 12 points and nine rebounds in 17 minutes off the bench.
Bond is the flip side of the story with Traudt, the example of a guy who, like De’Andre Hunter, who redshirted as a freshman in 2016-2017 before going on, two years later, to be the fourth pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, used his redshirt year to work on his game and his readiness physically to be able to compete at the ACC level.
Bond’s advice for this year’s redshirts: “I’ve just been telling them, attack every day. Understand that it’s a slow grind,” Bond said. “Don’t get discouraged, because discouragement is a loss of perspective. I told them, you’ve got to understand these workouts aren’t for nothing. They’re all going to add up so when you touch down the first game, they’ll pay off.”
The redshirt rule for college basketball probably needs to be amended to give coaches the same opportunity that coaches in football, who can play a guy four games and retain a redshirt for him, can use to aid in development.
A rule change was discussed, and eventually scuttled, a couple of years back that would have allowed participation in six to eight games without taking away the redshirt year.
For a guy like Gertrude, in particular, coming off an injury, that would be a nice option, to be able to work himself into getting some minutes while being able to retain the option of saving the year of eligibility.
And actually, even for guys like Bliss and Robinson, who were always going to be projects this year anyway, getting them some minutes in early-season games like last night’s blowout would be a bonus.
That is what it is.
In the meantime, Bennett had to have the talk with three guys that encompassed, OK, we don’t want to waste a year of your eligibility for a few games, we want you to keep working on your game so you’re ready, but we also don’t want you to get frustrated to the point that you want to leave at the end of the season.
“I think for their future, and again, we always leave it up to them, but, talked about it, and then with, again, Anthony, he discussed, we talked with him, and said, I think your best basketball is long range,” Bennett said last night. “And it’s something that happens when they get extra work during the season, day of game, they’re in the practice gym, getting extra lifts. But when they play on the scout team, or we call it our green team, they just get aggressive, and they kind of free up, and they can play without worrying about making so many mistakes when they’re trying to fit in. I think it restricts them if they’re not in that rotation right away.
“And so we just decided that we recommend that would be something that would probably bode well for their long-term future, but it wasn’t easy decisions. And of course, it was up to them if they wanted to, and I think they all feel it’s the best right now.”
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Chris Graham
