Tony Bennett has lost two members of his staff: He might not be able to replace them

UVA Basketball coach Tony Bennett has lost two members of his coaching staff in the past couple of weeks, and the talk around the program is, he has been told that he won’t be able to replace either of them, because of budget constraints.

The odd thing there would be: the most recent numbers on finances for basketball, for the 2022-2023 academic sports year, had the program running at an operating surplus of $4.4 million.

That number is from the database maintained by Sportico, which shows that UVA Athletics, as a whole, runs a tighter ship, with an operating surplus of just $2.7 million in the 2022-2023 year, so, yeah, maybe being able to save a couple hundred thousand dollars can make a difference.

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That’s the backdrop for the developments of the past few couple of weeks, starting with Johnny Carpenter, who was one of Bennett’s five full-time assistants before leaving for a job with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies.

Bennett promoted Brad Soderberg, his director of scouting, to fill that open spot.

That leaves the director of scouting spot open, though, and another of the support positions is also now open, with the news that we broke on Tuesday regarding Larry Mangino, the director of player development, whose contract was not renewed for the 2024-2025 season.

Mangino, per a public-records request, was on the books for $96,181 in salary and supplemental compensation in the 2023-2024 academic sports year.

Carpenter’s total compensation in the 2023-2024 academic sports year was $150,000, from information obtained through a public-records request.

Soderberg’s salary and supplemental compensation came to $200,000 in the 2023-2024 academic sports year, and from a separate records request, which the University of Virginia made available to us on Tuesday, he got a slight bump in his overall pay package for the 2024-2025 year, to $204,000.

Bennett, earlier this month, hired former Virginia star Kyle Guy to a new job, with the title of athlete development mentor/special assistant.

We made a second new records request to see what Guy’s total compensation will be, and found that he will be paid $100,000 in salary and supplemental compensation in the 2024-2025 academic sports year.

Adding Guy to the staff doesn’t address the openings in scouting and player development, so, assuming the talk around the program that Bennett isn’t going to be able to fill those spots, presumably other members of the staff are going to have to pick up those responsibilities.

The word getting back to us is, Bennett, who back in June signed an extension tethering him to Virginia through the 2030-2031 season, isn’t what you’d call happy about this, and if this is playing out as we’re being told, I’d say, understandably so.