We can probably all concede now, two days later, that the UVA Basketball media day from Monday is already old news.
The odd thing is, the folks in the program had to know that there’d be the minor blips of bad news coming with Jalen Warley hitting the transfer portal and Chance Mallory de-committing.
To be fair, there’s not much for the PR folks to do other than roll with the schedule as it’s set.
Me personally, I’m not all that torn up about either of the supposed bad-news items – Warley is not a good perimeter shooter, not a good defender, at best the third option at point guard, and Mallory, who is, sure, a four-star, is 5’9”, and he’d be behind three guys at the point spot when he finally made it to UVA.
Warley, to me, would have been informed by the interim coach, Ron Sanchez, that he was third on the depth chart at the one spot, because that’s what people in the Bennett coaching tree do – they show respect for their guys.
Sanchez would have told Warley that so that the kid could decide what was best for him for his final year of college eligibility.
Now, me, if I’m a kid in Warley’s position, I look at it like, I have a chance to get a UVA degree here, I should probably take that and run with it, and not the one from South Dakota Tech that I’m going to get as my best offer off the portal, but that’s the guy with a UVA degree hanging on my wall above me as I write this thinking that.
As for Mallory, the world is still his oyster. He let somebody, or multiple somebodies, get in his ear about the unknowns at UVA, with a lame-duck AD and an interim head coach, and he’s a kid, we can forgive him for that.
He needs to do what’s best for him.
So does Jalen Warley.
Neither guy impacts the 2024-2025 season for UVA Basketball. Warley was going to get Dante Harris minutes, and Mallory gets to weigh another flood of offers, and doesn’t have to get himself ready to compete with Dai Dai Ames, Christian Bliss and Elijah Gertrude for minutes at the one next season.
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Chris Graham
