UVA Basketball coach Tony Bennett isn’t going to have his guys running more and attacking more and earlier in the halfcourt because you don’t like the way he likes to play.
He’s not so much adapting because the style of ball he inherited from his dad isn’t working anymore, either.
It still works well enough.
It ain’t pretty, nowhere close, but it’ll get you 20 wins and an NCAA Tournament berth every year, and every so often, you might be in the running for more.
No, what’re seeing from Tony Bennett is a concession to the new reality in college basketball, that you’re not going to have guys around for four or five years to learn, to grow, to develop.
The new way, Bennett acknowledged last week, talking with the media at the ACC Basketball Tipoff, is putting rosters together in two-year blocks.
“I think you have to look at your model and adjust it a little bit,” Bennett told reporters. “The way we’re thinking with this team, you know, kind of in two-year increments, you probably can’t say, we’re going to redshirt and build guys for the next, have them for three, four, five years, but in two years.”
Bennett’s system – akin to hockey, offense playing with serious brakes, to ensure that opponents can’t get out in transition – takes time to learn.
Think about his best teams – the 2013-2014 team, for instance, led by Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell, two seniors, and Malcolm Brogdon and Anthony Gill, redshirt sophomores; the 2015-2016 team had Brogdon and Gill as fifth-year seniors, and London Perrantes as a junior.
The 2018-2019 national title team had a bunch of third-year players, Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, De’Andre Hunter, Mamadi Diakite, Braxton Key, Jay Huff.
It takes time for guys to learn Bennett’s Pack Line defense, his approach to tempo, his deliberate mover-blocker/continuity ball screen offense.
Time is something that you don’t have in the transfer-portal era.
“It’s a time that is unprecedented in college athletics. No one is going to deny that,” Bennett said, addressing the sea of change with the portal and its close friend, NIL, which has above-the-table money impacting the college game in a huge way.
“It’s kind of, people use the term, Wild Wild West,” Bennett said, sounding like he doesn’t like it, which, why would he, but that he’s also resigned to it, for however long he’s still going to be around to have to deal with it.
Bennett’s 2024-2025 roster is as talented as any he’s ever had. Building around his lone returning double-digit scorer, junior guard Isaac McKneely, Bennett hit the portal hard, landing point guard Dai Dai Ames (Kansas State), combo guard Jalen Warley (Florida State), and power forwards Elijah Saunders (San Diego State) and TJ Power (Duke).
Incoming freshman Jacob Cofie, a four-star power forward, from Washington, is also expected to get some rotation minutes.
Warley and senior Taine Murray are the only seniors expected to be rotation guys, which, to hear Bennett tell it, is by design.
“Everyone else on the team is going to be back, and they’re going to be together for two or three years. That’s kind of how we put this team together in a two-year block,” Bennett said.
“Of course, at the end of the year, could guys be disgruntled? Could a guy or two leave? Perhaps. But I think if you can keep a core together for at least two years, and look at it that way, and then they develop, and the COVID year finally goes away. Let’s be real. It’s time. This is the last year we will see guys that are in their seventh, sixth year, all that stuff. It’s going to be mostly four-year players.
“When you have a team that has continuity and are juniors and seniors, I think that’s a way,” Bennett said. “Obviously, you have to get it right with, in this climate, the character of your players, but put it together. I think all those things will be how you build a program. But everyone, that’s the beauty of college sports, college basketball. You get to choose how you build your program, the style you play, the system you run, all those kinds of things. I think it starts for us in that regard.”
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Chris Graham
