Tony Bennett, after giving a lot of thought to things during a weekend trip on the Rappahanock River, decided, on Wednesday, so, two days ago, that he was going to step down from the UVA Basketball job.
It was far from a spur-of-the-moment decision; he’d been going back and forth about his future in college basketball for the past three years.
“The thing that has choked me up the most, and the hardest thing to say is, when I looked at myself, and I realized I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment, and if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be all in. You’ve got to have everything. If you do it half-hearted, it’s not fair to the university and those young men. In looking at it, that’s what made me step down,” an emotional Bennett said Friday at his retirement press conference.
A who’s who’s – or, if you prefer, a ’Hoos ’Hoo – of dignitaries were on hand, starting with the obvious, UVA President Jim Ryan, Athletics Director Carla Williams, and her predecessor, Craig Littlepage, who hired Bennett in 2009.
UVA Football coach Tony Elliott was there, as the team plane was set to load for the game down at Clemson tomorrow at noon.
Legendary former UVA women’s hoops coach Debbie Ryan, who had to make this same tough call, to step away from the game, was there.
Former UVA Basketball great Rick Carlisle, who won an NBA championship coaching the Dallas Mavericks, and is now the head coach with the Indiana Pacers, who played a preseason game in Indianapolis last night, caught a flight in and was on hand.
National champion UVA Lacrosse coach Lars Tiffany led the applause when Bennett entered the media dining room on the second floor at the John Paul Jones Arena just after 11 a.m. ET.
Men’s basketball has long been the favored sport on Grounds and with the alumni base, dating back to the Terry Holland/Ralph Sampson era.
Tony Bennett was the one who finally led the University of Virginia to a national championship in our favorite sport.
The idea that he doesn’t think that he’s the guy best equipped to lead the program going forward is several things.
It’s a manifestation of his humility, the first of his famous Five Pillars.
It’s a sad day for the University of Virginia family, that we had this purest of the pure Tony Bennett as the face of our program, and our university, winning ACC and national championships, sending guys overlooked by other top programs to the NBA and to success in the real world, and now he’s gone.
And the reason why he’s gone is, itself, an indictment of college athletics, and more to the point, the inability of those in charge to figure out how to balance the pursuit of money with the best interests of the people involved.
A weekend to clear his mind
Bennett, addressing the room – the reporters, the TV cameras, his players and staff, the dignitaries – conceded that he “thought about stepping away” after the 2023-2024 season.
“Every coach, you get to that. It was a long season. It was a hard ending,” said Bennett, whose team earned another NCAA Tournament berth, by the skin of its teeth, this time, but rather famously flamed out in an ugly 67-42 loss to Colorado State in the First Four.
The thinking about stepping away didn’t go on for too long, out of necessity.
“The way the recruiting calendar works, you literally jump in,” Bennett said. “For two straight months, we’re in the transfer portal, and you guys know that. You’re involved in situations and conversations and things that I’m not great at, but because my staff, because of Coach Sanchez, Coach Williford, Coach Vandross, all the coaches, all the staff, Coach Zay, we got excited. We landed a really good group of transfers. We had two good incoming players. And I was excited about that and going forward.”
Reporting from me about Bennett’s contract status – I learned through a public-records request in May that his contract was to set to expire on April 30, 2026, meaning, he had two years left – eventually led UVA Athletics to offer Bennett a five-year contract extension in June.
“I didn’t know if I’d be able to do the whole six or seven years obviously, but I was excited and thought, I think I can do this. I’m excited about the way forward,” Bennett said.
Word started circulating in the summer that Bennett had given his top assistant, Ron Sanchez, who has been named the interim coach, more control of the day-to-day basketball part of UVA Basketball, and that Sanchez was working with the roster on tweaks to the philosophical approach – in essence, playing with more tempo, pushing more to create fast-break and secondary-break opportunities, getting better looks earlier in the shot clock in halfcourt sets.
Bennett said he was “encouraged, and it excited me for this way forward, and I kind of went through the summer and the fall hoping to do this.”
His last public appearance as the head coach, last week at the ACC Basketball Tipoff media event in Charlotte, had him looking and seeming excited about the upcoming season, though he did talk at length, in response to a question from a reporter, about the difficulties in dealing with the challenges facing coaches in the NIL/portal era.
Following the Tipoff event, Tony and his wife, Laurel, took a long weekend trip during the university’s fall break, and the time away gave him time to process where he is, and where he wanted to be.
“Fall break, you know, you don’t get a chance in this profession to really reflect and step back. You literally go. I hope the NCAA will change the calendar when the season is done. You just kind of go, and you go through it,” Bennett said.
“Fall break, Laurel and I went away to a beautiful place we found, I think it was The Tides Inn on the Rappahannock. It was beautiful. We just sat and talked. I was honest with myself and started feeling some of those things again and realized again, that stuff. It was at that time.”
Getting back to Charlottesville, Bennett sat on what he was thinking about his future until Wednesday, when he called Williams, the AD, who was on the West Coast on a fundraising trip.
“What’s today? Friday? It was Wednesday,” Williams told a group of reporters in a sidebar after the press conference.
You could tell it’s been a whirlwind past couple of days.
Williams relayed that she talked the decision through with Bennett, to make sure that he was at peace with what he was set on doing.
“Tony is important, not just to the men’s basketball program, but he’s important to our department, he’s important to the university community. So, we talked about several different scenarios, and he just felt like it was, it was time,” Williams said.
No regrets
It takes a humble man to walk away from a $4 million-a-year job, at or near the height of your powers.
Tony Bennett is just 55. Roy Williams retired at 71; Mike Krzyzewski at 75; Jim Boeheim made it all the way to 78.
Bennett’s UVA teams won six ACC regular-season titles, two ACC Tournament titles and that 2019 national championship.
Even 10 more years, and you’ve gotta think, they’re putting up more than a couple of additional banners to hang from the rafters at JPJ.
“I am at peace, and as I said, when you know in your heart it’s time, it’s time,” Bennett said.
“Will I miss the game? Do I love the game? Absolutely. But I don’t think I’m equipped in this new way to coach, and it’s a disservice if you keep doing that.”
That’s Tony Bennett all the way there.
He recruited players to fit into a system that isn’t for everybody – you’ve got to be willing to sacrifice on offense to play in mover-blocker, the most democratic of offensive systems, and you’ve got to commit to playing his Pack Line defense, basically one-on-one with zone principles and lots of helping depending on where the ball is.
To be a good Tony Bennett player, you’ve got to know your strengths, your weaknesses, and play within your abilities.
Tony Bennett, here, is playing within his abilities.
He came up as a coach who inherited a system from his father, Dick Bennett, who had success beginning at the D3 level by getting guys to buy in, and being able to develop players over their four years into being good team players playing together to be more than the sums of their individual abilities.
College basketball, in the era of NIL and the transfer portal, doesn’t offer coaches the luxury of being able to develop guys for four years.
Bennett conceded, at last week’s ACC Tipoff, that he had adjusted his thinking about how to go about building his program from the four-year development window to which he was accustomed to a two-year window.
As enthusiastic as he made himself sound at the Tipoff event that he could make the adjustment, he came to the realization, last weekend on the Rappahannock, that, no, he’s not the right guy going forward.
“I’m very sure this is the right step,” Bennett said. “I wish I could have gone longer, I really do, but it’s time. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think we had the right group of young men and the right staff to lead them forward in this way.
“That was the one thing President Ryan and Carla and Laurel and I talked a lot about, you don’t want to have regrets. You don’t want to have regrets. Think through this. Sit on this,” Bennett said.
“I think I’d have more regrets staying longer and not being able to be all in and not sure and giving everything to these guys than stepping away with maybe a little more energy in the tank but giving it in the right place. That would be the bigger regret I’d have.”
Video: Tony Bennett retirement press conference
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Chris Graham
