The additions of 6’6” shooting guard Andrew Rohde and 6’8” paint monster Jordan Minor are about as close to a 2-for-2 for Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner as UVA hoops coach Tony Bennett could have wished for going into transfer portal season.
There’s still one glaring roster need yet to be addressed: at the five spot.
More on that in a second.
First, to Rohde and Minor, who were both 17+-point-per-game scorers last season, so they’d figure to slot in nicely to the voids left by Franklin (12.4 ppg) and Gardner (12.0 ppg), the two leading scorers for Virginia in 2022-2023.
Georgetown transfer Dante Harris (11.9 ppg, 4.1 assists/g at Georgetown in 2021-2022) also rather neatly fills the opening left by the pending departure of Kihei Clark (10.7 ppg, 5.4 assists/g).
Another as close to even swap as you will find there, with Harris stepping in for Clark.
The backcourt
Looking now at the backcourt, I’m still assuming that Reece Beekman (9.5 ppg, 5.3 assists/g) will return after learning more about his NBA potential.
This would give Bennett a backcourt rotation of Beekman, Harris, Isaac McKneely (6.7 ppg, 39.2% 3FG), and Rohde (17.1 ppg, 3.6 assists/g at St. Thomas in 2022-2023), with junior Taine Murray and redshirt freshman Leon Bond III competing for minutes.
Now, if Beekman doesn’t return, there’d be a problem with there being no second point guard to be able to share minutes with Harris, but that’s a bridge to be crossed only if we have to.
I’m just pointing that out because none of the other guys in the backcourt mix are natural points.
The frontcourt
Next, to the frontcourt, where the pick-up of Minor (17.4 ppg, 9.4 rebounds/g, 51.5% FG) gives Virginia punch in the post for the first time in a while.
Gardner is primarily a jump shooter – 58.6 percent of his field-goal attempts last season were short and mid-range jumpers, per Hoop-Math.com – while Minor attacks the rim with impunity.
According to SynergySports data, Minor, a four-year guy at Merrimack, shot a grand total of 15 jump shots in 2022-2023; 81.6 percent of his shots were at the rim – layups, dunks and stickbacks.
The other two bigs among the scholarship guys on the roster are sophomore Ryan Dunn and incoming four-star freshman Blake Buchanan.
It’s hard for me to see any of those three getting minutes at the five spot – OK, maybe Minor, who I’m seeing listed at 240 pounds, which makes him a sort of Ben Vander Plas big, and Minor did average 2.6 blocks per game last season, which is impressive for a 6’8” fella.
I’m still thinking there’s a need for a legit five to pair with Minor, who seems a better fit at the four in the ACC.
The buzz around Hunter Dickinson, the 7’1” Northern Virginia native who is transferring out of Michigan, has died down, in favor of new buzz that there may be a chance that Kadin Shedrick (6.2 ppg, 3.8 rebounds/g, 1.4 blocks/g) may be thinking of returning, and that Virginia has a shot at getting five-star Class of 2024 recruit Jarin Stevenson, who then, as the story is being told, could reclassify to 2023.
My take there: there was more truth to the buzz about Dickinson when I wrote about it last week than the notions that Shedrick is thinking of returning and that UVA has any shot at landing Stevenson.
I’m hearing nothing from my peeps, in particular, on the Shedrick thing, so for now, at least, I’m chalking that up as message-board people with nothing better to do at the end of what is supposed to be their workday.
As for Stevenson: it’s nice to dream.
What if? scenario
One thing that would be interesting would be Bennett not deciding to beef up the frontcourt part of the roster because, and hear me out on this, because he wants to go four-guard next season.
He’s got the guys to be able to do that with the abundance of backcourt talent on the roster now.
I could easily see Bennett going four-guard around Minor at the five, with Buchanan as the backup, and Dunn playing some at big guard and some at small five.
More and more, you’re seeing coaches at the college and NBA levels going “small,” as we like to call it, to create matchup issues for teams that still play things straight up.
The 2019 national title team, you may remember, started four guards – Ty Jerome, Kihei Clark, Kyle Guy and De’Andre Hunter – around mobile big man Mamadi Diakite in the final five games of the NCAA Tournament.
This is where I leave you by wondering aloud if Bennett uses the coaching-staff opening left by the departure of Kyle Getter to go to Notre Dame to hire a coach with experience in four-guard offense.
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Chris Graham
