If you’re working a game in which Virginia coach Tony Bennett gets teed up in, you have to maybe think, in the back of your mind, maybe, just maybe, it’s on you, and not him.
Bennett was assessed a T at the 3:15 mark of the first half of Virginia’s 49-47 win over Wake Forest, after a back-and-forth with the officials that had been ongoing back more than eight minutes of gametime, and two media timeouts that the famously mild-mannered Bennett spent berating the ACC crew – Bill Covington, Tony Henderson and Mark Schnur.
Bennett copped after the game to what he said that got him the technical foul.
Yep, the magic word.
“Bleeping.”
“I thought (Cam) Hildreth had traveled on the play. I thought he had carried it and kind of traveled, and I said, Call the bleeping foul,” Bennett told reporters.
Only, no, he didn’t say bleeping.
“He heard me, and I asked him, I said, Why did you call me?” said Bennett, who had to be restrained by assistant coach Jason Williford after the call by Schnur.
“He said, Because you cussed at me,” Bennett said. “And I said, alright, I guess I deserve that. But every time a coach in our league is dropping a cuss word, there’ll be a lot of technicals, so.”
Good point there. They’re retired now, but to cite two examples, Mike Krzyzewski and Gary Williams wouldn’t have made it past the pregame introductions most nights.
One year, back in the ‘aughts, the ACC had overflow media seating at the ACC Tournament behind the scorer’s table, in between the two benches, and guess where I ended up.
Yes, that’s my face there beside “overflow media seating” in the dictionary.
The only coach that week who didn’t weave a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan was Roy Williams.
The worst you’d ever get out of Ol’ Roy: “blankety-blank.”
(Those actual words.)
What had set Bennett off on Saturday was what was obviously a good strategy from Wake coach Steve Forbes, which I call “good strategy” just because his team didn’t get called for it, that had his guys grabbing and clutching Virginia guards running off screens in Bennett’s mover-blocker motion offense.
The first and most glaring no-call involved Virginia sharpshooter Jake Groves, who was held by Wake forward Damari Monsanto trying to get through a screen, and as a result turned the ball over at the 11:57 mark of the first half.
Next time up the court, Groves got through a screen set by freshman forward Blake Buchanan, but as Groves was making a shot from three, Buchanan was being called for a moving screen, so, offensive foul, no basket.
That play, at the 11:35 mark, triggered the under-12 media timeout, the first of two that Bennett spent giving the officials several pieces of his mind, to no avail, because the Wake defenders kept grabbing and clutching the rest of the way, and the officials kept swallowing their whistles the rest of the way.
The play on which Bennett would end up losing his cool ended with an offensive-rebound stickback by Wake Forest center Efton Reid, the board coming off a miss by Hildreth on which Bennett felt the Deacs’ shooting guard had either traveled or been guilty of what we commonly call carrying, or, and this sounds more official, an illegal discontinued dribble.
If Hildreth was indeed guilty, I didn’t see it live, so, there’s that.
But Bennett saw it, or thought he saw it, anyway, and after about 20 minutes of actual time between the first awful missed call on the Groves turnover, and a running sparring session with the ACC crew, he then said what he said.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I really shouldn’t do that. It was classless on my part, just the heat of the moment,” said Bennett, with the contrition of a kid who has just been, ahem, corrected by his mother.
The media doesn’t get direct access to the officials after a game, so we don’t know if Schnur was similarly chastened.
KenPom’s officials ratings rank Schnur 92nd nationally among the 200 game officials included in the site’s 2023-2024 ratings.
Schnur was 104th last season, 107th back in 2021-2022, 100th in 2020-2021.
He’s a middle-of-the-pack guy, basically, which, no sin there.
I didn’t know his name until today; no doubt this is the first time most of you not named Mark Schnur reading this didn’t know who he was until just now, either.
Today was his third game this week, and his third Wake Forest game of the season – Schnur had previously worked the Deacs’ home games with Syracuse (Feb. 3) and Louisville (Jan. 20).
It was his first Virginia game of the season; the second for Covington (KenPom ranking: 72), and the third for Henderson (KenPom ranking: 32).
Officials can have bad days like players and teams can have bad days.
Today was a bad day for the guys in black and white, and the one guy made it worse by teeing up Bennett, who was last assessed a technical in a game that counts in Virginia’s 74-68 loss to Maryland way back on March 6, 2010, three weeks show of 14 years ago.
“Last time I did that was my first year, and we ended up losing that game,” a rueful Bennett said. “And I just, I didn’t want us, well, if we had made our free throws, it would have been a little different, but yeah, it’s just one of those bang-bang plays, and it was a physical game, and again, what was said was said, and shouldn’t have done it, again, move on.”
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Chris Graham
