Virginia fans don’t need to be sold on Ben Vander Plas. They remember him dropping 17 points on the ‘Hoos in Ohio’s 62-58 upset in Round 1 of the 2021 NCAA Tournament.
Vander Plas, a 6’8”, 232-pounder, was 7-of-15 from the field in the win, 3-of-9 from three, and had five rebounds, four assists and one block in the win.
Next year, he’ll be suiting up with the good guys.
“We are excited to add Ben to the Virginia basketball family,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said Monday. “Ben brings valuable experience, leadership and production to our team. He had an outstanding four-year career at Ohio University, and we look forward to having him join our program.”
Vander Plas, who chose Virginia over Wisconsin, Ohio State, Iowa State, Illinois and Virginia Tech, averaged 14.2 points and 6.8 rebounds per game in 2021-2022, shooting 46.7 percent from the floor and 33.8 percent from three.
The basketball part is there. The academic side has Vander Plas earning a spot on the 2021-2022 Academic All-America® Division I Men’s Basketball Team and being named the Division I Academic All-America® of the Year.
Vander Plas arrives at UVA with an undergraduate degree in communications and master’s degrees in sport administration and management. He sports a career 3.96 GPA and is a three-time Academic All-District® Men’s Basketball Team selection.
He also reconnects, in a manner of speaking, with family – his father, Dean, was a college teammate of Tony Bennett under Tony Bennett’s father, Dick Bennett, at Green Bay from 1989-91. Ben Vander Plas’ full given name is Bennett as a tribute to the Bennett family.
So, he’s a fit.
“I am very excited to be a part of the basketball family at Virginia,” Vander Plas said. “The program has a great history of success, and I am looking forward to being able to contribute to continuing that success. I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to play for Coach Bennett and his staff and continue to grow as a person and player this next year. There is a great group of guys in that locker room, and I can’t wait to get to Charlottesville and start working with them.”
The only question now is: where do his minutes come from?
Saying that, first, we all know that Vander Plas, a top transfer portal talent, didn’t choose Virginia so that he can sit on the bench for a year.
He’s coming because he expects to play 30 minutes a night.
His natural position is power forward. Virginia already has a power forward: Jayden Gardner, last season’s leading scorer, at 15.3 points per game, and leading rebounder, at 6.4 boards per game.
Gardner isn’t a natural guy to think you can just move him over to the five spot, at 6’6”.
Gardner is a pick-and-pop guy on the offensive end, at his best shooting 12- to 15-foot jumpers, and he emerged as his first season in Charlottesville went on as a solid defender (ask Paolo Banchero his thoughts on that).
Vander Plas is a classic stretch four, at his best, like Gardner, on the perimeter, Vander Plas able to stretch defenses more with his three-point shooting, Gardner maybe able to take advantage of the spots inside the arc that could be created with Vander Plas and Armaan Franklin bombing away from the outside.
The offense could look more like the group that lost to Ohio in the 2021 NCAA Tournament (which ranked 17th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com) or even the 2019 NCAA champs (which ranked second nationally in adjusted offense, per KenPom).
Defensively, Vander Plas and Gardner playing 30 minutes each a night could be a challenge. Kadin Shedrick, who blocked 2.1 shots per game in 2021-2022, and Francisco Caffaro, a solid position defender and rebounder at 7’1”, end up fighting for backup minutes at the two post spots.
Neither are guys opposing coaches worry about on the offensive end – Shedrick’s impressive 64.1 percent shooting mark seems almost entirely based on his ability to catch lob passes from point guards Reece Beekman and Kihei Clark and finish, and Caffaro, god love him, has hands of stone.
It goes against Bennett’s nature to sacrifice defense for offense, but he offered Vander Plas a scholarship knowing that he had Gardner back, and that the way to work Vander Plas in would be to pair the two together.
It’ll be OK. The defense wasn’t all that great last season anyway.
Vander Plas makes UVA a legit national-title contender. North Carolina, now that Caleb Love is returning for his junior season, will be the preseason ACC favorite, and Duke, with another class of one-and-dones, will get plenty of preseason media love.
With Vander Plas in the fold, Virginia won’t be any lower than third in the preseason media rendering of how the ACC will play out, will likely be a top 10 team nationally, once the national scribes let it sink in that UVA has its top six scorers returning, plus a mid-double-digits grad transfer, and if they’re not playing at least in the second weekend of the 2023 Big Dance, Freezing Cold Takes me on this.
Story by Chris Graham
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