Tony Bennett is everything that is right and good about college athletics. He is a decent man who slaps a bunch of words up on a wall and calls them his team’s pillar and who personally exemplifies humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness.
And yet his basketball team is currently unwatchable.
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This is the conundrum. Criticizing Bennett for not playing pretty when others are out there doing dirtier things feels wrong. Seriously, you want to take issue with this guy?
Except Virginia scored 14 points in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game. The Cavaliers ultimately mustered a whopping 42 for the entire play-in game against Colorado State. It is not just ugly; it is unsuccessful. In the last three years, the Cavaliers have been bounced from the NCAA Tournament in two first rounds and one First Four. Heaven knows Bennett is not alone (Matt Painter says hold my beer!) but it is the same song, new refrain. The Cavaliers have lost to equal or lower seeds each time. Their tourney exit average scoring? A blistering 55 points.
GO DEEPER
Colorado State shuts down Virginia in First Four
It is fair to question why a person who does everything right is doing this so wrong, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Dick Bennett, Tony’s father and inventor of the pack line defense, once fretted about his son adopting his style. Dick went through so much criticism at Wisconsin that he up and walked away from the profession, and when Virginia became the first 1-seed to get upset by a 16-seed, the hailstorm fell on his son. But then the Cavaliers went out and won themselves a national championship in 2019 and quieted the masses.
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Until now.
That First Four ugly score sent social media into a frenzy, people caterwauling that the Cavaliers got in and Indiana State and its beautiful brand of offensive basketball did not. It is not that simplistic; selecting the field isn’t exactly like choosing sides at recess. Either/or is rarely how it works.
Yet it is a fair recrimination of the selection committee that it let Virginia in, regardless of who was left out.
A little over a month ago, Virginia scored 80 points against Florida State; the Cavaliers have averaged 54.2 since then. There are teams that include such ferocious defenses that a bad offense can be forgiven. Virginia was once that, with its pack line approach.
This is not that. This is just bad basketball. The Cavaliers finished 211th in KenPom in offensive efficiency and 263rd in effective field goal percentage. For those uninformed, there are only 362 teams on the list.
There are legitimate reasons for the Cavs’ struggles this year. Three players — Isaac Traudt, Kadin Shedrick and Francisco Caffaro — transferred at the end of last year. Each had their own reasons: Traudt went to Creighton, back home in Nebraska; Shedrick had lost playing time and sought more opportunity at Texas (he didn’t necessarily get it, as Dylan Disu took over); and Caffaro, a 7-footer who’d been with the program since 2018 left for Santa Clara.
It left Bennett bereft of Virginia experience, with Reece Beekman essentially alone on an island.
There is the big picture that to consider, though, and this is where it gets hard. Bennett’s steadfast commitment to a style he believes in is admirable. Coaching chameleons typically don’t last or win in the long term, and in a college athletics world that doesn’t believe in much, kudos to anyone who believes in something.
Similarly, Virginia has intentionally approached NIL with the sanity that suits a school of high academic caliber and integrity. “They weren’t going to blow anything out of the water like some schools that have gone in with two feet,’’ Maddie Walsh, the director of marketing for Cavs Future, the Virginia collective, told The Athletic a year ago. Considering the buy/sell market at so many other places, a school willing to draw even the faintest line in the sand ought to be applauded.
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Except when you combine the two — Virginia’s inability to score points and its practical approach to NIL — it is fair to wonder if the button-down version of college hoops can fly when the sport feels more like a 1970s disco hall.
Something, it would seem, needs to give. It is one thing to remain steadfast in one’s convictions, and here’s hoping that Bennett remains there. It is another to be too stubborn to see a need for a change. Here’s hoping Bennett can get there.
(Photo: Michael Hickey / Getty)
