ACC Roundup - More On Tony Bennett’s Retirement And Alabama Crushes Wake Forest In An Exhibition
A strange day for ACC Basketball
In ACC news, Tony Bennett elaborated Friday on his stunning October retirement, telling CBS Sports this:
“Until there’s parameters, I know I can’t do it, and that’s the whole deal here. I think sometimes you almost talk yourself into things as you’re doing it. Like, I can do this. I am equipped. We can adjust. And you kind of tell yourself certain stuff and you start believing. Yep, I can. But when you kind of step back and look. Can I be as effective as I need to be? Am I fully aligned with how it has to be for this university, for these young men? Can I give everything, can we build a program in this way, or is it, is my way more designed for the old model?”
His old model, as he calls it, has him recruiting players who fit his system and training them for several years before they step up.
There were exceptions to that obviously - Kihei Clark for one - but it basically held true. And he was great at that.
Bennett’s Virginia teams were brilliant during the regular season, if less so after that. Here’s a bizarre stat: since 2018, with the exception of Virginia’s magnificent run to the national championship in 2019, Virginia has not won a single NCAA tournament game.
You have to cut some slack for Covid - we always say everyone gets a pass on that - but it’s a pretty pronounced pattern that you can’t overlook.
However, you also can’t overlook the consistent regular season success and more importantly, the integrity and humility that were his trademark.
A couple of final points: first, Virginia has named assistant Ron Sanchez as his replacement. Sanchez was previously coach at Charlotte, where he had an average run, finishing 72-78 in five years before returning to his old job at UVA.
And second, with Bennett’s sudden retirement, the transfer portal is open for 30 days. That’s going to be fascinating. The very issues that drove Bennett out of the profession may completely wreck the team he leaves behind. We’ll have to see how that works out.
It’s obviously too bad for former Blue Devil TJ Power, but if he decides to leave, he’ll certainly be in demand.
In other ACC news, Wake Forest had a charity exhibition with Alabama that didn’t go very well: Alabama won going away, 98-77. Worse, they did so without Grant Nelson, Latrell Wrightsell, Aidan Sherrill and Chris Youngblood.
It’s not a huge deal. It is just an exhibition game and the teams you see in October are not the teams you will see in March. Alabama is a very good team, even with so many players out. But Wake Forest is going to get better. Steve Forbes is a master at organizing a group with a lot of new players and he’ll put this loss to good use. Lots of data points to absorb and apply.
If you’d like to watch the game, here’s a link.
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