🏆 Bennett Retirement Presser

[Mr.E.Recruit]

ACCN didn’t carry it? The premier coach in your historic basketball conference just retired and you showed ACC Huddle?

[BDragon]

Nah I’m not in the selling business I prefer to help people with other vices.

What’s the O/U on wins this season?

[UVApride7]

Idk if that’s the actual number buts it’s my number lol.

[Hooandtrue]

20 (damn you three character minimum for a post rule)

[UVAdrian]

Still processing Tony’ final press conference. He was excellent as always, and while I can understand his thought process, I still haven’t come to the place of acceptance. As such, I am currently of two minds.

My Tony Bennett-can-do-no-wrong take is that he’s burned out, the college basketball landscape has changed, and he’s stepping down because he’s earned the right to make that call.

My Burn-It-All-Down take is that Laurel Bennett talked him into retirement. Here’s a gif of Laurel plotting in the shadows on how to best manipulate her idiot husband.

[Jerome]

@BDragon

What’s the O/U on wins this season?

O/U 19 - slamming the over. Think we have a good year

[Foresthoo]

I like 20 as well. Think we land around 22.

[DavetheWave]

Over under is tournament wins.
0.5

[UVApride7]

I think the weirdest thing about all this is somehow gonna be going to the opening game and not hearing “and your Cavalier’s head coach, Tony Bennett” announced after the starting lineups.

[hoosfan35]

Preston Willett (@PrestonWillett) on X

[WFS_HOO]

@BDragon

What’s the O/U on wins this season?

0. There are no wins this season.

[HooDat]

@BDragon

Crazy conflicting emotions watching this. Absolutely gutted first and foremost.

Legit pissed know I told @Merch that last night in the chat and he said he didn’t quite get that. But I’m pissed. I’m pissed at the state of the game. I’m pissed at Tidewater Inn and I’m pissed at Tony cause it hurts. He’s someone who’s had a massive influence in my life and it hurts that he’s not going to be a regular part of it in this role.

I’m with Dragon here on the very conflicted, but expanding on the pissed part, I’m really having trouble with timing of this. Less than 3 weeks before the start of the season? You just did ACC media last week?

He sounded positive and upbeat in the clip above someone posted, but Kyle Guy quit his fucking pro career and relocated because you offered him a job a month or two back.

How naive to think this two year core will still be intact next season for heir Ron.

A lot to unpack and I’m conflicted too but a lot of this is some serious wtf

[dave92]

I completely understand the concern about the timing, I’m just not sure what else would have been a better approach.

Tony couldn’t have retired earlier than this, because he didn’t even intend to retire until this past weekend. (If you take him at his word, which I do, he was completely in the swing of things prior to that and was excited about the new roster.) He can’t have retired before he decided to retire.

The question then is if he should have stuck it out through this season. That’s a fair question, and his answer to it was that he felt the team would be better off being coached by someone who still had the 100% passion for it. Like Kyle, I find that conclusion debatable, but if Tony believes that, he’s trying to do what’s best.

[HooDat]

To add, you also pigeon-holed your players. The 30 day transfer window for coaching changes is meaningless when the semester already started and teams rosters are already filled out.

[rushdacote]

The presser was amazing. Despite CTB being so consistent with his thought processes, I can never predict them. Then when he says them: “Of course, he’d say that.” He was only borrowing the UVA Head Coach’s job.

I still would have much preferred him to tell the world he was retiring at the end of the season, hand off recruiting to the assistants, and lead the team he committed to coaching this year. The transfers and Kyle Guy were left in the lurch by this timing. (I don’t feel too bad for them though. They still get to go as far as they can this season, and much worse things will happen to them in their life. This is a chance for them to show resilience.)

I know CTB announcing it was his last season would have hurt our recruiting, but I think the effect would have been small. The main people we needed to recruit for the next 5 months was our current team anyway, and the all-important portal would have been handled by the next coach (probably Sanchez if we had a good year and it seemed like the core wanted to come back.)

[ElliottHoo]

@dave92

but if Tony believes that, he’s trying to do what’s best.

This is one of those moments where a lifetime of being a standup guy pays off (not that’s why you’d do it, but still). Most of the time, when a coach abruptly announces a retirement like that, you assume a scandal. With CTB, its not even a rumor because it’d just be implausible.

If C… Sigh.

If TB says he did something because “X”, its really hard not to take him at his word.

[crossedsabres8]

This was my takeaway as well.

I really wish we got one more year so I could say goodbye and the players would get what theu signed up for. But I don’t think Tony thinks it’s right to stick it out for a year when you’re halfway out the door. I genuinely believe he thinks his staff, the program, and even the players are better off this way, even if he’s not right.

[DavetheWave]

He’s right though

[crossedsabres8]

Yeah he might be, he definitely would know better than probably anyone else. I just meant hypothetically.

[htraylor]

You know, a lot of the items that make up Tony’s retirement really suck when you examine them individually (3 weeks before the season, no farewell, what happens to the team, how does this affect recruiting, donors, what happens to JWilly, KGuy, the absence of a giant that we depended upon, etc.). But when you put the whole big picture together, as sad and sorrowful as we all are, it’s probably the best that can be achieved given that Tony had already made his mind up to retire sooner rather than later.