Coach K wants to (surprise!) have the college season delayed

Men's Basketball
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Why do you think a 70 year-old basketball coach would want to have the season delayed? I think it’s obvious. Is he going to be coaching from his office?

Is Trey Murphy, III going to play this year? If no one knows, then how did we get to having the season starting tomorrow and it’s still not resolved?

JPJ was supposed to hopefully enable us to stop the top high school players from leaving the state. It hasn’t. But, it’s enabled us to get some good players and prospects from the state of NC.

Is it correct to say that the top 3 big-time prospects in Virginia, all turned us down, and are going to be playing for Duke this year? However, we’re possibly going to have two players from Durham, NC playing for us. Two NBA prospects. And we have 2 other players with great potential from the state of North Carolina.

One of the three players from Virginia, Mark Williams, 7-0 center, his father, a physician, lived in Charlottesville for a year back around 2000, as he trained at the UVa Hospital…

It appears to me that Trevor Keels, is waiting to see who leaves Duke after this year, before he commits there anyway.

In the last interview I saw online of Efton Reid, III, he never even mentioned UVa as a school he was considering. He did say that he wanted to know what each school’s basketball program could do for him, instead of just how badly they wanted him. He was impressed with N.C. State, because they would not make him play center, and instead, would play him at forward. His mother may be a big fan of Georgetown. Maybe.

What did UVa do wrong in the recruitment of Keels and Reid? Is there any indication that our undeserved reputation of being a slow-paced, work the shot clock down style of offense, is hurting recruiting? Maybe we assume that the UVa coaching staff wanted these players, when in fact they were lukewarm on them, and prefer other prospects, such as high-quality transfers?

Is there any chance that players are impressed with the possibility of making a living in the NBA, and that they don’t even care about Final Fours or national championships any more? :slight_smile: Are Final Fours and national championships for the fans, and the players don’t care about that during recruiting?

Hey, if you’re a blue-chip high school basketball player, UVa coach Tony Bennett PLAYED in the NBA for 2 years. He knows what it takes to get there. How many years did Coach K, Roy Williams, John Calipari play in the NBA? 0.

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Slow paced offensive reputation is completely deserved and accurate. It’s efficient (well not last year) but pretty much battles Liberty for slowest in the country.

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I don’t disagree with him or Pitino. Vaccine is supposed to start getting rolled out in early December. Why not start season on Mid Feb and have May Madness this year?
Every time I get on Twitter today a game is getting canceled.

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Would only make sense if they had a guarantee the vaccine will be widely distributed by February. Otherwise you are sacrificing all of your wiggle room for a hope. Despite all of the cancellations they were still scheduled to have over 80% of teams play at least one game by Sunday last I saw.

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I thought I was reading an attack on Coach K for wanting to postpone the season but then it turned into a why does the top VA talent not stay in-state?? Anyways, it’s not a fault of Tony’s approach in recruiting. You cited Mark Williams, he wasn’t coming to UVA regardless (he’s a Duke legacy, his sister played there and has her jersey retired in the rafters of Cameron). To really answer your question, for one reason or another, UVA is still not a “cool” school to go like UNC or Duke is. TBH, I think that just comes with time, and putting more people in the pros.

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Bill, I think CTB lays everything out for a prospect. If said prospect is still interested, great. If not, we move on because there will be those prospects who fit the profile and who appreciate UVA for what it is and offers. Some won’t. In the long run, We don’t want a prospect who doesn’t fit, isn’t happy, or we’ve embellished to for their signature. Of course, some prospects are genuinely torn and for some we are window-dressing in their final list of programs. However, CTB has the program in a great place and garnering lots of respect. There will be players who want to play for CTB and parents who want him to mentor their sons. There’s also a self-filtering process that is somewhat integral to our recruiting process. We should appreciate that.

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