it’s been overtalked about but to answer your q’s.
He requested the redshirt after not playing in the NC central game. Preceding that game, Tony told him he would play sparingly and gave him the option to redshirt. Traudt said no initially but then came back to him and said yes. This was further preceded by Tony recruiting BVP and having to talk to IT and family about it.
He would have played in garbage time due to his defense probably. But, he’s also one of if not the best shooter on the team so may have seen significant run late in season and tourney with BVP’s injury and when we dove about 10% in team 3pt pct in feb and mar.
probably a while
for a coach like Tony, yes it takes time to learn our system so Rs makes sense. For other coaches maybe the tradeoff would be worth it to give a young guy some run and to benefit from his shooting even if the D causes some Ls. There are also maybe one or two other P5 coaches that RS healthy top 100 players.
If Blanks had stayed, he would have been competing with John Crotty for the other guard position. I kinda doubt he would have won that contest. As I recall, Blanks handle was sort of loose. At Texas though, they just ran up and down the court and shot the ball. At least, that’s the way I remember them.
But these were the days before the 3 guard lineup where traditional wisdom said you had to play a PG, SG, SF, PF & C in college hoops. Together those 3 would have been something.
Ironically Texas went to the Elite 8 with Blanks part of a 3 guard lineup.
Uh, the third guard at Virginia, then, would have been Bryant Stith. I still don’t see where Blanks finds much playing time. Which might have been why he transferred to Texas.
