Mailbag: Small Ball, Shedrick, Recruiting, Etc

Those stats *may be true, but call them UNIMPRESSIVE in my eyes :wink: That 2015 class that won the Championship- fine they were good, but dook has had WAY TOO MUCH talent squandered in that time period as well.

Yea I agree if the idea is to maintain continuity that would be best short term. And if J Willy has the juice heā€™d make it work longer term. Just leaves no way of finding out if he has the goods or not lol

To a larger point, if J Willy is not the guy, Iā€™m not particularly interested in continuity for the sake of continuity. I want to get a good head basketball coach regardless of whether his system is closer to Nate Oats or Tony Bennett.

Anyway, hopefully TB still has 6+ years left and these questions remain hypothetical for a good while

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The *one thing that I think JWilly would do would be to change the recruiting and bring more athletes. He is always recruiting the areas for athletes in which we are notoriously poor at getting committments from lol! Oak Hill, Richmond, and that school in Florida which Iā€™m forgetting the name ofā€¦so he would probably swing more for the fences on more ā€œathletesā€ and long limbed players.

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IMG Academy

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His assistants were great recruiters during that timeframe. As a coach, he underperformed based on the level of talent he had year in and year out.

Iā€™d be estatic if JWillie took over after Coach Bennett retires in 5-10 years. I donā€™t feel like Bennettā€™s a deep lifer coaching into his 70s. I think heā€™s more like Jay Wright in that he has other interests and doesnā€™t need the grind of college coaching and everything else it entails.

But Iā€™d be less enthused if JWilly were taking over without other head coaching experience first. And JWillie isnā€™t that much younger than Bennett. Itā€™s only like 2 or 3 years or something right? Heā€™s older than Tommy Lloyd and I donā€™t think he needs to wait as long as Jerome Tang. Definitely donā€™t need to follow Bill Guthridgeā€™s career path (although 2 FFs in his only 3 years as a HC is pretty damn good).

I think the comparison to Duke and UNC is apples to oranges. Those schools have a brand that we donā€™t so the new coaches have a huge recruiting advantage from day 1 that a new coach at UVA wonā€™t automatically have.

In summary Jay is in a pretty dang good spot!

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Totally agree. No one approaches Woodenā€™s amazing number of championships.

And, to note, because of Dre and Keyā€™s abilities to be Swiss army knives, we could play a lot of small ball in 2019, too.

If J-Willy gets the job say in the next 5 or so years, would be interesting that all of us, UNC, and Duke, would basically have gone to the same well: played at the school, and then long-time assistant, with no head-coaching experience.

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True continuosness

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I think that UVa has itā€™s own *identity if not a brand. If we keep the right coaches in places, they *know the type of players that fit our successful system. The recruits along with their parents from their eyes will recognize that we already have a foundation in place in JWilly, Kyle Getter, Coach O etc. and there wonā€™t be *much upheaval if TB leaves.

I went back through this entire thread and couldnā€™t find a single piece of actual information that would suggest Tonyā€™s retirement is imminent ā€“ just a lot of conjecture. I even Googled, ā€œIs Tony Bennett retiring from basketball?ā€ The only thing I found was a story in The Athletic from October in which, actually, he sounded animated about the challenge of trying to find success in the current landscape: ā€œCan I pursue excellence and enjoy it?ā€ Seemed like a guy who was excited to give it a shot, not pack up his pinnies and go home.

I think it was pretty obvious that K and Roy were mailing it in their last few years. To my eyes and ears, at least, Tony hasnā€™t come across the same way.

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Heā€™s done, man. Just accept it.

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Nice to come to the LRA board and realize it such a more zen experience than the 247 board. Letā€™s hope Bennett sticks around so we can keep that calmness going

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Do we know if JWilly would be a fully blown Tony disciple (packline and the whole shebang)?

Defensively I think he would be. BUT might implement a press or even zone (so maybe not)

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ZONE?!?! That is heresy.

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Totally. Implies you are soft hahaha

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