Those stats *may be true, but call them UNIMPRESSIVE in my eyes 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 heād 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, Iām 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
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 Iām forgetting the name ofā¦so he would probably swing more for the fences on more āathletesā and long limbed players.
IMG Academy
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.
Iād be estatic if JWillie took over after Coach Bennett retires in 5-10 years. I donāt feel like Bennettās a deep lifer coaching into his 70s. I think heās more like Jay Wright in that he has other interests and doesnāt need the grind of college coaching and everything else it entails.
But Iād be less enthused if JWilly were taking over without other head coaching experience first. And JWillie isnāt that much younger than Bennett. Itās only like 2 or 3 years or something right? Heās older than Tommy Lloyd and I donāt think he needs to wait as long as Jerome Tang. Definitely donāt need to follow Bill Guthridgeās 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 donāt so the new coaches have a huge recruiting advantage from day 1 that a new coach at UVA wonāt automatically have.
In summary Jay is in a pretty dang good spot!
Totally agree. No one approaches Woodenās amazing number of championships.
And, to note, because of Dre and Keyās 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.
True continuosness
I think that UVa has itās 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 wonāt be *much upheaval if TB leaves.
I went back through this entire thread and couldnāt find a single piece of actual information that would suggest Tonyās retirement is imminent ā just a lot of conjecture. I even Googled, āIs 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: āCan 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 hasnāt come across the same way.
Heās done, man. Just accept it.
Nice to come to the LRA board and realize it such a more zen experience than the 247 board. Letās hope Bennett sticks around so we can keep that calmness going
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)
ZONE?!?! That is heresy.
Totally. Implies you are soft hahaha