Similar to Drew actually.
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Perhaps a comparison to Jay Wright should wait until Coach Bennett has been to three Final Fours and won two national titles. In addition, Jay Wright has been at Villanova nearly twice as long as Coach Bennett has been at Virginia. That said, it might be useful to consider the five Villanova recruiting classes following Coach Wright’s first Final Four team (2009). I’m using 24/7 rankings simply because they were the easiest to access. Regardless, Villanova’s rankings were as follows: 2010, 41st with two recruits, 2011, 22nd with four recruits, 2012, 27th with 3 recruits, 2013, 36th with three recruits, and 2014, 48th with two recruits. Through this five year period, Coach Wright’s best signees were in the same sweet zone where most of Coach Bennett’s recent commits have been, #50 to #100. Also, I think it is a bit obvious that Villanova had little attrition during this stretch as all the classes are rather small. I think it is also worth noting that since its second title, Villanova has raised its recruiting profile just a bit, but it has also experienced more premature attrition. All things considered, I believe Coach Bennett’s recruiting, at similar points in their careers, is comparable to Coach Wright’s. I also believe that 2020 has disrupted recruiting so badly as to make any comparisons for the 2021 class meaningless. For everyone. I believe Virginia will be fine once the staff can get out and evaluate high school talent in live situations once again. These are the good old days!
Edit to add: I also beiieve that in the case of both coaches, their own evaluations are better than the various services when it comes to finding talent to fit their teams.
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No guarantee that ever happens. Which is kinda the point of the whole conversation lol
What makes you think they are comparable when you don’t believe TB will be able to do that?
On the other hand, based on the comparison, I believe that there is hope! No guarantees, but I remain optimistic! 
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I didn’t say he won’t be able to. Just that the whole point in discussing recruiting success is about making it back to Final Fours. So it makes more sense to compare TB’s recruiting to other coaches who have shown they can make Final Fours and National Titles than to compare him to middle of the pack ACC coaches.
I agree it’s more likely than not. Just the last two years have lowered my overall expectations. Probably made them more realistic lol but I really thought we were positioned to be the top program of the 2020’s. Don’t see that being the case now mainly because of the difficulty we’ve had with roster construction. It’s just so hard to maintain elite play year after year. Seems to me we are looking at a third straight season where all the pieces don’t quite fit together next year. And that’s probably more the reality of college basketball than the magical way our roster seemed to always work out for 7 years in a row. We really were spoiled from 13/14 through the title.
Don’t get me wrong I think we are still in for a great ride under Tony. If he stays here for his whole career we are probably looking at another 3-4 Final Fours and hopefully another national title. Like you said these are the good old days. Just don’t think we are going to emerge and become THE program like some of us were unrealistically hoping for 18-24 months ago.
It may be unrealistic but I’m still hoping for it and it’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility
Let’s be real here. If tony doesn’t take us to 10 final fours and 7 championships I will consider him an abject failure as a coach. There is no doubt in my mind he is the best coach in the game. Therefore, anything less than the best career of all time will be an epic choke job on par with…nevermind
I would say 10 Chips and 7 Final Fours and we good. shoot for the stars homeboy
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Really - we just went thru the 20-21 season. There are 9 more left in this decade. I’ll take TB’s record against the field for those 9 years.
8 more. Last season of the decade is 28/29. 1999/2000 Michigan State is a 00’s title and 2009/2010 Duke is counted as a 10’s title.
I think we’ll be up there. But wouldn’t count on 1st. Gonzaga will almost assuredly have the most overall wins. Villanova will probably have the most for a power conference team. Hard to predict who will win the most tournament games and win the actual national titles. I think we are a decent bet for top 5 or so but I certainly wouldn’t take UVA’s next 8 years over the field if I had to put money on it. Wouldn’t do that for any program really.
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I hope CTB wins a lot more NCAA Championships but even 1 more would be great. Having 2 NCAA Championships would put Bennett in very rare air. Only 7 coaches have won more than one NCAA Championship since the field was expanded to 64.
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OK - 8 years rather than 9 as I counted. I’ll give you that Gonzaga has the chance to rack up the most wins in that period - in my defense, I should have been clearer about “the field” being the Power 5 conferences. Wright at Villanova are may very well have the most wins in that period, but it will be close. When you said top 5 for UVa - who else besides Few and Wright would you put as the coaches with the most wins over the next 8 years - Musselman? Oates? Calipari?
Guys who have a chance to be up there:
ACC: Obviously Bennett. UNC is going through a transition and Duke will too at some point. Maybe Hubert and Duke tbd hit the ground running but that’s tbd. Louisville should eventually get rolling under Mack but they still have another year or two of uncertainty with the NCAA investigation.
Big East: Obviously Wright and Nova. Doesn’t seem anyone else in the conference is close. Maybe if Hurley can get UConn rolling again?
Big Ten: Maybe Howard at Michigan? No one in the Big Ten really dominates the regular season year in and year outs. Seems their champ typically has 8+ losses.
Big 12: Interesting conference. Can Scott Drew keep it rolling? Or was it a once in a lifetime nucleus of players? What does Chris Beard do with all of the advantages Texas will provide him? How long does the Kansas investigation go on and how hard does the NCAA come down on them? In a sanction free world Kansas would be safe bet to be up there.
Pac 12: Candidates would appear to be Mick Cronin and Dana Altman. Cronin won a ton of regular season games at Cincinnati so can he do the same with the positive momentum he has at UCLA? Altman has been the top dog in the conference for a while but does seem to have seasons here and there where he’ll drop 12 games so top 5 might be a stretch for him.
SEC: Cal and Oats are the guys. Have to think Cal will bounce back given all the advantages Kentucky has. Oats has to prove he can stay at the top but his work at Buffalo gives reason to believe he can. Musselman is a wild card but he did have some down seasons at Nevada. Can he avoid them with the better talent at Arkansas?
Others:
-Mark Few: obviously.
-Kelvin Sampson: Houston looks set up to dominate an AAC that isn’t quite a power conference but it clearly better than a mid major.
-Dutcher maybe? Aztecs are rolling the past few seasons but he’s had down years before. Also the Mountain West level might be hard to keep top players with the new transfer rule.
Put them all together and I’m pretty confident TB will come out top 5 in wins. Start factoring things like conference titles, conference tourney titles, and NCAAT success and the conversation gets a bit murkier in how to quantify top 5. Surely Tony needs to improve his NCAAT performance to become the undisputed top coach in the game.
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I think CTB has reached the level where anything less than a Final Four won’t move the needle forward. But early exits could tarnish perception a bit. Maybe another Elite 8 would slightly bump him up in perception but I’m not sure. A harsh standard to be judged by but I really think that’s where he’s at.
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I agree with most of that list. I wouldn’t leave out Holtmann at OSU.
Don’t see anyone else in the top 5 level, but Craig Smith at Utah has to prove himself at the P5 level, but I think he’ll do well. Mike White at Florida may be able to succeed. I like the Porter Moser hire at Oklahoma. Those guys could be in the conversation for top 15ish.
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Completely agree with your assessment of Tony/staff effectiveness of recruiting impact/contributing transfers. Prior to the pandemic, transfers were entering a program culture well-heeled with proven upperclassmen raised as true first-years that could seamlessly absorb players from the outside.
Starting last year, the several of the most productive members of the squad were transfers. Each one without the years of residual knowledge that has proven as an important differentiation of a Bennett-coached team above all others. Tony will now need to compress his development process to prove players with a shorter window in the program can produce at a similar high level as those that begin as true first-years.
This will be Tony’s challenge targeting top transfers moving forward. Combined with recruiting the right prospects out of high school that possess the proper disposition to be developed in a 3+ year cycle in a changing paradigm.
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Tony is a good recruiter. He has a very specific vision and criteria of the type of player that fits his program. It’s not based on recruiting service rankings or preference of fans. Now, one can disagree with his approach. But he has been reasonably consistent in the type of prospect for his roster. It has shifted subtly, at times, as Richie and Sanchez have departed and JWilly, Sod & Vandross’ voices took on more prominence.
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I’d hope every coach in the country has his own ranking of players that fit the way he coaches his team to play and those should be very different than ratings sites who rank recruits based on, I assume, generic ability regardless of teammates or style of play.