šŸ€ Tony Bennett Retires, Ron Sanchez to be Interim HC

I don’t even think Otz would be interested. He’s got a good thing going at ISU and the ACC is a step down from Big 12 basketball at this point.

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Shaka will come here and we’ll have a roster full of Leon Bonds

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Wonder if we’ll see a shut it down redshirt for this season in the next couple weeks?

My hope had been that Bennett would hold on for another 2 or 3 years, until Mark Byington proved himself at Vanderbilt.

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Taking it off prematurely would be idiotic. But if he proves himself to be at or near Tony caliber at UVa, then that beats a Carla-run search in my opinion. Would be nice if we had 2 years to judge but that may handicap recruiting too much next year.

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In addition to Shaka and Otz, a couple names I think we should kick the tires on are Drew Valentine and Amir Abdur-Rahim and maybe Ryan Odom.

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We need to win big this season or else we will be bad for likely multiple years after. Hopefully they can exceed expectations this year

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I had kinda been thinking about Kyle Smith before he moved to Stanford. Or Ryan Odom after a couple more good years at VCU (maybe still too unproven).

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Beginning of the end of the golden age for Hoos sports.

What used to make college hoops great was the continuity. That ended for most folks a couple years ago. We got sooooo lucky with Bennett.

I’ll start talking myself into Cam Newtown tomorrow. Tonight is for mourning

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SAME

In the age of the portal, you just need an solid purse and a good coach can assemble a tournament team day 1

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Im just sad. Gut punch. I knew it was going to come one day, timing sucks.

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We’ll see. I’m afraid the timing might work out such that Tony retires when there are no rules in place for that stuff and they put more strict regulations in place when we are trying to build back up and it screws us

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I keep thinking about the Trent Perry visit. @HoozGotNext reported that the only real hold up was the rumor around Bennett retiring.

Seems small, but I’m guessing Bennett did not give the Perry’s reassurance. Then the shoe dropped a few months later.

I’m not going to speculate on Sanchez or next coaches. Thankful for TB and hope this team has a good season. What a ride this off-season has been

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If you think Carla’s making the final decision on the coach and not PTJ and other major donors, we’re reading from different books.

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Got a text from a reputable source that knows the Bennett’s and assistant coaches well… supposedly TB made Carla aware of his plan to retire in 2 years. His wish was to have one of his guys take over the program that he built (rightfully so). Carla wouldn’t agree to it and so TB put her in the situation that unfolded. He thinks he has a final four caliber roster over the next year or so and by having one of his guys ā€œlead the wayā€ it sets them up for success.

Personally, I take it as, he was nervous about who Carla would bring in if the ball were in her court so to speak. This is a source I trust, and truthfully, knowing how loyal TB is to his guys and how strongly he feels about our program and the way he’s built it. This seems pretty darn plausible.

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I just hope all the players stick around.

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The guy who coached against us in the worst sports moment of my life? No. In fact, hell no.

It’d be like when we took BVP as a transfer but a billion times worse.

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Are you the one that said this on 247? If not that’s a very similar story someone else has heard.

Not saying you’re wrong there, think it goes deeper than just Carla, but if she didn’t agree to what he wanted the ā€œsuccessionā€ plan looked like, he saw the writing on the wall and took matters into his own hands