Solid to good P5 contributors:
Clark
Morsell
Shedrick
Abdur-Rahim
Beekman
Milicic
Dunn
McKneely
Cofie
Traudt is starting to find his way at Creighton. Gertrude and Sharma have a lot of upside despite their limited PT so far. Taine and Buchanan are roller-coasters. The latter will be good when the light consistently comes on.
Itās solid. The big missing piece is a scoring combo or point guard of Ty or Malcās caliber (or even someone a click or so down from them, frankly). And nobody in that Joe, Justin, Dre NBA caliber either, other than RD on defense.
Edit - maybe I should a āyetā qualifier on the last statement for Elijah and Cofieā¦ and Mallory was tantalizing on the former point
Are you aware that the current staff recruited these guys?
Id argue since 2019 it hasnt been great with consistent blowouts vs teams worth anything and 0 ncaa tournament wins (2023 was euro trip experience wins vs new baylor and illinois teams) being propped up by a horrendous ACC.
Pointing out frustration isnt being spoiled. Its showing our want to return to at least wanting to be nationally relevant. Which hasnt been the case in the last 6 years. 4th years at UVA dont know what an ncaa tournament win or an acc tournament championship feel like
To be fair, this fourth-year class isnāt alone. Far from it.
We went 38 years between ACC tournament championships (1976-2014), and 12 years between NCAA wins (1995-2007), then another seven (2007-14).
We were spanning a century mark between those milestones!
But how many of those guys are all-ACC caliber players? Theyāre ok P5 contributors but almost no stars, and the stars that are there (Reece and Dunn) were severely offensively limited. That group doesnāt even compare to the productivity of the players from the first half of Tonyās tenure.
Cofie could maybe get there, but he wonāt be here. McKneely is a nice piece, but heās like a dollar store Guy, not even close to the same level. Our recruiting hit rate has inarguably fallen off. We went from routinely hitting home runs and triples to singles and doubles and striking out way more often.
I never argued they were better. The question was whether we had decent HS recruits after the 2016 class. And the answer is, yes, plenty.
But post-pandemic is almost an unfair comparison because the 2014-19 players didnāt have no-sit transfers and NIL. Most of the stars we landed from 2011-16 wouldnāt have come here today, and the ones who did certainly wouldnāt have agreed to a redshirt or developmental and incremental first-year PT.
Dre would have bolted. Guy would have been at Indiana or Purdue. Jerome and London ā who knows. Anderson wherever he wanted. Malcolm might have been the only one of those guys who would have chosen UVa ā and stayed.
Itās impossible to compare our HS recruiting prepandemic vs. after. But Iāll concede that the 2017-19 classes mostly didnāt pan out.
I think the point Iām trying to make is that the program we built under Bennett could not be built today. It would look much different.
Actually itās really easy to compare our results before and after the pandemic. I bet if you looked at recruits composite rating we actually recruited better after the title. We just missed on a lot of evals for reasons that boil down to a combo of luck and lack of effort from CTB
Is it missed evals when a number of those guys are playing well at other high-majors? Or is it that development programs are harder to build with the lack of firm rules and guidelines in place to do so?
Itās a little of both. None of the guys are really anywhere close to Brogdon, JA, Jerome, Guy, or Hunter range. Very few are even in that next tier with Gill, London, etc.
But itās definitely harder to build a development program but itās not impossible. Shaka has built one. So has Painter. But they both actually committed to building one. CTB chose a weird middle route that didnāt work out
Tony didnāt want to keep a developmental program. He wanted to over-index on mediocre portal talent. So he did.
One can either think Iām right (because I am) or one can think that Tony lacks a basic understanding of how his actions will affect himself and the world around him.
All in all, I think my view is more charitable and more correct.
I think Bennett tried to maintain a developmental and culture based program post-championship, but for whatever reason it didnāt work and guys kept leaving every year. Maybe guys didnāt buy into the promise of the reward for staying patient since Bennett kept bringing in older transfers just as it looked like playing time opened up for the younger guys. Maybe Bennett just brought in the wrong guys. Who knows?
So after getting burned by guys leaving he had to keep bringing transfer in, a vicious cycle. So no more developmental program anymore. I donāt think the change was a conscious decision.
Yeah, but youāre a lawyer. You know there are many mental states between āI want this exact outcomeā and āI do not want this exact outcome and you can infer that from my actions.ā
We were still very solid to good in 2022-23 and 2020-21 (and 19-20). The perception of those years changes considerably if we win 4-5 NCAAT games in those 3 years, vs the 0 that resulted. Yes maybe not national title contender, but certainly second weekend caliber.
The combination of a slight dip in recruiting, but also a complete inability to adapt and perform in single game elimination is the kicker. We became very easy to prepare for, and a team who larger seeds coveted to get matched up against.
Serviceable and playing well are two different categories.
Igor is probably the only one on that list that will earn some sort of conference honor (and we sat him so he could cheer on Kody all year). Other than that you had only Beekman (2nd team) and Clark (3rd team) as the only other guys to earn conference honors.
Now, yes those lists are political to a degree but landing on one is generally indicative of impact. (I think Cofie probably lands on one by year 3).
Any answer that includes āblame the mediaā is going to be an easy winner.
Igor has been successful there and is a key reason they have done so well. But heās also 4th in scoring on Tennessee. Almost 3rd to be fair.
Weāve recruited some very good role players (for us and other teams). But no dudes, no dogs, no alphas, no dawgs, no alpha dawgs.
I think Covid (assisted by unregulated NIL) took what was a leak that was probably reparable into a full blown Titanic-sized tear in the hull that ended up sinking the program.
I think that we recruited a bunch - we just didnāt sign any.
Didnāt say āgreatā. I said ābadā for a reason. UVA won a shit ton of games, double byes consistently, 2 ACC titles, 2 more championship game appearances, 6 regular season titles. Yāall can feel sorry all you want to, just saying that being in the 90th+ percentile of all programs during the Bennett years is the exception rather than the rule and perspective is important.