Home or Away, Pack Line Remains a Constant
Jeff White’s Twitter | NCAA Tournament Bracket | Matt Riley Photo Gallery
By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At 3:37 p.m. Friday, three minutes before the start of Virginia’s practice at the KFC Yum! Center, manager Ben Buell walked onto the court. He had a roll of blue tape in his hands and an important assignment to complete.
It was time to put down the Pack Line.
That’s a task Buell, a fourth-year student from Richmond, Va., has mastered since joining head coach Tony Bennett’s program in 2015-16.
“He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen at it,” said Ronnie Wideman, UVA’s associate athletic director for men’s basketball administration.
The Pack Line defense is the man-to-man system created by Bennett’s father, Dick, a legendary former coach who guided the Wisconsin Badgers to the Final Four in 2000. It’s designed to clog the lane with help defenders packed inside an arc about 16 feet from the basket.
In games, UVA players don’t have the benefit of an actual line to remind them where to position themselves on the defensive end. Practices, though, are different, which is where the Cavaliers’ managers come in.
This is Tony Bennett’s 10th season at Virginia, where a series of managers have taken charge of putting down the Pack Line before each practice, home or away. They even apply the tape in ballrooms during walk-throughs at hotels. The job is considerably more challenging than it might sound.
“It’s very impressive the way they get it down very quickly,” said redshirt sophomore Jay Huff, one of the Cavaliers’ post players. “It would be super janky-looking if I tried to do it. It’s impressive the detail they put in.”
Junior guard Ty Jerome said: “All our managers are so great at their jobs. I don’t think people understand how valuable they are to this program.”
Buell, a graduate of Collegiate School, said it usually takes him 15 to 20 seconds to put down the Pack Line. He starts with a straight line that runs parallel to the baseline and bisects the free-throw lane, then adds the arc.
“He’s the best, hands down,” head equipment manager Matt Althoff said. “It’s not even close.”
The other managers on this NCAA tournament trip, Grant Kersey, Justin Maxey and Faris Warim, agreed.
“I’m not actually that bad at it,” Kersey said, “but Ben is on a different level. He does it every day. That’s kind of turned into his thing.”
Wasim said: “It takes me like 10 minutes to do it. I’ve done it a couple times, but I don’t do it fast, because I’ve got to get up every once in a while. My knees don’t work that well any more.”
The Cavaliers’ managers, Buell said, divide their various responsibilities. “We each kind of have expertise in certain areas,” he said. “We all use our strengths in different ways.”
Buell said this is his second year putting down the Pack Line full time. His predecessors in that role have included Will Gent and the Ford brothers, Luke and Logan.
“I learned through them,” Buell said. “They taught me.”
Over the course of a season, Althoff said, the team goes through hundreds of rolls of blue tape. At the suggestion of Bennett, who wanted to emphasize the importance of stellar defense, UVA recently switched to a wider variety before its game against Oklahoma in the NCAA tournament’s second round.
The Cavaliers, seeded No. 1 in the South Region, came into the NCAAs leading the nation in scoring defense, and they’ve been characteristically stingy in their three games.
Virginia defeated 16th-seeded Gardner-Webb 71-56, ninth-seeded Oklahoma 63-51 and 12th-seeded Oregon 53-49.
Now comes an Elite Eight matchup with third-seeded Purdue, which figures to present a daunting challenge for UVA’s defense. Purdue scored 99 points Thursday night in its overtime win over second-seeded Tennessee. The Wahoos (32-3) take on the Boilermakers (26-9) at 8:49 p.m. Saturday at the KFC Yum! Center, with the winner advancing to the Final Four.
A lot of college teams run versions of the Pack Line, Purdue head coach Matt Painter noted Friday, but Bennett learned the defense from its inventor. Small wonder, then, that the Cavaliers run it so well.
“His dad was Pack Line,” Painter said. “And so you have to be able to move the basketball [against Virginia]. You have to be able to be efficient. Then you’ve got to be able to make the right decisions.”
After graduating from UVA in May, Buell said, he’ll start work as a college counselor at William Monroe High in Greene County, as part of a “two-year program that places recent college graduates in schools that have lower college enrollment rates than the state average,” he said. “I’m going to do that for two years, and then go to law school.”
If the ‘Hoos win Saturday night, Buell will put the Pack Line down during the team’s practices ahead of and at the Final Four in Minneapolis. When the season ends, though, he’ll pass the torch – or, if you prefer, the tape — to another manager.
“Matt Palumbo is the heir apparent,” Buell said.