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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
 
CHARLOTTESVILLE – When he arrived in Australia in January 2017, he spoke only Spanish. But Francisco Caffaro, a native of Argentina, learned English quickly at the NBA Global Academy in Canberra. In the process, he picked up the nickname his teammates and coaches at the University of Virginia now call him by, too.
 
Let Caffaro explain.
 
“As soon as I got to the academy, I started watching Prison Break,” he recalled, “and there’s this dude in [that TV series] that speaks Spanish, and he used to call everybody Papi. He’d go around and say, ‘Hey, Papi, how you doing?’ And that’s what I was doing too, because I was just trying to learn English. I was calling everybody Papi, and then after a few months they all started calling me Papi.”
 
At 4 p.m. Saturday, second-ranked UVA (27-2 overall, 15-2 ACC) closes the regular season against Louisville (19-11, 10-7) in what will be fifth-year senior Jack Salt’s final game at John Paul Jones Arena. In a Senior Day ceremony starting around 3:40 p.m., the 6-10, 250-pound center from New Zealand will be recognized, along with team managers Ben Buell, Justin Maxey and Faris Wasim.
 
Salt, who redshirted in 2014-15, is a three-year starter whose modest statistics belie his value to the program. He excels in head coach Tony Bennett’s renowned Pack Line defense, and Salt’s jarring picks help free Kyle Guy and the Wahoos’ other perimeter players for open shots.
 
A respected figure on and off the court, Salt won’t be easy to replace, but another bruising import figures to fill a similar role for UVA, starting in 2019-20: Caffaro, a 7-0, 235-pound freshman who’s redshirting this season.
 
“He’s definitely a beast in the paint,” UVA freshman Kody Stattmann said of his roommate. “He’s kind of like Jack. He likes to throw his body around, he can rebound, he can finish under the basket. He’s working on his midrange [shot], but at the moment he’s just really strong and likes to throw his body around in the paint.”
 
Caffaro said: “Jack is strong and tough. He likes to bang. That’s what I do. I just like to go at people and bang. But I feel I also can and like to play offense.”
 
A 6-7 guard from Queensland, Australia, Stattmann has known Caffaro since 2017. They met in Canberra, Australia’s capital. Stattmann was taking part in a basketball program at the Australian Institute of Sport, along with many of his country’s other top young players, and Caffaro was at the NBA Global Academy.
 
There are seven such academies around the world, and their mission is to provide elite young players with excellent coaching, facilities and competition, as well as academic work. Caffaro’s teammates came from such places as Senegal, India, China, Egypt and Korea.
 
In Canberra, the players from the NBA Global Academy and the Australian Institute of Sport often trained together, and friendships formed.
 
“We basically lived together in the same dorms, kind of like here,” Stattmann said.
 
Stattmann committed to UVA in August 2017, long before Bennett and his staff began recruiting Caffaro. Last March, in fact, Caffaro couldn’t resist needling Stattmann about Virginia’s stunning loss to UMBC in the NCAA tournament’s first round.
 
“I did get a lot of trash talked to me after that game,” Stattmann said, “but here he is now at Virginia, and I guess he regrets that.”
 
Before coming to UVA in 2009, Bennett coached at Washington State, where his post players included Aron Baynes, a rugged Australian who’s now with the Boston Celtics. Ben Johnson, then one of Bennett’s assistants, led Wazzu’s recruitment of Baynes. 
 
Johnson, who’s now an assistant at the University of Portland, contacted Bennett after last year’s Final Four in San Antonio, Texas, where Caffaro had impressed against a U.S. all-star team in the NCAA Next Generation Sunday event.
 
“Ben called and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re looking for a big, but I know how much you value Jack Salt and how much you liked Aron Baynes,’ ” Bennett recalled. “He said, ‘This kid plays hard like those guys. He’s 7-feet. He’s raw, but he’s really intriguing. I like him a lot, and I think he’s worth going after.’ “
 
That piqued Bennett’s interest, and he called Stattmann in Australia. “We were talking, and I said, ‘Kody, tell me a little bit about this big kid, because my former assistant liked him.’ Kody gave him the thumbs up and said, ‘He’s actually on some visits in the States right now.’ ” 
 
Caffaro, after visiting Georgia Tech and Nebraska, was in California touring St. Mary’s.  (He’d visited Pittsburgh on another trip to the United States.) Bennett contacted the coaching staff at the NBA Global Academy to see if Caffaro, who had one official visit left, would want to see UVA before returning to Australia.
 
The visit took place late last April, and Caffaro committed to UVA on May 1.
 
“He came, he saw it, I think he trusted the people,” Bennett said, “and he knew Kody was [coming] here.”
 
In June, at the FIBA Americas U18 tournament in Canada, Caffaro starred for Argentina. He averaged 16.7 points and 8.8 rebounds and was named to the all-tournament team. 
 
In Argentina’s semifinal loss to eventual champion USA, Caffaro finished with 22 points, six rebounds, four assists, two blocked shots and no turnovers. He was 6 of 9 from the floor and 10 of 12 from the line.
 
“That was nice,” Caffaro said of the experience in Canada.
 
Growing up in the Sante Fe province of Argentina, about 300 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, Caffaro played soccer, rugby and volleyball and swam as a boy. He didn’t start playing basketball, though, until January 2014, and so he’s still raw. But the Cavaliers can afford to be patient with Caffaro, who won’t turn 19 until May.
 
“I go back to Baynes and Jack and guys like that,” Bennett said. “There’s a place for a big, physical body that’s willing, and he knows it’s a process that will take time, very similar to Jack. He’s unselfish, a good student, a good person, all those things.”
 
An injury has slowed his progress at UVA. Caffaro arrived in Charlottesville last summer with a broken bone in his left leg. That required surgery, and Caffaro and the coaches decided it made sense for him to redshirt in 2018-19.
 
Caffaro spent most of the summer and fall rehabbing with head athletic trainer Ethan Saliba and Mike Curtis, UVA’s strength and conditioning coach for basketball.
 
“We just took our time,” Caffaro said, “because there was no rush to get back into practice or play games and stuff like that.”
 
His workload steadily increased, and Caffaro began practicing with the team in late December. Since then, back problems have occasionally limited his availability for practice, but he remains an intriguing prospect.
 
“He’s had some injuries, so he’s got to get his body right, but in the stretches that he’s played, he’s been very rugged and physical,” Bennett said. “You see he’s a bit unorthodox and raw, but if he gets the ball deep, he can score the basketball. And he’s one of the newest guys to the game we’ve ever had, even newer than Mamadi.”
 
Mamadi Diakite, a 6-9 redshirt junior, came to the United States from his native Guinea in January 2014 and enrolled at Blue Ridge School in Greene County. He’s part of a sizable contingent of international players on UVA’s roster, along with Salt, Caffaro, Stattmann and Francesco Badocchi.
 
“Sometimes you can find a hidden gem,” Bennett said of the Cavaliers’ interest in players from outside the U.S. “If you have a connection, you might not be fighting [as many schools]. So those things help.”
 
Curtis, a former UVA player, has spent untold hours in the weight room and in the practice gym with Caffaro. 
 
Asked about the comparisons with Salt, Curtis said, “Some of the physical characteristics are somewhat similar, but I think [Caffaro] brings a little bit different skill set to his game.
 
“He seems to embrace the physicality the same way Jack does, but I think he’s a little bit more refined offensively at this point.”
 
Caffaro has an older brother, Agustin, who stands 6-10 and plays professional basketball in Argentina. Agustin’s background in the sport made it easier for their parents to agree to let Francisco move to the NBA Global Academy in Australia.
 
His experience in Canberra, Caffaro said, was positive, “because there was a lot of good coaches and people there, and being away from my home and family and country, that taught me a lot, too, mostly as a person, but also [about] basketball and also the language.”
 
With the departure last spring of associate head coach Ron Sanchez, who’s now head coach at Charlotte, Caffaro is the only person in the UVA program who speaks Spanish fluently. (Diakite is fluent in several languages, including French, and Badocchi speaks Italian.)
 
That hasn’t fazed Caffaro, whose English continues to improve. On Grounds, he takes advantage of opportunities to speak Spanish when they arise, and he’s enjoying life in Charlottesville.
 
During games, he’s on the Cavaliers’ bench, soaking in the atmosphere. Caffaro knew little about college basketball before enrolling at UVA, and he’d never experienced anything like a sold-out game at JPJ.
 
“I haven’t played in a stadium like that before,” he said. “I heard it was crazy, and it definitely is.”