By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE –– For most of the summer, while his University of Virginia teammates sweated through workouts at John Paul Jones Arena, Francisco Caffaro was elsewhere.
The other Cavaliers didn’t hold that against the big man they call Papi. It’s not often, after all, that a basketball player gets to compete in the Olympic Games.
The 7-foot Caffaro, who’s heading into his fourth year at UVA, was the second-youngest player on Argentina’s roster at the Tokyo Olympics, and he was the only one who won’t be playing professionally in 2021-22.
He rarely saw action for Argentina, which lost to Australia in the quarterfinal round, but Caffaro relished the experience and believes it will pay dividends for him at Virginia.
“For sure,” said Caffaro, who’s from the Santa Fe province of Argentina, about 300 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. “I went into these tryouts knowing that I’m probably not even going to make the team, or if I make it I’m not gonna play. I went into this knowing that I was going to learn a lot and gain a lot of experience being with these people, training with these people, watching these people play. It’s not only how they play basketball, how they practice, it’s everything. The sleep schedule, eating, diet, all the stuff. Seeing how they work, I think it helped me a lot.”
Virginia’s associate head coach, Jason Williford, said the experience will give Caffaro “much-need confidence going into the year, just knowing that he can play with the big boys. You make the national team, you compete in the Olympics, I think that should boost his confidence.”
Caffaro, who has battled injuries throughout his college career, looked noticeably different when he returned to Grounds this month for the Wahoos’ final summer practices at John Paul Jones Arena.
When he left to try out for the Argentina national team in June, Caffaro weighed nearly 255 pounds. He’s now around 240.
“I lost some weight, but I still feel just as strong or maybe more strong than I did before,” Caffaro said, “and I feel more mobile and agile. I haven’t felt like this pretty much since my first surgery.”
Caffaro arrived at UVA in the summer of 2018 with a broken bone in his left leg. The injury required an operation, and he redshirted in 2018-19.
During his six weeks with the national team this summer, Caffaro saw what his older teammates ate, and he began following their lead.
“One of the things he said he learned the most from the veterans was that,” Williford said. “For them, staying lean and keeping their bodies right was super important. Papi said that was the most impressive, important thing he learned coming out of the Olympics: to eat right and just take care of yourself.”
Argentinians are known for their love for beef. That’s not a big part of Caffaro’s new diet, “which is sad,” he said, smiling. “More like fish and chicken, with greens and avocado and all that type of stuff. Gluten-free diet.”
It was an adjustment, but Caffaro found he liked the diet. “It made me feel still as strong as always, but leaned up a little bit and being able to like get off the floor a little quicker and move a little quicker.
“That stuff slowly just makes you feel better, and when you see changes happening, it makes you understand that if you change little things outside of basketball, it helps you in basketball as well.”