Hoos Still Establishing Their Identity

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — At the end of fall break, the University of Virginia men’s basketball team reconvened at John Paul Jones Arena on Oct. 16 to resume preparations for what was expected to be Tony Bennett’s 16^th season as the program’s leader.

Twenty-four hours later, Bennett informed the team that he was retiring, effective immediately, and Ron Sanchez took over as interim head coach.

The players had little time to process that stunning development. UVA hosted VCU in a scrimmage at JPJ on Oct. 19 and then scrimmaged Georgetown in Washington, D.C., a week later.

The season began Nov. 6, and by the time final exams started at the University on Dec. 9, the Wahoos had flown to the Bahamas, to Florida and to Texas for games. Then came three more contests, after which the Hoos were finally able to pause and catch their collective breath.

All of UVA’s players went home for the holiday break except Taine Murray, whose sister and parents are in Charlottesville visiting from New Zealand. It was a refreshed and rejuvenated group that returned to Grounds late last week.

“It was good for all of us to have some time to look at things without having to worry about competition, without having to prepare for a competition within 48 hours or whatever it was,” Sanchez said. “It was really good for all of us to sit down and take some time and analyze and wrap our heads completely around everything.”

The Cavaliers practiced Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. They’ll resume ACC play on Tuesday, the final day of the year. At noon, Virginia (7-5, 0-1) hosts NC State (8-4, 1-0) at JPJ.

UVA’s coaches mixed work with family time during the holiday break. Sanchez said he wanted the staff to “take a look at our defense and see the things that are hurting us and what can we do to improve in those areas. Offensively, what are the things that we’re doing well? The goal is to make sure that we get closer to really identifying our identity on the basketball court. The one thing that we have to have is a true identity. Right now, we’re still kind of becoming, and we’ve got to get to that point.”

Bennett compiled a 364-136 record at UVA, with an NCAA title in 2019, and there was no mistaking his program’s identity. The Cavaliers’ trademark was the Pack Line, a rugged man-to-man defense designed to limit penetration and make opponents take contested outside shots. Its creator was Tony Bennett’s father, Dick, a legendary former coach himself, and the Pack Line helped the younger Bennett build one of the nation’s premier programs.

Sanchez, who has spent most of his coaching career with one or both of the Bennetts, shares their belief that the foundation of a program must be a stout defense.

“Absolutely,” said Sanchez, who rejoined Bennett’s staff in June 2023 as an associate head coach. “I think the only way to win at a high level is to guard.”

In 2023-24, when the Hoos finished 23-11, opposing teams averaged 59.8 points and shot 40.6 percent from the floor against them. Through 12 games this season, opponents are shooting 39.3 percent against Virginia. The Cavaliers are allowing an average of 60.3 points per game.

“We’ve done it in stretches,” Sanchez said. “Many first halves of defense have been close to excellent. What we have to do is get that endurance up. I know it’s hard to get young guys who haven’t done that before to do that. It takes so much energy to be excellent defensively, and we have to be close to perfect in so many areas. And that’s one thing that we really want: to get to the point where our defense continues to stay the staple in this building.

“Some people think that just because you put on a Virginia uniform, you become a good defender. That is not the case. It takes time and energy. Charlottesville doesn’t make you a good defender. Work does. Experience does, and we have to make sure that some of our young guys are getting more and more experience so they can continue to improve and grow.”

At the other end of the court, the Cavaliers are averaging a modest 61.6 points per game. They’re shooting 43.6 percent from the floor (and 37.9 percent from 3-point range). Only two players are averaging double-digit points for UVA: junior guard Isaac McKneely (12.1), who’s in his third year in the program, and junior forward Elijah Saunders (11.3), a transfer from San Diego State.

Virginia played a grueling non-conference schedule that included games against three teams ranked in the latest Associated Press poll: No. 1 Tennessee, No. 6 Florida and No. 21 Memphis. St. John’s, which was ranked No. 22 when it played UVA in the Bahamas last month, is 11-2 overall.

UVA went 0-4 in those games and also dropped its ACC opener, losing 63-51 to SMU in Dallas on Dec. 7. The Cavaliers’ non-conference wins were over Campbell, Coppin State, Villanova, Manhattan, Holy Cross, Bethune-Cookman and American.

From its 2023-24 team, Virginia returned only four players who had significant roles: McKneely, Murray, Blake Buchanan and Andrew Rohde. The 2024-25 roster includes two freshmen (Jacob Cofie and Ishan Sharma) and three scholarship transfers: Saunders and sophomores Dai Dai Ames (Kansas State) and TJ Power (Duke).

Murray is the team’s lone senior, and with so many newcomers the Hoos struggled with consistency in non-conference play. Still, Sanchez said, “I like that we started figuring out who the guys are that have to get shots for us and who’s going to be consistent in that area.

“When it’s a new group, you’re hoping that certain guys can do certain things, and some of them just need more experience and more time. So for us it’s really identifying who those guys are going to be. Who are going to be our most consistent scorers every night and how do we help those guys be consistent on the floor every single night based on everything we do? We’ve got to get our better players to be able to perform well.”

UVA’s players individually “are doing some good things,” Sanchez said, “and we’ve just got to get them to eliminate losing and compete a little longer. Increase their stamina, their focus, their stance, their vision.”

In its most recent game, a 63-58 win over American on Dec. 22, Virginia recorded assists on 17 of its 23 field goals, “and that’s how we want to play,” Sanchez said. “The ball has to move. The ball has been sticking a little too much for us. So to get to that point where the ball is really moving, we gotta put guys on the floor that can do that. And then we gotta coach the guys that aren’t doing that to do it better.”

McKneely, who’s shooting 44.7 percent from 3-point range, draws the opposing team’s top perimeter defender, and he rarely gets uncontested looks.

“We have to make sure that we use him appropriately,” Sanchez said, “and he can’t just stand in the corner. He needs bumps and screens to get open, and we have to continue to do that for him.”

The 6-foot-9 Power started the Cavaliers’ first five games but has been coming off the bench since then. He’s averaging 2.0 points per game and shooting 23.1 percent from beyond the arc.

Unlike Saunders and Ames, who were rotation players at their previous schools, Power started no games at Duke and played only 181 minutes total last season.

“TJ is an inexperienced player, and he has to get more experience and more time,” Sanchez said. “He’s not a guy who played 30 minutes [per game]. Even Dai Dai has more playing experience than he does, and Dai Dai’s still making freshman mistakes out there. We’re hoping that TJ can give us more. He works really hard, and I think that hard work honors the individuals, and I think because of his hard work he’s going to figure some things out.”

The Cavaliers’ reserve guards in 2023-24 include Dante Harris, who entered the transfer portal after the season. With no offers that appealed to him, Harris returned to UVA for the fall semester and was allowed to practice with the team while finishing work on his bachelor’s degree.

Harris was invited to rejoin the Hoos as an active player but chose to transfer this month to Memphis, for which he made debut Saturday.

“The biggest thing that we did for Dante,” Sanchez said, “is make sure that he did not leave this institution, our Grounds, without having a Virginia degree, which is going to help him 40 years from now.”

Sanchez talks regularly with Tony Bennett, and Dick Bennett stopped by a recent practice at JPJ with his son and spoke to the team.

“Dick has watched several games and has written text messages with suggestions and thoughts and notes, and I love that,” Sanchez aid. “I’m so fortunate to have both him and Tony sharing their messages.”

The Bennetts built their programs on five pillars—humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness—and “we talked about the pillars when Coach Dick Bennett came by, the pillar of thankfulness in particular,” Sanchez said.

“The message to all of us, the team, the coaches, was to be thankful in the hard. You learn most when you’re in difficult, tough situations, so for us to be thankful for that. But then for me personally, it’s been to stay true to what we value. Just do the things that need to be done as a whole. There’s just great wisdom in it.”

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