Rohde Growing Into Leading Role

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Growing up in the Milwaukee area, Andrew Rohde was well aware of the University of Virginia men’s basketball program. No surprise there. The Bennett family is hoops royalty in Wisconsin, and head coach Tony Bennett had built UVA into a national power.

“They played the right way,” Rohde said.

Moreover, Wisconsinites such as Paul Jesperson, Reece Beekman, Sam Hauser, Ben Vander Plas and Leon Bond III had landed in Charlottesville to play for Bennett.

As a senior at Brookfield Central High School, Rohde averaged 28.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 2.2 steals per game, but didn’t attract any interest from UVA. A 6-foot-6 guard, Rohde was considered a mid-major prospect, and he signed with the University of St. Thomas, a Minnesota school where his brother Sam had played.

“When I went to St. Thomas, I was expecting to be there four years,” Rohde said.

Plans change. After being named the Summit League Freshman of the Year in 2022-23, Rohde decided to follow a different path. “I had the opportunity to play at the highest level,” he said, “and that’s been my dream for a long time.”

He entered the transfer portal in the spring of 2023, and the Wahoos didn’t pass on him this time. “I remember the first time they called me,” Rohde said. “It was a Zoom call with Coach Bennett and my parents. I was just really excited.”

He also visited Creighton, but Rohde chose to continue his career at UVA, where he joined a program whose 2023-24 roster included Bond and Beekman. Rohde and Bond were good friends who had been AAU teammates in middle school, and in high school Rohde played in the AAU program for which Beekman had starred.

His first season in a high-major program proved challenging for Rohde. He started 27 games for the Hoos in 2023-24, playing with Beekman on the perimeter, but averaged only 4.3 points and 2.7 assists per game. He shot poorly, making only 29.3 percent of his field-goal attempts overall. From 3-point range, he shot 25.7 percent.

“It was just a bit of an adjustment period,” Rohde recalled. “Obviously the level of play is so much different and it’s just kind of a challenge all together.”

He’s been a different player this season. UVA (9-10 overall, 2-6 ACC) hosts Notre Dame (8-10, 2-5) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at sold-out John Paul Jones Arena, and Rohde leads his team in assists and steals. He’s third in scoring (9.1 ppg). Most impressive, perhaps, has been his shooting. Rohde is hitting 38.9 percent of his attempts from long range and 45.5 percent overall.

“I love playing with Rohde,” said junior guard Isaac McKneely, Virginia’s leading scorer (12.3 ppg). “He’s just awesome, and an even better teammate or just friend in general. But his growth over this past couple years has been outstanding to see. He’s a super hard worker. I have extreme confidence in him. If we need a bucket … I want the ball in his hands. He’s going to make the right plays.”

Once the 2023-24 season ended, Rohde focused on shoring up the weaknesses  in his game, and he’s seeing the results of that work. He’s also more comfortable in his surroundings.

“I think it’s a big deal to spend a year in this system and around the program,” he said, “because you get to learn so much about the history of the program.”

An unexpected turn of events rocked the program in October. On the eve of what would have been his 16^th season at Virginia, Bennett retired, and Ron Sanchez was promoted to interim head coach.

It’s been an uneven season for the Hoos, who ended a five-game losing streak with a rout of Boston College on Tuesday night, but Rohde has kept a positive attitude.

“At times this year it’s been a little challenging, just with the ups and downs that we went through,” he said, “but we get to come in and play basketball every day and we’re at a great school, and there’s just so many blessings to look at. So it’s important to just look at it on the bright side and try to come every day ready to learn and ready to play and ready to win as many games as you can.”

Turnovers have contributed to many of the Cavaliers’ losses, and Rohde’s ballhandling was often shaky in November and December. He had four turnovers against Campbell, four against Tennessee, four against SMU, and five against Memphis.

Since Virginia’s Dec. 18 loss to Memphis, however, No. 4 has had few lapses with the ball. In his past eight games, he’s totaled 39 assists and only seven turnovers. In ACC play, Rohde is tied for the conference lead in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.5).

“I think your players will do what you teach and you emphasize every day,” Sanchez said. “One thing that we emphasize and really work on is taking care of the basketball every single day. It’s part of our practice. It’s a major point of emphasis. For us, it’s the first step in eliminating losing. For Andrew to mature this way as he’s journeying through it, it’s a sign of his work. He’s capable, he can do it, we emphasize it and he values it, and I think that’s how he wants to play.”

When he sees a box score after a UVA game, Rohde said, he first checks his turnover column. What it revealed Tuesday night pleased him as well as his coaches. In 29:47 against Boston College, Rohde had no turnovers while recording 16 points, a game-high six assists and four rebounds. The 16 points tied his career high as a Cavalier. As a St. Thomas freshman, he scored 27 against North Dakota.

Rohde said he’s “getting a better feel for my teammates and where they’re going to be on the court. I think it’s helped a lot in just building that level of comfortability with them, especially the bigs.”

Against BC, his most memorable assist came near the midpoint of the second half. From the left wing, Rohde spotted Taine Murray cutting to the basket and whipped a pass to his teammate for a layup that pushed Virginia’s lead to 55-34.

Rohde also shot well Tuesday night. In his previous two games, he’d missed 15 of 19 shots, but he made 5 of 6 against BC, including both of his 3-point attempts. McKneely, also a junior, broke out of a two-game slump too, making 7 of 10 shots from the floor.

“I thought their backcourt outplayed ours today,” BC head coach Earl Grant said. “But those guys are veterans, and they did what they needed to do for their team.”

Rohde, who’s majoring in youth and social innovation, is from a family of athletes. His father, Kevin, was a kicker on the football team at Wisconsin. Andrew has three siblings: brothers Sam and Nate and sister Lydia. Sam and Lydia played college basketball at St. Thomas and Northwestern, respectively, and Nate played soccer at Marquette.

A Real Madrid fan, Andrew played soccer as well as basketball throughout high school, and he shined at center back. Had he not been focused on basketball, college soccer might have been an option for him.

“Maybe a mid-major somewhere,” Rohde said, smiling. “I’ve got confidence in myself. I like to think I could have played somewhere.”

The UVA roster experienced significant turnover after last season. Among the players departing the program were Bond, who transferred to Northern Iowa, and Beekman and Ryan Dunn, who left to pursue NBA careers.

Rohde remains close with all three. Beekman and Dunn, who play for Brooklyn and Phoenix, respectively, regularly share advice on how Rohde can help lead a UVA team whose only scholarship senior is Murray. Beekman, who grew up in Milwaukee too, also mentors Rohde on playing point guard in the ACC.

That process started last season, when Rohde and Beekman would break down videotape together.

“Just watching film with him, seeing different reads that he makes and watching him play has definitely helped me a lot,” Rohde said, “just because his poise and his comfortability with the ball is great. So just having a role model like that watching has definitely helped me.”

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