Wahoo Wire

I had been saying for two weeks that I was reserving judgment on the firing of Dave Leitao until I saw who we hired as a replacement. Well, at first glance, let’s just say I was a little underwhelmed. In case you haven’t heard by now, UVA’s new basketball coach is Tony Bennett. No, not the singer your grandmother adores, but a young up and coming coach from Washington State University. My thoughts? I don’t hate the hire by any means, but I hate the decision making of the athletic department.

I have no problem with hiring an up and coming coach. Everything I’ve heard about Mr. Bennett is that he is the top young coach in the country and I look forward to seeing what he can do. What I do have a problem with is how the fans/alumni/athletic department higher ups – whoever is the driving force behind the hiring/firing of the coach – don’t seem to have the patience to let the new guy approach run its course. Dave Leitao was supposed to be a great young coach who would be here for years…he lasted four. I thought he had recruited pretty well for a UVA coach (a McD’s all-american and an honorable mention) and that the basketball program was rising from the depths it had reached after the Gillen years.

Apparently, for those making the decisions, this wasn’t enough and they fired him because they want to win NOW. Well, I’d love for us to win NOW but it just isn’t feasible for a guy like Leitao, or even Bennett to win NOW in the ACC. If you want instant results, hire Tubby Smith, Rick Barnes, or Jeff Capel. They’ll bring in the 5-star recruits and fill the arena like nobody’s business. But, if they turn us down (which I think happened in this search), then lower the expectations to a reasonable level and give the new guy a chance to do his thing. By firing Leitao and hiring Bennett, we’ve effectively hit the “reset” button on the basketball program back to four years ago, which is not a good place to be. And, frankly, I don’t see the outcome being any different four years down the road if people’s attitude doesn’t change.

All that being said, I’m beginning to really like this hire. Bennett played for his father at Wisconsin-Green Bay and actually played a few seasons professionally for the Charlotte Hornets before retiring due to injury. He then joined his dad’s staff in Wisconsin (the Big 10 one, not Green Bay) and stayed there until 2003 when his dad took the Washington State job. He succeeded his father at Wazzou in 2006 and proceeded to take the team to the NCAA tournament his first two years (the Sweet 16 in 2008) and the NIT this season. That’s a pretty nice resume for a coach…but there have been several concerns from Cavlier fans about this guy. Let’s examine some of these concerns and see how he holds up.

He’s only been a head coach for three years.

A legitimate concern but again, if you’re willing to wait and let him do his thing, this shouldn’t be an issue. Coach K had only been coaching for 5 years when he got to Duke and he had much less success with those Army teams than Bennett had at Wazzou…I’d say Mr. Krzyzewski turned out to be a good hire.

He didn’t win with his guys/ he can’t recruit.

Well, when he was an assistant under his father, he did some of the recruiting for him at Wisconsin and then again at WSU. He recruited Devin Harris and Alando Tucker to play for the Badgers (maybe you’ve heard of them?) and recruited most of the guys he took to the Sweet 16 at WSU. This is made even more impressive considering WSU is the third best program in the state behind Washington and Gonzaga and it’s located in Pullman, Washington. My dad described Pullman to me yesterday: “Fly to Spokane (a Cville-esque size city) and drive two hours out of that.” Yikes…not exactly a glamorous place to attend school. I’d say he can do no worse than our previous guys.

He’s a flight risk.

Another legit concern since he has little connection to the area but I don’t think this is an issue. He’s already turned down big time jobs closer to his home area (Indiana and Marquette to name a few) and we’re paying him quite a bit of cash to come coach here. I don’t think he’s going to be able to find an upgrade in terms of exposure, money, and proximity to home…it just doesn’t exist.

His teams play boring basketball.

Ok, his teams averaged 2 points less than us per game this past season…big drop off there. But seriously, are we going to complain about the style if it produces wins? That’s just stupid. His teams are well coached and they win basketball games. Their opponents averaged 1.078 points per possession this past season…that would put them at number two in the ACC this year in defense, second only to Duke and well above the likes of us. The year they went to the Sweet 16, they coupled their great defense with a remarkably efficient offense as they averaged 1.425 points per possession and a differential of .3674…that’s just good basketball. We haven’t even come close to matching that efficiency since the expansion. And it’s not like those stats are inflated against a cupcake league; that was the Pac-10 when UCLA went to the Final Four, USC had OJ Mayo, and the Lopez twins were at Stanford. To really sum up his coaching ability, if you put the average WSU team he’s coached in the ACC, my predictor calls for them to win 70% of their games. That’s his average team…I like those numbers considering the best we’ve seen from our guys was a .650ish winning percentage in 2006-2007.

In closing, this guy can coach and I don’t think anyone can argue that. But what will determine his tenure here at UVA is what we the fans view as success. If success is reaching the ACC Championship and maybe the Final Four within four years, then he’s in for a short stay. But if it’s to build the program steadily and end up in 5-6 years making it to the NCAA Tournament regularly, I think Mr. Bennett could be here for quite some time. We aren’t Carolina or Duke; let’s hope we realize it before we reset again.