Wahoo Wire

The 2011-2012 season has the Virginia men’s basketball team off to their best start since 1981-1982, notching a 14-2 record and a #17 ranking in the most recent ESPN/USA Today poll.  Tony Bennett is being heralded as the coach that will finally bring the ‘Hoos back to relevance on the national stage, fifth-year senior Mike Scott is arguably the frontrunner for the ACC Player of the Year award, and a slew of analysts see this Virginia team as having a legitimate shot to challenge perennial ACC blue-bloods Duke and North Carolina for the league’s top spot.  Yet in the midst of this national attention, Virginia received some unfortunate news over the holiday break: redshirt freshman F/C James Johnson and sophomore G KT Harrell requested, and were granted, the right to transfer.  In the wake of this news, Wahoo Wire will tell you why these attritions happens and what impact they will have on the basketball program, both for this season and the future.

Why go?

Since arriving in Charlottesville following the 2007-2008 season, head coach Tony Bennett has been no stranger to transfers.  Following Bennett’s first year at the helm of the program, three players opted to jump ship: G/F Tristan Spurlock transferred to UCF, G Jeff Jones took his talents to Rider, and G Sylven Landesburg mistakenly declared for the NBA draft.  All three of these players had previously committed to play under former coach Dave Leito, so their decisions to leave the program are pretty understandable.  Bennett brought a new face, a new scheme, and a new emphasis on defense that not all guys buy into.  Simply put, Bennett is the type of coach that has a “type,” and those who don’t fit it often find themselves on the outside looking in.

But the transfer trend that has plagued Virginia over the last few years doesn’t just stop at the three Leito commits.  Of Bennett’s highly-touted first recruiting class – dubbed by some “Bennett’s Six Shooters” – four are no longer enrolled at the University: G Billy Baron now plays for his father at Rhode Island, F Will Regan transferred to the University of Buffalo at year’s end, and now Johnson and Harrell have bolted halfway through the season.  The question that everyone is asking is why?

The answer? Playing time.

Baron, as many will remember, got off to a hot start in Charlottesville, scoring 33 points in his first two games before seeing his minutes fall off in December.  Frustrated and unsure of how he would stack up against ACC-caliber talent, Baron chose to transfer midseason.

Regan, on the other hand, only averaged 6.6 MPG in the 2010-2011 season and never scored more than seven points in a game.  While he was certainly invested in the team on the bench, he, like Baron, wasn’t sure if he had the ability to compete at the ACC level and wanted to play closer to home.

James Johnson, the highest ranked of Bennett’s six recruits in the 2010 class, redshirted last year on his own accord and was predicted by many to be a huge part of Virginia’s success this year.  But to anyone that’s ever seen a basketball game, Johnson looked confused out there.  Honestly, the guy was setting picks for people that weren’t even there and looked sluggish on the defensive end.  After notching a decent number of minutes in the first few games of this year’s campaign, Johnson rarely found himself on the court as the season.  According to his father, James prefers to get up and down the court at a higher pace than Bennett’s slowed-down offense, which is why he’s now playing for coach Steve Fisher at San Diego State.

The departure of KT Harrell, however, is far more puzzling than the others.  Arguably a better player than fellow sophomore Joe Harris at times (i.e., the UNC game last year), Harrell began the 2011-2012 season as a starter until losing the gig to fifth-year senior G Sammy Zeglinski in late November.  Nonetheless, KT held onto a spot in Bennett’s patented eight-man rotation, often being the first man off the bench and still averaging 18.9 MPG at the time of his withdrawal.  In my opinion, KT’s decision to leave had more to do with his realization that the future may be unkind to him.  With Malcolm Brogdon establishing himself as a viable option for immediate playing time and big-time recruit F/G Justin Anderson coming to Charlottesville next season, Harrell likely envisioned a scenario where his minutes would continue to drop-off.  I still think that KT could have been great at Virginia with a little bit of confidence and aggressiveness, but now he’ll be looking to start anew elsewhere (rumors are Auburn).

Immediate Impact

With only nine scholarship players active on the roster following the Harrell-Johnson transfers, coach Tony Bennett and staff took immediate action to solve the situation.  They did so in two ways:

The first move was to “burn the shirt” of freshman G Paul Jesperson, the 2011 Wisconsin High-School Player of the Year who had originally planned on spending this season watching from the sidelines and growing physically.  Without Harrell, however, the Cavaliers were without any real depth at the 2/3 position aside from Brogdon off the bench, so Bennett and Jesperson made the collective decision to allow Paul to play.  Jesperson has since appeared in Virginia’s last six games, averaging 2.5 PPG and 0.3 APG.  Those numbers may seem low to some, but keep in mind that this was a guy who was forced into action after having the mindset that he wouldn’t see the floor until next year.  The important part is not the statistics, but that Jesperson has been able to get a few minutes under his belt and get accustomed to playing on a bigger stage, against better talent, at a time when his team will need him.

Bennett and company also made another move to combat the hole left by Harrell in particular: they allowed 2012 commit G Teven Jones to enroll at Virginia for the spring semester.  Jones, a 2011 graduate from Kannapolis, NC, had been spending a prep year and Fishburne Military Academy when the staff, helped by Fishburne Coach Ed Huckaby, approached him about enrolling early.  Already in Charlottesville, Jones will use the remainder of the 2011-2012 season as a redshirt year, allowed to practice with the team, travel to away games, and get started at earning his degree.  The move allows Jones to have a leg up on the offensive and defensive schemes run by Bennett and puts him in a better position to see considerable minutes next year with the departure of Zeglinski.

Future Impact

Assessing the impact that these transfers will have on the future of the program is harder to do because, at this point, everything is mere speculation.  Sources close to the program, however, continue to report that the departures could affect how the staff handles recruiting the classes of 2013 and 2014.

The prospect that the conversation is centering around is 2013 F Brandan Stith, son of Wahoo great Bryant Stith and brother of 2014 Virginia-commit G B.J. Stith.  Prior to the December transfers, the Virginia coach staff had already offered Brandan Stith a spot on the UVa squad, but with one caveat: he had to do a prep year elsewhere.  At that time, the numbers, both in terms of players already on the roster at the forward position and scholarships available in the 2013 class, didn’t really work out.  But now things are different.  With two more scholarships ready to give, Bennett now has the ability to offer the older Stith a spot for 2013, something that Brandan has been reported to have coveted.  Bennett, however, still believes that Brandan could benefit more from a year of actual playing action as opposed to a redshirt year, so nothing is set in stone.  We’ll just have to wait and see.