When I received back-to-back emails this afternoon around 4 p.m. suggesting that Washington State’s Tony Bennett would be the next Virginia men’s basketball coach, I thought it was just another suggested name to throw on the ever-growing list. Within the hour, The Daily Progress’ story hit the internet breaking the Bennett to UVa news.
My gut reaction: Really? After looking it over, however, I think the decision-makers did exactly what I suggested a few days ago. They found a model they believe can be successful in Charlottesville and hired Bennett as the architect. As for winning the press conference as my colleague Jeff White called it in a recent radio interview, the Cavaliers clearly are banking on winning games not the publicity battle.
So after giving it some time to sink in I believe Virginia made the right move.
The Pitt Equation
Shortly after the announced departure of former UVa coach Dave Leitao, speculation about potential candidates began to surface. Rather than join the fracas of name-dropping, I said that I believed the first step in picking a coach is picking a program model from three S’s. Successful, similar, and sustainable. For the article, I chose Pittsburgh (read it here) due to its situation in a power conference with recent National Champions, the historical similarity of the basketball program, and how the Panthers have achieved their recent success. In Pitt’s case, clearly there is success and similar conference stature.
The basic premise truly was rooted in the final S, though. Sustainable. The reason Pittsburgh, an Elite 8 qualifier this season and NCAA Tournament regular this decade, has found success in a similar situation to Virginia is based on a system. The Panthers defend and rebound mercilessly. They play physically on both ends. They compete hard from beginning to end. Offensively, Pitt relies on a point guard with good decision-making skills and shares the wealth in terms of points. The team runs sets to get certain players looks at certain times, but still leaves the freedom to create plays. And perhaps most importantly in terms of relevance to Virginia’s situation, Pittsburgh does it all without dominating the recruiting wars.
Enter Bennett from Washington State.
The system starts on the defensive end, which is a good thing – any coach will tell you that you will have a chance to win almost every game if you play strong defense. Like his father Dick Bennett, Tony Bennett uses the Pack-Line Pressure Defense to shut down driving lanes and post play. The system works; Washington State led the Pac-10 in the Bennetts’ first season (Tony joined his father’s staff before ascending to head coach), holding opponents to just 59.7 points per game, a 19.1 points per game improvement from 2002-03.
Tony Bennett’s three WSU teams have ranked highly on defense and regularly shut down opponents. In 2006-07, the Cougars (26-8) ranked 17th nationally by allowing 59.5 points per game; they held opponents to 40.4% shooting. In 2007-08, the Cougars (26-9) ranked third nationally by allowing 56.4 points per game; they held opponents to 41.3% shooting. This season, the Cougars (17-16) currently rank No. 1 nationally by allowing 55.4 points per game; they held opponents to 38.7% shooting. Florida State won 25 games and finished fourth in the ACC this season with that exact defensive field goal percentage.
While defense is the starting point, the team still has to win the scoreboard. On the offensive end, Tony Bennett’s three Washington State teams have shot 47% from the field and 37% from 3-point range while averaging 66.6 points per game. The Cougars are noted for taking care of the basketball, controlling the game’s pace, and producing quality shots; in those three seasons, WSU has averaged 13.8 assists and 10.3 turnovers. For comparison sake, Dave Leitao’s teams at Virginia had more turnovers than assists in all four of his seasons on the job.
The offensive system Bennett uses for the most part is often called the Blocker-Mover Motion Offense. The system uses tenets developed by Dick Bennett, Bob Knight, and others. On the basic level, the offense features designated players that act as screeners that mostly set off-ball screens and designated players that act as movers (or creators) that mostly work to create offense by using those screens. The system relies heavily on good decision-making (both as passers and shooters as well as in getting open without the ball), floor balance and spacing, and team basketball. In short, the players must be able to read what the defense gives them and be willing to let anyone on the floor be the beneficiary. It also requires players to be aggressive in looking to attack the basket.
In short, Tony Bennett’s teams rely heavily on a system that emphasizes both offensive and defensive teamwork with the focus on letting your defense dictate your chances to win. In many ways, it is what allowed UVa basketball to find sustainable success for nearly 25 years under Terry Holland and then Jeff Jones . By placing a premium on toughness and defense with a controlled and effective offense, the Cavaliers won 20+ games 13 times in 24 years and 18+ games in 5 other seasons (so 18 or more wins in 18 of 24 seasons).
The Recruiting Puzzle
It all sounds simple, right? But many coaches, fans, and reporters will tell you that if a coach can’t recruit, then the system won’t work. They’re both right and wrong at the same time. Without question, coaches must attract good players to their programs in order to win. So yes, a coach has to be able to recruit. However, I maintain that a coach doesn’t have to be able to outrecruit the heavyweights to make a program successful, he only has to recruit appropriately for his system.
Take a look at Pittsburgh once again. The Panthers have not signed a McDonald’s All-American recruit since 1987 and according to statsheet.com, which compiles statistics about sports programs, Pitt has signed just six top 100 recruits since 1998 in the RSCI composite rankings. Of this season’s three stars, DeJuan Blair (40), Sam Young (58), and Levance Fields (93) were top 100 recruits so clearly you do have to find talented guys, but you don’t have to pull in nothing but top 25 guys in order to win games. The Panthers focus on regional recruiting (Northeast and Mid-Atlantic) and picking the right players to fit their mold.
Turning the focus to Virginia and Bennett, a similar approach is the key to success. After all, let’s face it – UVa is not going to beat out college basketball powerhouses and ACC bluebloods like UNC and Duke regularly for McDonald’s All-Americans and top 25, 5-star players. We saw that with Leitao’s tenure when nearly every target turned down the Cavaliers for the likes of Duke, Carolina, and Kentucky. Instead, the focus must be on players willing to fit the mold of teamwork, discipline, and defense.
Fortunately for Virginia, that’s exactly the outline Bennett has been using in his three-year career. Find players that fit your system and develop them. In his first two years as head coach, two of Bennett’s key recruits from his stint as a WSU assistant coach, Derrick Low and Kyle Weaver, received All-Pacific-10 Conference First Team accolades, making them the first Cougar duo to earn all-conference first team honors since 1995-96. Both earned all-league honors again in 2008 as well. Low received a top 100 rating in only one service while Weaver had limited scholarship offers (just one from a Division II school according to Bennett).
Here is what Bennett had to say about his recruiting philosophy during an NCAA Tournament press conference last season.
“As I said, too much is made out of hype and how many stars he’s got by his name. Can the kid play? Can he fit your system?” he said. “It’s about when they come to your program how much will they improve and develop and our kids have done that. … The system we run and everybody’s go this perception, and I’m used to it, that it’s boring, it’s slow, it’s not fun. I think we play good basketball. We get our players shots; they have freedom to do things. They learn how to guard; they learn how to be good with the ball. Many of the NBA programs like that, that kids are developed. We don’t run all sets, they learn how to play. So it’s an easy sell to talented kids, it’s just getting them to believe can they come to a Washington State and maybe have a chance at touching something special.”
In other words, yes a coach has to recruit … to fit what he needs, not the hype machine.
Hopeful Outlook
So with that, it’s another new beginning for Virginia, who welcomes its third coach of the decade to town. Will Bennett be the answer to a growing sense of basketball irrelevance in Hooville? Can he produce winning teams in the unforgiving ACC? Keep in mind winning league records have eluded the program for most of the last 15 years with only four finishes above .500 in that time span – 12-4 under Jeff Jones in 1994-95, 9-7 in 1999-2000 and 2000-01 under Pete Gillen, and 11-5 under Dave Leitao in 2006-07.
In other words, competing in the ACC with the likes of Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Gary Williams, and so on isn’t easy, particularly when many ACC programs are landing the highly rated recruits on a regular basis. If there’s one thing Boston College’s Al Skinner has taught us, however, is that it is doable. Skinner’s BC teams have made the NCAA Tournament seven of the last nine years; since joining the ACC in 2005, the Eagles have won 20+ games and made the Big Dance three out of four years. Like Pitt, Boston College does it with a system.
Certainly, the Cavaliers are looking for similar success with a similar approach. In other words, as a message board poster stated earlier today, the Hoos went with the all steak and no sizzle hire. Here’s hoping it works. I believe it will.
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