Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Whether it was burnout or the freight train of massive changes (for good or bad) in college sports, Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett announced his retirement effective last week.
No, Tony Bennett is not related to the singer of the same name.
This Tony Bennett is the 55-year old highly successful men’s basketball coach for the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers were winners of the NCAA men’s basketball championship in 2019. The Charlottesville-based team has been dominant in the always-tough Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for the past 13 seasons.
Coach Tony Bennett’s teams at UVA featured (being nice here) “deliberate” offensive schemes and very tough man-to-man defenses. Outside of a few fast break opportunities, his basketball teams rarely took a shot at the basket with more than five seconds left on the shot clock.
Most opponents would rather visit a dentist than have to play against the slow-down offense and pressure defensive squads of Coach Bennett.
UVA annually held opponents to their lowest point output of the season.
Though many fans hated this throwback style of basketball in today’s run-and gun era, it was quite successful for Tony Bennett during his coaching career.
The University of Virginia’s basketball teams during the Coach Bennett years were pleased when holding the final score to under 60 points for the winning team. That’s because Virginia won more than 90% of those contests.
Tony Bennett transformed the University of Virginia into a national power in men’s basketball
After coming to the University of Virginia in 2009, Coach Bennett’s teams have won six ACC titles and captured 30 or more wins in four seasons (including the 2019 national championship team). The ACC features some of America’s premier basketball programs such as Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Florida State, and Miami.
Tony Bennett captured two National Coach of the Year honors while at UVA (in 2015 and 2018) and was a four-time recipient of the ACC Coach of the Year award.
He posted a 364-136 record at Virginia and guided the Cavaliers to 12 consecutive postseason appearances. Coach Tony Bennett surpassed the late Terry Holland to become UVA’s all-time winningest basketball coach.
After winning the national championship in April, 2019 with a 36-3 record, UVA has gone 23-7, 18-7 (COVID-year), 21-14, 25-8, and 23-11 last year in the 2023/2024 campaign.
The coach agreed to a lucrative contract extension this summer which was intended to keep him around UVA through 2030. At the time he signed the new contract a few months ago, Tony Bennett seemed happy.
“I love UVA and it has always been a special place for me and my family,” said Coach Bennett. “My staff and I look forward to adapting to the new landscape of college athletics. We will continue to build one of the best basketball programs on and off the court without compromising the values of our university. Go Hoos!”
Even before signing the contract extension, Coach Tony Bennett was having doubts
It was already hard enough to recruit top players to come to Virginia and play Coach Bennett’s “old school” style of basketball.
It took seven years before UVA signed its first McDonald’s high school All-American player, Kyle Guy, in 2014.
Many of the top high school basketball players prefer to play for wide-open offensive teams in college in order to add gaudy stats in hopes of impressing NBA scouts.
When playing for Bennett’s Virginia Cavaliers, the team’s top scorer rarely averages more than 15 points per game. Plus, Virginia’s relentless defensive pressure requires more work and effort on that end of the court than many top players are willing to give.
Coach Tony Bennett’s unique system also requires a few years of experience for most of his players to shine on the court.
That simply doesn’t translate in today’s increasingly mobile NCAA transfer portal and cash-driven NIL environment
Virginia’s head coach had no trouble convincing talented basketball players that they would receive a great education and compete for ACC titles while at UVA. However, more and more players had become reluctant to stick around long enough to excel at running Coach Bennett’s complicated offensive and defensive schemes.
If the player’s next goal is jump into the NBA ASAP, Coach Bennett’s system is totally unlike the offenses being run by high-scoring pro basketball teams.
Virginia’s basketball team has finished in the top half of the ACC standings in each of the past 13 years.
However, it has become much harder to maintain that standard of excellence in this current era of frequent transfer portal moves (with some players changing schools every year) and increasing NIL cash offers.
Tony Bennett’s father has always been a big part of his son’s life and career
The longtime men’s basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay, Dick Bennett also was known for his team’s tough defenses and low-scoring offensive output. After Tony graduated from high school, he couldn’t wait to play on his Dad’s college basketball team.
Tony Bennett became a four-year letterman for the Wisconsin-Green Bay Phoenix and averaged nearly 20 points per game over his college career. He was also a two-time Academic All-American. Tony was selected with the 35th pick in the 1992 NBA draft by the Charlotte Hornets.
After three seasons as a role player in the NBA, the younger Bennett eventually joined his father’s coaching staff in Wisconsin and, later, at Washington State.
When Dick Bennett decided to retire as the head coach at Washington State in 2006 at the age of 63, his talented son, Tony, was tapped to assume the top job for the Cougars.
In his first year as a head coach, Tony Bennett led Washington State to a 26-8 record and a 3rd seed in the NCAA tournament (the school’s first trip since 1994). The talented young coach was named AP National Coach of the Year in 2007 at Washington State. He became the nation’s hottest young coaching commodity.
Tony Bennett was offered jobs at Indiana and LSU, but his wife Laurel (ironically, a native of Baton Rouge and an LSU graduate) helped convince him that the job offer from the University of Virginia seemed like the best fit for their family.
So, why did Coach Bennett retire from college basketball coaching at age 55?
Let’s fast-forward to last week’s surprising retirement announcement by men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett at the University of Virginia.
He said that one of his considerations for retiring now was to spend more time was his family – including his 81-year old father and mother.
“I love (my wife) Laurel with all my heart, and we’re going to find out if you love me with all your heart because I’m going to be around a lot more,” said Coach Bennett last week. “I want to be a better dad to my daughter Anna and my son Eli. My parents are both 81 years old, and I don’t want to live with any regrets. Just to be around them, to be a better friend, a better brother for my sister…”
For now, he plans to take a well-deserved sabbatical. His wife told a reporter than Tony made a deal with her not commit to any new type of job for the next year so that he can fully unwind and assess his future.
Coach Bennett does want to lobby college basketball’s governing bodies to institute a true shutdown period during the off-season (one month or more) so that coaches and potential recruits will not have any contact with each other.
Otherwise, Tony Bennett expects we will see several more top coaches retiring earlier than expected in the next few years.
“Now that I’m not in it, I can say this. It’s too much,” Bennett confided to a CBS Sports reporter recently. “You go from the moment the season ends, you’re trying to fill your roster and you’re in there and you gotta go, go, go. You gotta be on campus. And the season’s long enough, whether you are in the tournament, the moment it ends you’re right away trying to rebuild your roster, and you’re in there, and it was two months of insane work. You’re just going, going, going.”
Tony Bennett told the assembled media last week that he was leaving the UVA basketball program to a trusted assistant coach. Associate head coach Ron Sanchez, who was on the former head coach’s staff at both Washington State and Virginia, will take over the head coaching responsibilities for this upcoming season.
The now ex-coach acknowledged some of the stressful issues in college sports today.
“I think it’s right for student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don’t mistake me,” Bennett said Friday. “The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change and it’s not going to go back. I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That’s who I am.”
He’s right.
Tony Bennett’s style of play demanded talented basketball players who were willing to sacrifice personal stats for team victories. His coaching style made it difficult to find the right type of college basketball players long before the advent of the NCAA’s relatively new transfer portal and NIL payments to players.
Today, college athletics seems like a “Rent-a-player” world. The top basketball players are not likely to commit to sticking around long enough to learn and later excel at Coach Bennett’s unique basketball system.
Either the coach or the players had to change.
When I described Coach Bennett’s sudden retirement to my lovely wife this morning, she said, “It sounded like asking a top rock star (Coach Bennett) to start playing country music.”
Could he do it? Probably so. Would he like doing it? Absolutely not.
Best of luck in your sabbatical/coaching retirement, Tony Bennett!
I really enjoyed watching your UVA basketball teams cause the opposing coaches and players fits every year as they tried to adapt to your team’s style of play.
After taking a well-deserved rest, perhaps you will, indeed, become instrumental in leading some improvements to college basketball so that the coaches, players, and fans will have a more enjoyable product soon.