Virginia’s latest NCAA failure renews criticism of program
DAYTON, Ohio – When Virginia’s basketball team squandered a 15-point lead with 9:33 to play against Syracuse in the 2016 Elite Eight, fumbling away a Final Four berth in the face of the Orange’s full-court press, critics of the program pinned the loss on coach Tony Bennett’s system, a defense-first, slow-tempo approach to the game.
Two years later, when Bennett’s Cavaliers became the first-ever No. 1 seed to lose to a 16-seed, that criticism grew louder.
Of course, Bennett and his program silenced it the following season, authoring college basketball’s all-time great redemption story by winning the 2019 national championship.
But now, five years since cutting down the nets in Minneapolis, and with nary an NCAA tournament win to show from those seasons, the pillory is back.
Virginia’s season ends with a blowout loss to Colorado State in the First Four
“I know we’re going to get a lot of hate,” sophomore forward Ryan Dunn said Tuesday night after the Cavaliers were blown out 67-42 by Colorado State in a First Four game in Dayton, Ohio. “It makes sense. People want to win, and we haven’t won in a couple of years.”
Three times since taking the title Virginia has lost its first NCAA game and once, in 2022, it didn’t make the field. There was no tournament in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taking shots at Bennett’s program because of his pace of play has been a cottage industry for some national media types, even after the championship run. Twitter is littered with disparaging one-liners and a fan who attended Tuesday’s game in a “Virginia basketball is Iowa football” t-shirt went viral, mocking both programs’ offensive deficiencies.
Could there now be some substance behind the slander?
In the transfer portal era, Bennett – who is 16-11 all-time in the NCAA tournament, including 13-9 with the Cavaliers – may need to reshape some of how he runs his program. Transfers adjust more slowly to his style of play. High-end recruits may be less likely to commit to his defense-first mentality.
Virginia is far from the forefront when it comes to delivering NIL riches to its players and recruits.
“Absolutely, I always have to examine our ability to advance,” Bennett said Tuesday night after his team’s latest March disappointment. “We’ve raised the bar really high here. We’ve qualified for this tournament, which is not an easy thing. We’ve done well. But it’s stung to get to this point and not advance. So, of course, we’ve got to keep adding quality players. We’ve got to look at things, certainly, from a system standpoint, absolutely.”
Of course, Bennett’s way does have answers to those questions, too. If top recruits want NBA careers, Bennett has been as good as anyone at putting players in the pros. His list of proteges turned pros includes Joe Harris, Justin Anderson, Malcolm Brogdon, Sam Hauser, Trey Murphy, De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy and Mamadi Diakite.
And players who don’t to buy-in defensively or who are more focused on NIL riches than development, bluntly, aren’t Bennett guys, anyway.
“I think we showed during the regular season that our style of play is good enough to win big games and close games,” said senior guard Reece Beekman, a two-time ACC defensive player of the year who went 0-3 in the NCAA tournament. “The games haven’t gone our way in the tournament. I don’t think it’s just because of how we play. I think it’s just game by game scenarios.”
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Bennett doesn’t like to fall back on the specific circumstances of each loss, but a wholistic evaluation of his team’s postseason failures would be incomplete without acknowledging them. When UMBC shocked the No. 1 Cavaliers, Virginia played without Hunter, who had injured his wrist during the ACC tournament.
The COVID year, UVa had won eight straight games before the season shut down.
In 2021, Virginia lost to Ohio in the first round after having to leave the ACC tournament stop practicing because of positive COVID tests.
In 2023, it took hard-to-fathom turnover by Kihei Clark and a miracle, buzzer-beating 3-pointer for Furman to pull the upset.
Any one, maybe two of those, could be forgiven and forgotten. But the accumulation of losses has Bennett’s doubters once again on their soap boxes.
“It’s frustrating because before that, we’ve been to a couple of Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight and a national championship,” Bennett said. “But there have been some hard losses in the first round. That’s frustrating.”
And more than that, it’s a problem Bennett is tasked with solving.
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