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Virginia men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett never chased the spotlight. That included with his stunning and abrupt decision to retire effective immediately, announced on the eve of the start of the season.

The program said Thursday the 55-year-old Bennett will announce his retirement at a news conference on Friday at 11 a.m. EDT. No reasons were given for his decision, which was unveiled simply in an online post by the program months after he had signed a contract extension to keep him in the job through at least 2030.

It came a week after Bennett appeared at the Atlantic Coast Conference’s preseason media days, and with the Cavaliers’ opener against Campbell looming at home on Nov. 6.

Bennett led the Cavaliers to the national title in 2019. In his 15 seasons as the coach in Charlottesville, he made 10 NCAA Tournament appearances.

https://apnews.com/article/uva...5430b0889202e11027de

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Frustration with the transfer portal and the current NIL system. Bennett obviously had some challenges in the NCAA tourney besides the year of Virginia's title run, but he did a tremendous job in player development. He would take guys that were not McDonald's All-American types and develop them into guys that could contribute at the NBA level - Malcolm Brogdan, DeAndre Hunter, Justin Anderson, Sam Hauser (who looked much better in Tony's system than at Marquette), etc.

Now if he gets a guy like that in his system and they improve too much over the course of a year or two, someone else will outbid him to reap the rewards of the player development work when the guys are upperclassman.

It extends to all schools. Would Frank Kaminsky have stayed at Wisconsin past his sophomore year had the NIL system been in place back then?

Last edited by MichiganPacker2

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