Column: "New" means a lot more as UVa's hoops season starts
As the beginning of hoops season looms, I find myself in an odd place.
For a decade and a half, Tony Bennett was the one who set the tone for Virginia basketball. There was a center rhythm to things, including the preseason. You knew he thought he had a good team if he was a little more ornery than usual, a little quicker to push back on silly questions. You could tell in the lead up exactly what Bennett thought about the group, though his expectations for what they’d give never waned despite how he might approach each group’s ultimate potential.
He didn’t coach them all the same but he coached them the same way. It was like the moon: You could set the tidal waves on it.
Watching the Wahoos last week during the exhibition against Villanova pressing in the full court, taking a slew of 3s, wanting to go fast, it felt both like welcomed breath of fresh air but also kind of bizarre still.
It’s not like I haven’t accepted the program’s reality, as it’s now securely in the hands of someone who focuses as clearly on it’s path ahead as he appreciates the steps it took through the past to reach today.
But just because I’m ready for the Ryan Odom era to officially begin….doesn’t mean I’m “ready,” ya know?
I think a lot about Charlotte. About Brooklyn and DC and Greensboro. About Chicago. NYC. About the run through Louisville and Minneapolis. It’s still jarring to think that period is over.
To edit the Jedi master slightly: The greatest teacher, time is.
It feels like that era just started.
It’s the one my dad was here to see and quiz me on. It’s the one that included the exhale of finally breaking through. It’s the one that (with apologies to Odom’s father, and to Terry, and to Ralph) put UVa basketball on the map. Or back on it at least.
This is a new team in a new era, in oh so many ways. It includes a roster of transfers—guys UVa smartly introduced through a fantastic in-house TV series, mind you—but they’re all still playing in the same jerseys, taking the court at JPJ, coming out of that same locker room and training on the same practice court.
I find myself shaking my head at the absurdity of change like that, thinking about the most random things.
For example: What will the pop from the crowd be like on opening night when Odom, some semblance of nerves surely running through him, emerges for the first “real” time from that tunnel? What will replace the roar of a shot-clock violation? What will it be like to go through a full season without Bennett and Co. on the sideline?
My counterparts on press row have obviously seen other coaches at the helm but I sure haven’t. Other than Jeff Jones Basketball Camp when I was a kid and a bit of cutting my teeth on the beat during the tail end of the Dave Leitao era, it’s all new terrain now.
It’s just an odd yet still exhilarating feeling.
I don’t say any of this to imply that there’s anything wrong with what’s transpired in the time since Bennett announced his exit. To the contrary; I think UVa and Carla Williams played their hand as well as could have possibly been played. Odom was the right choice at the right time, just enough old school to mix with his new-school vibes. The analytics, the speed, the approach, all of it. It fits. It fits perfectly.
Last year was a slog and one that very few of us would want to revisit. In turning the page, there’s not just hope and renewal but there’s uncertainty. For 15 years, little was uncertain.
It’s as exciting as it nerve inducing.
Here’s to a new journey and getting the chance to tell the stories along the way.
