Virginia Guard Reece Beekman Declares for 2024 NBA Draft

Matt Newton | Jun 27, 2024

Reece Beekman shoots a three-pointer during the Virginia men's basketball game against Boston College at the ACC Tournament. / Virginia Athletics

Virginia senior point guard Reece Beekman has declared for the 2024 NBA Draft, forgoing his final year of eligibility, he announced in a social media post on Wednesday morning.

"After much reflection and discussion with my family and coaches, I have decided to forgo my last year of eligibility and declare for the NBA Draft," Beekman wrote in the post. "I will carry with me not just the dream of playing at the highest level, but the responsibility to represent UVA with humility and passion. I am excited about the future and committed to continually improving, both on and off the court. Always a Hoo!"

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Though success in the NCAA Tournament eluded him, Reece Beekman leaves a lasting and undeniable individual legacy in the annals of Virginia men's basketball. For a program known for producing excellent defenders, Beekman was the first Cavalier to ever win back-to-back ACC Defensive Player of the Year awards and just the third player from any school to win the award in consecutive seasons. Beekman was also a three-time All-ACC selection and a three-time ACC All-Defensive Team selection.

While he was locking down the opposing team's best offensive player night in and night out, Beekman also found himself carrying the entire weight of Virginia's offense on his shoulders. He led the ACC in assist to turnover ratio in each of the last three seasons and led the league in total assists in two of the last three seasons, remarkable accomplishments given UVA's slow pace of play.

"To be a back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year and the only guard in the history of ACC basketball [to do that]. You think of those fine players, those fine defenders, remarkable," Tony Bennett said of Beekman. "The thing that was so amazing to me about Reece, who I was so proud of, is he had to be right on both ends of the floor for us to be competitive in games. And it forced him, and I think offensively - he had 64 more assists than any other point guard in the league - offensively what he's had to do."

Beekman recorded 212 assists in his senior season, two shy of John Crotty's single-season Virginia program record. He finished third in career assists with 636, trailing only Crotty and Kihei Clark. Beekman broke Othell Wilson's UVA career steals record with 228 takeaways and had 68 steals in his final season, third-most in program history behind Wilson's 69 steals in 1983-1984 and his own record of 73 steals from the 2021-2022 season. With 1,195 career points, Beekman sits 38th on UVA's all-time scoring list.

Perhaps most impressive was the fact that Beekman was a four-year starter at Virginia, where it is notoriously difficult for freshmen to earn significant playing time under Tony Bennett. Beekman started 20 of 25 games as a first year and started every game he played after that, finishing with 126 games played, 121 starts, and 4,122 minutes on the floor.

A pair of first-round upsets as a No. 4 seed sandwiched around an NIT appearance his sophomore year and then this up-and-down roller coaster of a season that ended with a blowout loss to Colorado State can do nothing to take away from Beekman's legacy, which includes all of the individual records and accolades previously mentioned, two ACC regular season titles, and an unquantifiable impact on and off the court for the last four years at Virginia.

"It doesn't change anything about this guy's career and what he's done," Bennett said of Beekman. "For four years I've never seen a guy get better and better [like this]. Someone's going to be very fortunate at the pro level to have this guy."

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