Matt Riley/Virginia Athletics
Virginia Snubbed From Early College Basketball Preseason Top 25 Rankings
With the return of Reece Beekman, Virginia should be able to contend at the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference once again. The Cavaliers lost several pieces from last year's roster, but secured four quality transfer additions, and with a talented core of Beekman, Isaac McKneely, and Ryan Dunn coming back, UVA should have a highly-capable team taking the court in year 15 under Tony Bennett.
The national media disagrees. There have been several so-called "way-too-early" preseason top 25 college basketball rankings released by various analysts and media outlets since the end of the season and none of them - even the ones posted in the last two weeks after Beekman made his decision - included Virginia in or even near the top 25. ESPN, Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, CBS Sports, and Stadium have each publish preseason top 25s since the beginning of June and each have omitted the Cavaliers from their rankings.
Their argument is understandable. UVA lost the bulk of its scoring and minutes from last year with the departures of veteran starters Kihei Clark, Armaan Franklin, Jayden Gardner, and Ben Vander Plas, rotation centers Kadin Shedrick and Francisco Caffaro transferring out, and Isaac Traudt, a four-star recruit who was expected to have a big year for UVA next season after redshirting his freshman year, transferring to Creighton.
With that said, Virginia added some talented and experienced additions from the transfer portal: Georgetown point guard Dante Harris, who was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2021 Big East Tournament, Merrimack forward Jordan Minor, who was the Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the Northeast Conference last season, St. Thomas guard Andrew Rohde, a big guard and capable ball-handler and scorer who was the Summit League Freshman of the Year and a First-Team All-Conference selection last year, and Oklahoma forward Jake Groves, a stretch forward who shot above 38% from three for the Sooners last season. Additionally, the Cavaliers are welcoming in a trio of freshmen, featuring four-stars Blake Buchanan and Elijah Gertrude and three-star Anthony Robinson.
Virginia returns an exciting tandem of rising sophomores in sharpshooting guard Isaac McKneely, who led the Cavaliers in three-point shooting as a true freshman, and the hyper-athletic forward Ryan Dunn, who has been mentioned as a potential lottery pick in next year's NBA Draft. UVA also returns redshirt freshman wing Leon Bond III, who was a four-star prospect coming out of high school, and rising junior wing Taine Murray, whose experience in Tony Bennett's system will be invaluable as he steps into a leadership role as an upperclassman.
And of course, there's the 2022-2023 ACC Defensive Player of the Year Reece Beekman, who very nearly remained in the 2023 NBA Draft, but instead decided to return to Virginia for one more season in the hopes of playing himself into the first round of next year's draft. With the keys of the offense firmly and solely in his hands and a clear goal of becoming more of a force on the offensive end, the stage might be set for Reece Beekman to be unleashed in a breakout senior campaign that could take the UVA offense to new heights next season.
Regardless of the moving pieces on UVA's roster, you'd think the media would have learned by now not to doubt Tony Bennett, who has coached the Cavaliers to six ACC regular season titles, two ACC Tournament championships, and a national title. College basketball experts can dare to keep Virginia out of their preseason top 25 rankings if they want, but considering that UVA has only finished outside of the final AP Top 25 poll once since 2014, that's a risky move.
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