Cavaliers Now

Tony Bennett Retiring Immediately as Virginia Basketball Head Coach

Matt Newton

Virginia men's basketball head coach Tony Bennett announced his surprising retirement on Thursday.
Virginia men's basketball head coach Tony Bennett announced his surprising retirement on Thursday. / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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Tony Bennett will announce his immediate retirement as head coach of the Virginia men's basketball program on Friday morning, UVA announced in a shocking press release on Thursday afternoon. Bennett will hold a press conference to formally announce his retirement at John Paul Jones Arena on Friday (October 18) at 11am.

This is a particularly stunning development considering the proximity of his retirement to the beginning of the 2024-2025 UVA basketball season, which is set to begin in less than three weeks on November 6th.

This season was to be Bennett's 16th at the helm of the Virginia men's basketball program. In 15 seasons, Bennett amassed a 364-136 overall record, making him the winningest head coach in program history, and led the Cavaliers to six ACC regular season titles, two ACC Tournament titles, 10 NCAA Tournament appearances, and the 2019 NCAA National Championship. Bennett was named the ACC Coach of the Year four times (2014, 2015, 2018, 2019) and the National Coach of the Year three times (2007, 2015, 2018).

UVA Basketball: Health Not a Factor in Tony Bennett's Abrupt Retirement

The press release did not indicate who would be serving as the head coach for the Cavaliers on an interim basis this season. One would assume that Virginia will have either Jason Williford or Ron Sanchez, the team's two associate head coaches, serve as interim head coach while UVA director of athletics Carla Williams conducts a national search to choose the next head coach of the program. Those details have yet to be revealed and we will likely learn more about Virginia's plan moving forward and the reasons for Tony Bennett's shocking retirement in Friday's press conference.

Bennett gave no indication that his retirement was imminent when he made his annual appearance at the ACC Tipoff event at Charlotte last week. In fact, he alluded to a two-year plan with regards to the construction of his roster with so many players having come into the program this offseason with multiple years of eligibility remaining. Here's what Bennett said at the ACC Tipoff :

"The question you asked, can you build? I think you have to look at your model and adjust it a little bit. The way we're thinking with this team, you know, kind of in two-year increments. You probably can't say we're going to redshirt and build guys for the next -- have them for three, four, five years, but in two years. For example, this team this year -- sorry, Taine, on this one, he's one of our only guys, and I think we have a chance to have a really nice team. Taine and Jalen Warley are two seniors or in their fourth year. Everyone else on the team is going to be back, and they're going to be together for two or three years.

That's kind of how we put this team together in a two-year block. Of course, at the end of the year, could guys be disgruntled? Could a guy or two leave? Perhaps. But I think if you can keep a core together for at least two years and look at it that way and then they develop, and the COVID year finally goes away. Let's be real. It's time. So this is the last year we will see guys that are in their seventh, sixth year, all that stuff. It's going to be mostly four-year players.

When you have a team that has continuity and are juniors and seniors, I think that's a way. Obviously you have to get it right with, in this climate, the character of your players, but put it together. I think all those things will be how you build a program. But, everyone, that's the beauty of college sports, college basketball. You get to choose how you build your program, the style you play, the system you run, all those kinds of things. I think it starts for us in that regard."

It would seem something changed significantly over the course of the last week to drastically change Bennett's perspective on his head coaching career, but we won't have find out what that is until Friday's press conference.

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Matt Newton
MATT NEWTON

Matt launched Virginia Cavaliers On SI in August of 2021 and has since served as the site's publisher and managing editor, covering all 23 NCAA Division I sports teams at the University of Virginia. He is from Downingtown, Pennsylvania and graduated from UVA in May of 2021.