Well there is another opening for a head coach in the ACC and this one is at Virginia.
Think about being a Cavaliers fan. A year ago you were probably thinking that you had one of the most stable programs and coaching situations in the country. Tony Bennett seemed like he was going to be Virginia's Coach K, a guy who was there for decades and never left.....
A year later they just fired the interim coach, Ron Sanchez, who was basically Bennett's hand picked choice.
From the AP article about it:
"Sanchez took over as UVA's head coach under the interim tag on October 18th following the retirement of Tony Bennett, coaching the Cavaliers to a 15-17 record and a ninth place finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference. This was Sanchez's 11th season at Virginia, as he served as an assistant on Bennett's staff from 2009 to 2018 before spending five years as the head coach at Charlotte. Sanchez returned to Charlottesville in 2023, serving as associate head coach for the 2023-2024 season."
I'm sorry but for all the good things Bennett did for Virginia, the way he went about retiring or whatever the hell he did screwed this program long term. And this isn't a great job that will attract the top end elite coaches. It is a good job but not a great job and I would be willing to bet without a guy like Bennett, who specialized in winning without top end talent, this program might never see the heights it saw the last 10-15 years.
Bennett's reasons for retiring may be valid but his timing was nonsense. There was no reason he couldn't have gone through the season and then retired when the season was done so the school could really get started on a coaching search. That search would have been for a program that had at least the perception of being stable and instead it is now a program that is in a bit of a state of chaos.
And Bennett can say what he wants but the reality is he stepped down to force them to give Sanchez a shot for this season as the interim head coach. That almost never works to be honest and in this case it was a bit of a disaster. Sanchez wasn't a good coach at Charlotte, what made anyone believe he would be able to do a good job in the ACC?
All of this underscores the fact that the stakes for men's basketball and football are increasingly high and I believe that many schools are going to turn up the heat on their coaches. Now that players are being paid, now that alumns and sponsors and donors are feeling the pressure to donate at levels higher than before, you better believe the stakes are reaching levels that many coaches won't be able to handle.
Again, I don't think Capel is going anywhere and probably don't think he should but with jobs starting to open up now that seasons are coming to an end, I would be very interested to see what the pool of coaches for a school like Pitt would realistically look like.
One name that is always out there is Sean Miller and I heard he was at Nemacolin resort with Allen Greene!!! (That's a joke for those who have been around for a while)
Think about being a Cavaliers fan. A year ago you were probably thinking that you had one of the most stable programs and coaching situations in the country. Tony Bennett seemed like he was going to be Virginia's Coach K, a guy who was there for decades and never left.....
A year later they just fired the interim coach, Ron Sanchez, who was basically Bennett's hand picked choice.
From the AP article about it:
"Sanchez took over as UVA's head coach under the interim tag on October 18th following the retirement of Tony Bennett, coaching the Cavaliers to a 15-17 record and a ninth place finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference. This was Sanchez's 11th season at Virginia, as he served as an assistant on Bennett's staff from 2009 to 2018 before spending five years as the head coach at Charlotte. Sanchez returned to Charlottesville in 2023, serving as associate head coach for the 2023-2024 season."
I'm sorry but for all the good things Bennett did for Virginia, the way he went about retiring or whatever the hell he did screwed this program long term. And this isn't a great job that will attract the top end elite coaches. It is a good job but not a great job and I would be willing to bet without a guy like Bennett, who specialized in winning without top end talent, this program might never see the heights it saw the last 10-15 years.
Bennett's reasons for retiring may be valid but his timing was nonsense. There was no reason he couldn't have gone through the season and then retired when the season was done so the school could really get started on a coaching search. That search would have been for a program that had at least the perception of being stable and instead it is now a program that is in a bit of a state of chaos.
And Bennett can say what he wants but the reality is he stepped down to force them to give Sanchez a shot for this season as the interim head coach. That almost never works to be honest and in this case it was a bit of a disaster. Sanchez wasn't a good coach at Charlotte, what made anyone believe he would be able to do a good job in the ACC?
All of this underscores the fact that the stakes for men's basketball and football are increasingly high and I believe that many schools are going to turn up the heat on their coaches. Now that players are being paid, now that alumns and sponsors and donors are feeling the pressure to donate at levels higher than before, you better believe the stakes are reaching levels that many coaches won't be able to handle.
Again, I don't think Capel is going anywhere and probably don't think he should but with jobs starting to open up now that seasons are coming to an end, I would be very interested to see what the pool of coaches for a school like Pitt would realistically look like.
One name that is always out there is Sean Miller and I heard he was at Nemacolin resort with Allen Greene!!! (That's a joke for those who have been around for a while)
