One day after the University of Virginia announced the surprise news that men’s basketball head coach Tony Bennett was retiring – effective immediately – after 15 seasons at the helm, an emotional Bennett explained why.
“I’m no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment,” a choked-up Bennett said in a press conference Friday at John Paul Jones Arena. “And if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be all in. You’ve got to have everything. And if you do it halfhearted, it’s not fair to the university and those young men.
“So in looking at it, that’s what made me step down.”
Ron Sanchez, who was associate head coach under Bennett, is taking over as interim head coach for the 2024-2025 campaign. Virginia will open its season against Campbell on November 6.
A three-time national coach of the year, Bennett posted a 364-136 record with the Cavaliers. He guided the men’s program to its first national championship in 2019, a year after Virginia was famously upset in the first round of March Madness.
In 2018, UVA was a No. 1 seed and a heavy favorite to beat No. 16 seed University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in the annual NCAA men’s basketball postseason tourney. The Retrievers made history when they beat the Bennett-led Cavaliers, becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed in men’s tournament history.
To Bennett’s credit, he orchestrated one of the most remarkable redemption stories in sports history a year later, when UVA returned to the title game as a No. 1 seed and defeated Texas Tech in overtime to clinch the program’s first title.
Bennett said he came to Virginia to test himself to see if he and his staff “could build a program in our unique way to compete against the blue bloods” against hall of fame coaches like Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina’s Roy Williams and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
He indeed found success. During Bennett’s tenure as head coach of the Cavaliers, Virginia won two ACC tournament titles and six ACC regular season championships.
Bennett, 55, said that he had considered stepping down after last season but quickly was immersed in the recruiting process and the transfer portal. Then the university offered him a contract extension, which would’ve kept him with the program until 2030.
It was recently during fall break, Bennett said, when he took a step back to reflect and processed what the future would be.
“And that’s where I kind of came to the realization that I can’t do this,” Bennett said. “It’s not fair to these guys and to this institution that I love so much to continue on when you know you’re not the right guy for the job.
“The reason I did it then instead of waiting, I’ve always wanted this to be taken over by one of my staff members. I always have. I just felt if I knew it was the time instead of trying to delay it, I wanted these guys in the staff to have a couple scrimmages, three weeks before they play games, to get together and just to step of the way.”
Bennett made a point in his press conference to say he believes “it’s right for players to receive revenue.”
“Please don’t mistake me,” he said. “I do. I think it is. But the game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change.
“I think I was equipped to do the job the old way. That’s who I am, and that’s how it was, and my staff has buoyed me along to get to this point.
“But there needs to be change. It’s going to be closer to a professional model … where there’s got to be collective bargaining. There has to be restriction on the salary pool that teams can spend. There has to be transfer regulation restrictions.
“There has to be some limits on the agent involvement to these young guys. … And I worry a lot about the mental health of the student-athletes as all this stuff comes down. … Maybe I can be an advocate for the student-athletes and the coaches to get the changes.
“(Virginia) is a place that will not compromise and do it the right way. I wish it could be me, but it can’t. And when you know in your heart it’s the time, you have to give it away.”