In perhaps the most shocking college basketball news since John Calipari left Kentucky for Arkansas, Tony Bennett has announced his immediate retirement at a press conference Friday morning.
The two-time National Coach of the Year, who led the Cavaliers to six regular-season ACC titles and the 2019 national championship, is stepping away less than three weeks before the start of the 2024-25 season, in which his squad was recently picked to finish fifth in the 18-team ACC.
It’s a stunning development for the 55-year-old coach who had been at Virginia for 15 seasons. Beginning his head coaching career with three years at Washington State, Bennett posted an impressive 433-169 (.719) overall record, which includes winning nearly 70% of his ACC games with the Cavaliers.
On Friday, Bennett announced what those who followed the program had already inferred: Virginia basketball assistant Ron Sanchez has been elevated to interim head coach for the 2024-25 season.
Ron Sanchez worked under Bennett at both Washington State and Virginia before leaving to become the head coach at Charlotte. He led the 49ers for five seasons, but despite some success — winning the CBI with a 22-14 record his final year despite going 72-78 overall — Sanchez returned to the Cavaliers as an assistant for the 2023-24 season.
It’s probable that Bennett waited so late into the fall to announce this to ensure that someone who had shown such loyalty would get a full season to audition for the head coaching position.
Ron Sanchez Connection to John Calipari
That name is likely unfamiliar to Arkansas basketball fans, but Ron Sanchez is certainly a coach John Calipari knows from one of his most underrated coaching positions during his legendary career.
From 2011-12, at the height of his powers leading the Kentucky basketball program, Calipari was also the head coach of the Dominican Republic national team.
During those two summers, the Dominicans moved their training camp to Lexington, Ky., to accommodate their head coach and one of his assistants for both teams, Orlando Antigua.
According to this story on the official Virginia basketball website, Ron Sanchez was also present at that training camp in 2012, helping Calipari and Antigua coach his home country.
The following year, Antigua replaced Calipari as the Dominican Republic’s head coach and brought on Sanchez as a full-time assistant.
Arkansas Basketball Part of the Reasons Bennett Left?
On Friday, Bennett said that opening up more time for his family was a big reason for stepping away. “To be a better husband…To be a better dad… My parents are both 81 and I don’t want to live with any regrets. Just to be around them.”
Gary Parrish, CBS’ college basketball analyst, said on Thursday he believes burnout with NIL-related hassle played a big role. This, of course, is something that increasingly plagues big-time head coaches in college football and basketball.
“I cannot tell you how many college basketball coaches over the past couple of years have explained to me that they have never enjoyed their job less than they are enjoying it now,” Parrish said on the “Eye on College Basketball” podcast. “They love the paychecks, they love being in the gym, they love the individual work, they love the competition, but that’s only a small part of being a division one high major college basketball coach these days. Again, and I can’t overemphasize this, there’s a long list of men in the profession who swear to you privately they’re ready to go and are going soon.”
Interestingly, Calipari, despite being 65 years old and forced to handle all kinds of NIL-related matters, seems rejuvenated at Arkansas. Likely it helps, in his case, that Arkansas is widely considered to have the largest NIL war chest in the nation. He probably doesn’t have to be quite as budget-conscious when it comes to roster composing as someone like Bennett at a smaller program.
Parrish knows of a college coach who decided “this is not how I want to spend my days — on Zoom calls in the transfer portal, rallying boosters to build collectives, and then taking that collective money and trying to figure out how to buy players in the same league as Duke and North Carolina and Louisville and other big brands that are operating at the tip top of the NIL game.”
Unquestionably, the Arkansas basketball program would be included among those big brands that are making life awful hard for some college coaches these days. If this kind of NIL-induced stress was indeed a reason for Bennett leaving, then Arkansas as part of the pack of blue bloods would have played an indirect hand in that.
Tony Bennett himself indicated he saw the writing on the wall last week:
John Calipari and Recruiting
A handful of elite NBA players have ties to the Dominican Republic, with the most notable being Karl-Anthony Towns.
Towns grew up in New Jersey with an American father and Dominican mother and didn’t make his first visit to the island until age 15, but it immediately made an impression on him. At the age of 16, the future No. 1 NBA Draft pick joined the national team and played under John Calipari in a friendly against a U.S. team featuring the likes of Kevin Durant and LeBron James, with whom Towns would join forces in 2024 to win the Olympic gold medal.
The next year, playing for Orlando Antigua and Ron Sanchez, represented the Dominican Republic in the 2013 FIBA AmeriCup. In 2014-15, Towns starred for Kentucky as a freshman, playing for both Calipari and Antigua before going pro.
What was once a fairly hot source of NBA players has dried up some in recent years, but a potential future NBA player with ties to the island nation comes in the form of Tajh Ariza, son of former NBA player Trevor Ariza.
Trevor Ariza has Dominican ancestry, among other nationalities, and once considered playing for its national team. His son, who lives in Los Angeles, is 247Sports’ No. 3 ranked player in the class of 2026 with an offer from every major program you can think of including Arkansas.
Even without the Dominican tie, Calipari would find plenty to discuss with Arizas given his extensive network. But the island connection can only help.
~Andrew Hutchinson contributed to the above~
More from Parrish on Tony Bennett:
More on Arkansas basketball from BoAS: