From Ted Lasso lessons to ‘No Tie, No Problem,” Bennett goes off-script

By Jerry Ratcliffe

While most of the ACC Basketball Tip Off media day is about gaining and sharing knowledge about the league’s 15 teams, there are some lighter moments.

A couple of those were with Virginia coach Tony Bennett, dealing with the last 18 months of pandemic basketball and coats and ties.

Bennett was asked what he learned over the past year and a half during the stressful times of playing during the pandemic as college basketball transformed under the creation of the transfer portal, NIL and more. The Virginia coach decided to add a little levity to the situation to get his interview started.

“I’ve learned Ted Lasso is a really good Netflix show,” Bennett cracked, drawing some yucks from the media crowd.

Ted Lasso is an Emmy award-winning show about an American college football coach who accepts a job in the UK to manage a struggling London football team in the top flight of English football, unaware until arrival that it is a different type of “football,” and his struggles to adapt to his new environment.

Bennett turned serious for a moment, talking about the pandemic and other items, but some media members were eager to explore the Lasso thing to more length.

“I think we’ve learned to certainly appreciate the opportunity to play and made us realize how cool it is to have fans and that environment,” Bennett said, pointing out that the two UVA players that he brought to the Charlotte event, Reece Beekman and Kadin Shedrick, who filled in last minute for Kihei Clark, hadn’t had the opportunity to experience playing in fan-filled arenas at this point of their careers.

It wasn’t long until Lasso came back into the interview when someone asked Bennett what strategies he had learned coaching-wise from Ted Lasso. The quick-witted Bennett jumped right back into it.

“Well, someone told me the shoes I’m wearing, they look like Ted Lasso’s shoes, so I guess my style,” Bennett laughed. “It’s a fun show. It’s my wife’s (Laurel) favorite show. She loves it. She can quote most of the lines and watched the first season.

“I haven’t made it all the way through the second one. I don’t think it’s finished. But I think perspective. One thing — it’s kind of fun to watch. He’s a guy that is kind and he cares about the young men that he coaches and older guys, and Roy Kent is quite a character. I learned that.

“But, I always like it because there are some cool human lessons in there just about how you treat people. That’s the thing you take away. It’s just lighthearted comedy and good stuff.”

Toward the end of the interview session, Bennett was asked a question very dear to his heart.

“Coach, are we all going back to coat and ties?” a scribe asked.

During the Covid-plagued season last year, ACC coaches elected to ditch the coats and ties in favor of more casual coaching attire, of which Bennett was a big fan. He wore a tie during most of his UVA career only because Craig Littlepage, the AD who hired him, asked him to do so.

Once Littlepage retired, Bennett asked then-new AD Carla Williams if he could lose the tie, and has coached tie-less ever since. Last year was even more casual for all the league.

“Did they not release a statement?” Bennett replied to the coat-and-tie question. “Someone told me … I thought they did.

“As coaches, we talked about are we going to wear what we wore last year, and that was the plan at the ACC coaches thing, but I don’t know if that came out. I’m all for it. We just coach basketball. We’re not trying to cure — do important stuff. I think football coaches have it figured out. But I think the plan is, I hope it is (to not wear coats and ties). I’m operating under that, so I like it.”