Bennett slapped with a rare technical foul in Wake win

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Nearly 14 years had passed since the last time Virginia coach Tony Bennett was slapped with a technical foul, until Saturday’s game against Wake Forest.

The mild-mannered UVA coach had spent most of the first half barking at the officiating crew of Mark Schnur, Tony Henderson and Bill Covington until Schnur lost his patience and called the technical.

Bennett hadn’t been tagged with a “T” since March 6, 2010, when Jamie Luckie called a technical on Bennett for taking off his sportscoat and throwing it on the bench in a 74-68 home loss to Maryland.

This time, Wake’s Boopie Miller made both free throws to help the Deacons to a 22-21 halftime lead before Virginia came back to win, 49-47.

“I thought [Cameron] Hildreth had traveled on the play, I thought he had carried it,” Bennett explained, “and I said, ‘Call the bleeping foul,’ and [Schnur] heard me. I asked him, I said, ‘Why did you call a T?’ and he said, ‘Because you cussed at me,’ and I said, ‘Alright, I guess I deserve that,’ but everytime a coach in our league is dropping a cuss word, there would be a lot of technicals.”

Bennett was right. There have been several coaches in the league that would let cuss words — particularly f-bombs — fly often without drawing technicals.

“I really shouldn’t have said that … that was classless on my part. It was just the heat of the moment because it was a big possession,” Bennett said. “I thought we were guarding and I thought he had traveled. I’ll watch the tape, I might be wrong, but again, I shouldn’t have said that the way I said it to him, but it just came out.”

Bennett said he felt bad about it because points were at a premium, and that gave Wake Forest two points in a game that would eventually be settled by two.

Senior point guard Reece Beekman said the technical foul call caught him off guard, having never seen his head coach ‘T’d’ up before.

“It caught me off guard a little bit just because I just felt like that what [Bennett] said wasn’t worthy of a tech,” Beekman said. “You know, all my years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get one, so that was interesting to see.

“I think it gave us some energy … we see him fired up and everybody else is like, OK, let’s get fired up with him.”