New Scattershooting: O’Connor, Sanchez, more hoops, Hootie’s Golden Nuggets

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Scattershooting around UVA and the ACC, while noting the silence from Virginia’s athletic department is deafening …

A day after news leaked that UVA baseball coach Brian O’Connor was the leading candidate to fill the vacancy at Mississippi State, everything has gone silent. Both Virginia and MSU have been mum. O’Connor hasn’t responded to the reports, and from my experience, when the main subject of a coaching or AD search stays quiet, it’s usually not a good thing for the previous school.

On Wednesday, this reporter made a formal request to find out from Virginia AD Carla Williams what her plans were in terms of funding UVA baseball’s 34 full scholarships, the new limit by the NCAA and apparently a huge sticking point with O’Connor.

This was the reply from UVA’s media relations: “Thanks for reaching out, but we respectfully decline the request.”

Not unexpected coming from an AD who doesn’t believe in communicating with media, and during my 40-plus years covering Virginia, far and away the least-communicative AD that I’ve ever worked with. In fact, I can usually get more information about what’s going on in Virginia’s athletic department from ADs at other ACC schools than from UVA’s AD.

Back when Craig Littlepage and associate AD Jon Oliver were running the show, it was exactly the opposite. They thrived on communication for the most part, always returned calls and believed an open line to media was important.

I remember Oliver telling me once that there were three people in the athletic department where the golden rule was, “We shall not piss off these people.”

Those three were Tony Bennett, Brian O’Connor and Brian Boland.

The rule was that those three were so good at what they do, just leave them alone, help them any way possible, and let them do their thing. Apparently that’s no longer the case.

To let O’Connor walk away, if that happens, is a cardinal sin and the entire administration should be held accountable. He’s a freakin’ Hall of Fame coach. He has rebuilt UVA baseball into a national power, he is popular in the fan base, he’s approaching 1,000 career wins and a quality human being. Where I came from, you do everything possible to keep those people happy.

Sanchez hired

Former Virginia interim head coach Ron Sanchez, who was put in a near-impossible predicament by the sudden retirement of Tony Bennett, then let go after a losing season, has been hired.

Sanchez has been picked up by Baylor as associate head coach to Coach Scott Drew. It’s generally known in coaching circles that the associate head coaching title puts that person in a better position to be hired as a head coach elsewhere at the right time.

Drew released a statement Friday about the pickup: “Ron is a tremendous fit for our program and we are excited to welcome him to Waco,” Drew said. “He has built and coached champions throughout his career in a variety of roles, doing it alongside legendary names like Dick and Tony Bennett. Spending nearly three decades pouring into athletes and helping them reach their dreams, Ron will be a great steward of our culture of joy.”

UVA hoops schedule

Interesting that the ACC designated NC State to play Virginia twice this upcoming season in league action. Each ACC school was given two opponents to play home-and-home. UVA’s two: State and Virginia Tech.

Why State? Who knows. It certainly wasn’t going to be Duke or Carolina. Outside of the Hokies, there wasn’t another school geographically that fit, so at least there’s ancient history with NC State and Wake Forest. At least it wasn’t Louisville, which was previously Virginia’s “other” designated partner, replacing Maryland when the Terps went to the Big 10.

The ACC sensibly went to an 18 rather than a 20-game league schedule starting this season.

Here’s UVA’s home opponents: Virginia Tech, NC State, California, Miami, North Carolina, Pitt, Stanford, Syracuse and Wake Forest.

Road opponents: Virginia Tech, NC State, Boston College, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville and SMU.

TBT moves from JPJ to JMU

The Basketball Tournament, originally scheduled at Virginia’s JPJ Arena this summer, has been moved to JMU’s Atlantic Union Bank Center (begins July 18).

Things changed when the previous host team, “Embrace the Pace,” the UVA alumni squad headed up by Kyle Guy, fell apart after Guy was hired as an assistant coach at Nevada.

JMU will field an alumni team, named The Founding Fathers. The winner-take-all event wins $1 million.

Hootie’s Golden Nuggets …

• I still can’t figure out why Virginia agreed to play a “nonconference” road football game at NC State this fall, a place where the Cavaliers have struggled for a long time, when it could have scheduled a sure win. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s a cheap trip. So what. By the way, NC State has sold more than 30,000 season tickets for the 22nd consecutive year, and also has sold out its last 20 home games.
• Congratulations to former UVA hoops standout J.R. Reynolds, who has joined the coaching staff at Omaha University. J.R. was the 2003 Virginia “Mr. Basketball,” and a two-time All-ACC honoree who went on and had a solid career internationally. He was previously coaching at Queens College in Charlotte.
• Congratulations to longtime colleague Dennis Carter of Lynchburg, who had his last broadcast of the “Carter & Company” sports talk radio show on WLNI. Dennis, who worked with me years ago in the newspaper business, went on to become the longtime sports director for Lynchburg’s ABC-23 television and was inducted into the state of Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.