Getter excited to become a full-time assistant for the Wahoos

Years ago when he started to get deeper in the coaching profession, this was the type of situation that Kyle Getter hoped he might one day find. And after years at VCU, Radford, and Liberty, he’s gotten it.

Recently promoted to become a full-time assistant coach in his fourth year with the program, Getter is not only thankful that Tony Bennett is willing to put that level of trust in him but he’s also looking forward to what’s ahead.

“So, really this just happened,” Getter told CavsCorner this week. “I guess it was about a month ago, Coach offered me the opportunity to be an assistant coach and I couldn't be more excited. I'm going on my fourth year here and really to be able to work with a coach like Tony Bennett with his character and integrity and the amount of success that he's had here and then also just seeing how he does it, it's really a dream come true.”

Getter previously served as UVa’s director of recruiting and player development. In a bit of a reshuffle, former assistant Brad Soderberg will now be in a new role as the director of scouting while Larry Mangino heads up player development.

“Well, I think certainly there's a different bucket of responsibilities, right?” Getter began. “But I think each place that I've been, I've kind of had the mentality of serving the needs of the head coach and the program. So, that's kind of my mentality of the job. Certainly there'll be a much heavier emphasis in recruiting in the new role. But at the same time I'm just going to try to continue to serve Coach Bennett and the other staff members. I think we have really good chemistry on our staff and I think that that's been a big part of it, multiple people kind of have that same outlook.”

He came into the assistant coaching position understanding that things will be different for him than they were his first three years in Charlottesville.

“In that role,” he explained, “I tried to do everything that I could from an administrative standpoint and obviously within the NCAA rules to take as much off the assistant coaches and Coach Bennett's plate as I could. So really then all they have to do is relationship build and evaluate, right? There's so much from a logistical standpoint that goes on behind the scenes that I think a lot of people maybe don't realize.

“So I just tried to tackle as much of that as I could so they wouldn't be bogged down with a lot of that and those activities,” Getter added. “And like I said, so then they can just really dive into evaluating prospects and relationship building and that type of thing. That's as big a piece of it as anything.”

So as he and the other coaches prepare to get out on the road next month, what will be UVa’s focus?

“I mean, we are just very excited for the dead period to end,” he said. “The NCAA is allowing two weekends in June where we’re allowed to go to scholastic events, the last two weekends in the month. And we'll have a 10-day period in July that we're allowed to go out. We can’t wait to get out there because it's been, what, 15 months or so since we were basically able to go out and see and evaluate? And that's a big part of our job obviously. There's been a lot of challenges, I would say, with not being able to do that and having to evaluate on film and things like that. But yeah, we're real excited about getting the opportunity to go out.”

As far as the needs the Wahoos will be looking to address, part of that depends on what they see.

“That's a great question,” Getter said when asked what the needs will be. “I think for us, it's been such a long time since we've been able to go out and evaluate that I think for us, there are some specific needs that we're going to take a look at and try to fit and things like that. But the reality of it is too is that we have a young team in some ways, right? We’ve got a lot of newcomers this year. And I think a lot of maybe what our specific needs will be kind of remain to be seen. I think we'll probably try to evaluate as many players as we can that we've been relationship building over the past year or so, and really try to get our eyes on them.”

For a program that has thrived on early player evals that turned into early commitments, not having the same amount of time in 2020 to evaluate younger prospects so their improvements could be tracked over time means there’s a resetting of sorts.

“Yeah, that's it. That's a great question,” he said. “For us, I think first and foremost we're going to always recruit to the pillars. So, we're really going to dive in on finding prospects that fit us right as much as we fit maybe what they're looking for. I think it's a kind of a two-way street, right? We want to recruit to the pillars and we’re going to do that. So I think that kind of goes on to your next question about how deep do you go into the classes. So much can change, I think, from year to year, especially with the transfer portal, so certainly we're going to be looking at a younger group, probably with a little more of a broader net because you really don't know what your needs are going to be because it could really vary year to year.”

While traditional recruiting will certainly be a big part of Getter’s focus, so too will the portal. And while some coaches might view the two in different ways, that’s not the way Virginia plans to handle it.

“Actually, I don't think that it's too different with the way we've done it,” Getter said. “The only difference would be is that I think a lot of these young men [in the portal], they've been through the recruiting process, so it's going to probably be just a quicker process. I think that for us, like I mentioned before in regards to the pillars, we're recruiting to the pillars even out of the transfer portal. And I think Coach is big on fit and expectations, right? I think those are probably two words that are probably used the most. And I think it's just a matter of fitting our current guys on the court, off the court, our culture. Coach Bennett, when he first got the job here, he talked about building a program that lasts, right? To do that, you’ve got to have a certain level of continuity.

“I think it'll be just more business as usual,” he added later when asked about any changes to UVa’s overall recruiting plan given the staff changes. “I think we do a good job of team recruiting and we'll continue to operate that way. Recruiting is relationship-driven, right? So we all have relationships throughout the country and we just try to strategically kind of pair up where our relationships are and kind of divide up that way in terms of who’s kind of got the lead on a specific player. We try to team recruit, so just because one of us may have the lead we're all trying to touch that circle as much as we can.”

All told, this was the kind of job that Getter has worked hard to get and he has every intention of continuing to work hard to prove it’s where he belongs.

“I just really feel blessed by the opportunity,” he said. “I played Division III basketball and have made some career choices that would hopefully one day allow me to have an opportunity like this. And I'm just very appreciative that I get an opportunity to be an assistant at Virginia and work for Tony Bennett. I couldn't be more excited to hit the ground running and hopefully continue to serve him and continue to build on all of the success that’s already happened here long before I got here.

“I know sometimes that word is probably overused, but I'm using it: I feel blessed by the opportunity,” Getter added. “I'm like pinching myself that I'm here.”

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