This is the second in our annual preseason series with UVa's assistant basketball coaches. Associate head coach Ron Sanchez talks about recruiting, transfers, the lessons of last season, the new pieces this year, his own view of positionless basketball, and much more.
Let's start out with one recruiting question. I know 2018 has been a bit more of a struggle for you guys on the trail than perhaps you or most other folks expected. What would you attribute that to? When you look back on it, what do you think the reasons were?
Well, Charlottesville had a difficult time this summer and all those things come into play when it comes to athletes making decisions. When you have the timing aspect of it, it impacted official visits and things of that nature. That's probably one of the biggest contributors to that.
I know part of Coach (Tony) Bennett's response to the transfers at the end of the year was to give guys a chance to develop. Has that tweak in recruiting, not using all of the scholarships that are available, changed much for you guys? Is that a transition that changes much in terms of how you do what you do?
I don't think so, no. We're still attacking our needs. But there has to be an opportunity for kids to play. That's definitely important. If you look at the transfer market, when and why kids are leaving, it's usually due to playing time or playing opportunities. We're not changing our philosophy. We're still going to recruit the same types of kids that meet our needs.
On the court, when you look back at last season where do you feel like things sort of went off track? What would you say are the reasons, so to speak, as to why you guys weren't able to accomplish more of the goals that you had for that team?
I think that the issue with Austin Nichols not being a part of the team as we had expected hurt our long-term plans. We geared some things around him and it just didn't work out that way. Jay (Huff) ended up redshirting and he's coming along. He's bigger, stronger, which were his biggest issues. I think Jay's still a ways away but every day he improves. But I'll say this: Even though our goals last year may not have been met, our goals aren't really quantitative. So to get back to the tournament and advance to the Second Round, we still feel like we had a good season. Everybody wants to advance to the Sweet 16 and Final Four, but getting past the first round of the NCAA Tournament, dealing with the issues we dealt with last year, means we had a pretty successful season.
