Tony Bennett reflects on how UMBC lose prepared him for a championship
After losing in the first round last year, Tony Bennett’s Cavaliers are now national champions.
USA TODAY
One of Wisconsin’s favorite basketball sons, Tony Bennett, announced officially Friday that he was retiring from coaching college basketball at age 55, leaving a Virginia program he led to a national championship in 2019.
The son of Wisconsin basketball patriarch Dick Bennett, Tony was a decorated high school player, a star at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay playing under his father, a brief NBA player and assistant coach on the Wisconsin team that went to the Final Four, then a stellar coach in his own right.
He racked up more wins in 15 seasons at Virginia than any other head coach in program history.
His roots in Wisconsin run deep.
Tony Bennett was born into a basketball family in Wisconsin
The Tony Bennett story begins with his father, Dick, whose fingerprints can be found in virtually every corner of Wisconsin basketball.
Tony was born in Clintonville, Wisconsin, while father Dick was a high school basketball coach in the state. Dick’s high school résumé included stops in West Bend, Mineral Point, Marion, New London and Eau Claire Memorial; put those dots on a map, and they’ll include at least one point in roughly each of the state’s four quadrants.
The family basketball legacy was far more than just Dick. Tony’s uncle, Jack (Dick’s brother), retired after winning back-to-back national championships at UW-Stevens Point. Nick Bennett, Jack’s son, played on those teams and Nick later won a state championship as coach at Racine St. Catherine’s High School. Tony’s sister, Kathi, became an accomplished coach in her own right, including a long stint at UW-Oshkosh but also at three stops in Division I, including Indiana.
Dick won 168 high school games and, in his final year in the prep ranks, led Eau Claire Memorial to a runner-up finish in the 1976 WIAA state tournament, then made the jump to college at UW-Stevens Point the next season. Dick stayed nine years at UWSP and continued to find success.
He was named NAIA coach of the year and a national runner-up. He coached Milwaukee native Terry Porter, whose legendary career with the Pointers ended with Bennett’s. In 1985, Porter was taken by the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the NBA draft with the 24th pick, on his way to a career in which he made two NBA all-star teams, saw his number retired by the Blazers and later became a head coach in the NBA, including a tenure with the hometown Milwaukee Bucks from 2003-05.
That 1985 season was also Bennett’s first coaching Division I basketball at UW-Green Bay. He took over a team that went 4-24 and transformed it into a winning program. In his sixth season, he led UWGB to the Mid-Continent Conference title and a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
A big part of that success was Tony. When the Bennetts moved to Green Bay, Tony was in high school, having completed his freshman year at PJ Jacobs Junior High (which houses grades 7-9 in Stevens Point).
Tony enrolled at Green Bay Preble and became one of the best players in state history. He scored 1,340 points, including 689 as a senior, when he was named Mr. Basketball in Wisconsin and also the state player of the year by the Associated Press and UPI. A survey in 2005 conducted by the Journal Sentinel named Tony one of the five best players in state history.
But there was a twist ending.
Stevens Point and Green Bay Preble converge in state tournament
Tony’s team at Green Bay Preble went into the 1988 WIAA state tournament undefeated at 24-0. The Hornets had held the No. 1 ranking in Class A throughout the season, and Tony (averaging more than 28 points per game) had become one of the most high-profile players in the state.
But the team that Preble drew in the first round of the tournament was none other than Stevens Point, which featured many of Bennett’s old friends.
Guard Ben Johnson, who had been recruited to join Tony at UW-Green Bay the following fall, was regarded as a menace defensively. With Johnson at the point of a 1-2-2 zone, Bennett shot just 5-of-15 for 17 points, and the Panthers (which went to Madison at 21-2) stunned Preble, 45-39.
Stevens Point coach John Schell said afterward that he preached a brand of defense that he had gleaned … from Dick Bennett’s teams at UWSP.
“That’s been the cornerstone of our program,” Schell said. “I learned our defensive style from Dick Bennett. In this game, we had to keep good pressure on the ball, and I thought we did that.”
Bennett and future NBA star Latrell Sprewell, whose reigning champion Milwaukee Washington team lost to Milwaukee Pulaski, were both gone in the tourney’s first round. Onalaska, which beat Stevens Point in the semifinal, went on to win the title over Neenah, which ousted Pulaski.
UW-Green Bay rises under father-son combination of Dick Bennett and Tony Bennett
As a sophomore, Tony Bennett led UWGB to a 24-8 record and a trip to the second round of the NIT.
“I have a tendency to expect too much and I might say something to him that I shouldn’t say,” Dick said in 1988 after the first few games of coaching his son. “I’ve caught myself doing that about a half-dozen times and after it’s said, I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry I got a little carried away.’ He seems to handle it well. He’s a pretty low-key person, and I think that helps him.”
Tony’s low-key nature would become a trademark later in his coaching career. For now, the state of Wisconsin knew him as a player.
The real breakthrough came his junior season, when the 24-7 Phoenix won the Mid-Continent Conference title and made the program’s first NCAA Tournament. Not only that, but the Phoenix gave a genuine scare to Michigan State in the first round, taking a 35-30 lead at halftime before ultimately falling, 60-58.
Spartans star Steve Smith hit a jumper from the top of the key that slid through with one second on the clock, allowing the Spartans to escape. Bennett scored only nine points in the loss, but that was highly unusual; he would depart UWGB as the MCC’s all-time leader in points (2,285) and assists (601). He’s still eighth in career scoring in what is now the Summit League and fourth in assists.
His 49.7% shooting mark at UWGB set an NCAA record, one that still stands among those who had a minimum of 200 makes (he hit 290). His No. 25 jersey is retired by the program. Bennett and UWGB went 25-5 in 1991-92 and won the conference regular-season title for the first time but not the league tournament, with Tony’s career ending in the first round of the NIT.
It was good enough from him to get selected in the second round of the NBA draft by the Charlotte Hornets. Dick stayed on at UWGB through the 1995 season, leading the Phoenix to one more regular-season title and two more conference tournament championships.
That included a massive upset victory over California in the first round of the 1994 Big Dance, defeating a Bears that featured future Hall of Famer (and another future Bucks coach) Jason Kidd.
Tony Bennett returns home to reunite with his father
Tony played professionally, first with three years in the NBA and then overseas in Australia and New Zealand. When he returned in 2000 to Wisconsin, he served as a student manager on his father’s staff at the University of Wisconsin, and, boy, what a season that wound up being.
Dick, who had moved from Green Bay to the state’s flagship university for the 1995-96 season, had already led Wisconsin to two previous NCAA Tournament berths. This one was special; Wisconsin went on an unbelievable run and reached the Final Four. There was some serendipity when the Badgers lost to eventual champion Michigan State, the same program that had defeated Tony’s UWGB team in the 1992 first round.
Tony had become part of the recruiting team; Dick said Tony had worked hard to lock up future program cornerstones such as Devin Harris, Kirk Penney and Mike Wilkinson. Penney played on the 2001 team that went back to the NCAA Tournament as a freshman and Wilkinson redshirted.
Dick abruptly stepped down from Wisconsin early in the 2000-01 season, turning the reins over to Brad Soderberg, a Wausau native who played at Stevens Point under Bennett and wound up on Virginia’s staff under Tony beginning in 2015. UW didn’t retain Soderberg after the season, hiring future Hall of Famer Bo Ryan instead. Dick took the break but wasn’t out of coaching forever.
Instead, he took over Washington State in 2003-04, and Tony joined his staff. Though Dick wasn’t able to lead the program to a winning record in three seasons, success soon followed when Tony was announced as head coach in 2006-07.
The head-coaching journey begins for Tony Bennett
Tony immediately found success, leading the Cougars to their first NCAA Tournament in 13 years that first season and being named national coach of the year by nine organizations, including the Associated Press. The following year, Washington State made its first Sweet 16 and reached as high as No. 4 in the AP poll.
By 2009-10, he was leading Virginia. The Cavaliers made the NCAA Tournament in his third year, then made nine of 10 tournaments beginning in 2014. That included the unforgettable first-round loss to Maryland-Baltimore County in the 2018 tournament, the first time a No. 1 seed had fallen to a No. 16, followed by a rebound to win the following year’s championship in 2019.
One last bit of serendipity: The team Virginia beat in an overtime Elite Eight thriller to get to the Final Four that championship season? Purdue, the same team Wisconsin beat in 2000 at the same stage of the tournament.
Wisconsin players to play for Tony Bennett in college
Along the way, many Wisconsinites have played for Tony Bennett.
- Kyle Weaver, Beloit Memorial. He played at Washington State from 2004-08 and was selected in the second round of the 2008 NBA draft.
- Paul Jesperson, Merrill. Jesperson played two years at Virginia, including as a regular starter in 2013. His biggest moment came in 2016 after he transferred to Northern Iowa, when he hit a half-court buzzer beater in the NCAA Tournament to stun Shaka Smart’s Texas team.
- Sam Hauser, Stevens Point. The future NBA champion with the Boston Celtics began his career in Bennett’s old hometown of Stevens Point, then began his college career at Marquette before transferring to Virginia for his senior year in 2021. He led the team with 16.0 points per game that season.
- Reece Beekman, Milwaukee native. Though he went to college in Louisiana, Beekman spent his youth in Milwaukee and played four years with the Cavaliers, averaging 14.3 points and 6.2 assists last year.
- Ben Vander Plas, Ripon. After four years at Ohio, he played the 2022-23 season with the Cavaliers, averaging 7.4 points and close to 25 minutes per game.
- Andrew Rohde, Brookfield Central. A sophomore last year, Rohde transferred from St. Thomas in Minnesota and started 27 games, with 4.3 points and 2.7 assists per contest.
- Leon Bond, Wauwatosa East. The springy guard scored 4.1 points per game in 24 contests as a redshirt freshman last year. He transferred to Northern Iowa for this season.
