On Wednesday, Virginia head coach Tony Bennett confirmed that guard Taylor Barnett (9.5 minutes per game, 2.6 points per game) would transfer. That marked the second transfer since the Cavaliers' season ended; sophomore starter Paul Jesperson will transfer to Northern Iowa.
The oddest thing about the two latest transfers is that it had been a year-and-a-half since Bennett had a player transfer, and that was after he dealt with eight transfers (one early departure) in his first year-and-a-half on the job.
Bennett suffered some attrition at the beginning of the tenure at Virginia, which is to be expected. Most of the early transfers were recruited by his predecessor, Dave Leitao. Nearly half, in fact. Just one transferred before Bennett could coach him (seldom-used center John Brandenburg).
Two Leitao recruits — Tristan Spurlock and Jeff Jones — decided to stay committed to Virginia even when Bennett was hired, but decided they didn’t like it. Jones played just one year at Rider after transferring (averaging 13.4 points), while Spurlock will be a senior at UCF. He averaged nearly 33 minutes and 11 points last year.
When Jones left, he said it just wasn’t a "good fit." Playing for Bennett and his pack-line defense certainly isn’t for everyone. Spurlock and Bennett never really seemed to mesh, but the top-100 recruit was honest about what happened after the fact.
And so was Bennett, for that matter.
The Sylven Landesberg saga, though, was more perplexing. The McDonald's All-American was the ACC Rookie of the Year in 2009, and he was having a great year again in 2010 before being suspended in March — right before UVa's final regular-season game — for "failure to live up to his academic obligations."
