ACC Basketball: Analyzing each team’s returning impact players for 2023-24

Virginia

Virginia found a lot of success in the past season (outside of the NCAA tournament) and can likely be expected to find more success in the upcoming season. Tony Bennett always seems to max out his team’s potential and it’s likely he will be able to do the same next season, but I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the overall lack of returning power that the Cavaliers retained.

With players like Armaan Franklin leaving for the draft, and Kihei Clark finishing up his fifth and final year with the Cavs (even though it felt like he was there for an eternity) they are losing a majority of their top players during this off-season. But despite losing a majority of their star players they have been able to return sox pieces, including one of the best players on last year’s roster in Reece Beekman.

Among the returning players there is Isaac McKneely, Ryan Dunn, Taine Murray, Tristan How, Leon Bond, and the aforementioned Reece Beekman. Tristan How made the team as a walk-on last season, and only scored three points on the year, and coming into next season it is likely he will have a similar role for coach Bennett. Taine Murray is going into his third season playing for UVA.

Through his first two seasons, he has had very limited playing time, and despite a slight boost in playing time this March, it is likely that his role will only slightly increase for the Cavs despite the departures. Leon Bond will come into the season as a redshirt freshman this season after the Cavs opted to redshirt the former 4-star recruit in his first year with the team. Bond is expected to play a significant role as a wing this upcoming season. Coming out of high school his athleticism was noted as one of his strong suits alongside his defensive versatility, two attributes Coach Bennett often grows to new heights in his young players. As for the other three returning players, you can expect much more production in the near future.

This past season, Ryan Dunn played in 12 minutes per game, and in those 12 minutes he put up 2.6 points and 2.9 rebounds, and while these numbers seem very lackluster it’s on the other end of the court where Dunn shines. Last season, Dunn became just the second ACC Basketball freshman in over 15 years to have a block rate over 10% while also having a steal rate over 2%. He also proved to make his entire team better as when he was on the court Virginia gave up 6.7 points less per 100 possessions. This means when Dunn was on the court the best defense in the entire conference got even better.

Isaac McKneely is another player looking to make a jump into a more prominent role next season. McKneely proved himself to be a very capable player as well as a great fit for Virginia last season. He played his role very well inside of the Tony Bennett system. While he doesn’t have quite the defensive impact of many of his teammates he held his own defensively throughout the entirety of the past season, and he proved to be a large threat offensively for opposing teams despite only averaging 6.7 points.

McKneely shot a team-leading 39% from beyond the three-point arc while attempting 3.9 per game. This shooting ability should help Virginia find much more spacing than they have grown accustomed to having, and help Coach Bennett use this spacing to create an offense that works with their slow pacing.

Arguably the biggest news of the offseason for UVA came when it was announced that Reece Beekman would be coming back for his fourth season. Beekman has already established himself as one of the best players to dawn the Cavaliers jersey in recent memory. The reigning ACC DPOY may not be the most electric player when it comes to scoring, but both his court vision and defense ability are among the best in the entire conference.

He averaged the second most assists on the team at 5.3, while also winning Defensive Player of the Year for the conference due to his ability to lock down the other team’s best guard in almost every matchup he faced. He sits inside the top 10 for the program history in both assists and steals and he will only work his way further up these ranks over the next year.