Tony Bennett retirement: Rick Pitino weighs in on sudden retirement by Virginia coach

On Thursday, Virginia announced that men’s basketball head coach Tony Bennett is retiring. Immediately after the announcement, countless individuals flooded social media to reflect on Bennett’s impact on the game and those around him. St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino had nothing but compliments for Bennett.

“If the news is true, college basketball just lost a man with incredible class, humility, and dignity,” Pitino wrote on X. “Tony Bennett is an awesome teacher of our game. You will be deeply missed!”

When Pitino was the head coach at Louisville, he faced off against Bennett and the Cavaliers six times. Bennett led Virginia to a 5-1 record against the Pitino-led Cardinals; only one of many accomplishments Bennett achieved while with the Cavaliers.

At only 55 years old, Bennett’s retirement came as a shock to the college basketball community. After all, Virginia tips off its season opener against Campbell in only 20 days. Further, Bennett didn’t mention his retirement at the ACC Men’s Basketball Media Days last week.

Nonetheless, college basketball insider Jeff Goodman reported that Bennett’s decision to step away from the game isn’t due to health issues, which has been the case for numerous surprising retirements in the past.

Bennett has been the head coach at UVA since 2009 and has a 364-136 record in Charlottesville. During that time, the Cavaliers won six ACC regular-season titles and won the 2019 national championship – one year after becoming the first No. 1 seed to ever lose to a No. 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Bennett arrived at Virginia from Washington State, where he was the head coach from 2006-09 after three seasons as an assistant. He was also an assistant coach at Wisconsin from 1999-2003. All told, during his time as a head coach at Wazzu and UVA, he amassed a 433-169 record.

Over the course of his career, Bennett received multiple notable honors. He is a two-time Naismith College Coach of the Year, a four-time ACC Coach of the Year and the 2007 Pac-10 Coach of the Year. In addition, he won three Henry Iba Awards as the best college basketball coach in the nation by the United States Basketball Writers Association.

Bennett plans to hold a press conference to officially announce his retirement at 11 a.m. ET on Friday.

On3’s Nick Schultz also contributed to this report.