Background

Those darn national championships.  Sometimes they just throw a wrench into the whole works.  There was always high-level NBA potential with De’Andre Hunter, and Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy are (obviously, at this point) talented enough to get attention from the pro scouts.  Even if the Hoos hadn’t gotten their act together against Gardner-Webb.

A Kyle Guy that can’t get his team out of the first weekend, though, isn’t that interesting to the League.  A Kyle Guy who sinks three stone-cold free throws and sinks Auburn at the same time, with literally the whole basketball world watchng, suddenly you see labels like “winner” attached to the scouting reports.  And NBA teams like that.

Which, along with Marco Anthony’s transfer to Utah State, left Tony Bennett staring at a major backcourt chasm and scrambling to find someone to fill spots that weren’t expected to be empty.  To accomplish this, he turned to a place he never had before, and UVA turns only rarely: the junior college ranks. Enter Tomas Woldetensae and his fork-in-a-socket hair.

Woldetensae will be one of the more colorful characters to come through the UVA program.  He’s an art major with designs on becoming an architect.  He’ll wear the number 53, which has been worn by precisely one player in UVA history, and was almost certainly chosen for that reason.  (He wore 14 at Indian Hills CC, but that’s not an option at UVA.)  He is a different-drummer kind of player.

Strengths

Woldetensae played two years at Indian Hills, and his coach likes to say he was used like Ty Jerome his first year, and Kyle Guy his second.  That is, he was a combo-guard type of player, then Indian Hills got a point guard and Woldetensae started coming off screens.  He has experience all over the backcourt.

Also, shooting.  And shooting, shooting, and more shooting.  The first stat anyone ever quotes from his days at Indian Hills is his 47.6% shooting from three.  The second is his 89% free-throw shooting.  UVA is losing one hell of a lot of long-range firepower to the draft, so trying to fill their shoes with another marksman was a must.  The hoop isn’t any smaller in the ACC, and open shots are open shots.  His shooting stroke is very consistent.  He can get a shot off coming off a screen and half-twisting, the way Guy often did; he can catch and shoot, create a three on the dribble, or shoot it wide open, and regardless of what his lower body is doing, his upper body – shoulders, arms, chest – is always the same.

Woldetensae also flashes some ability to drive and finish.  He’s not a one-dimensional scorer, and likes to be opportunistic.  He’s got long arms and an ability to use them to protect his shot.

Weaknesses

Those shooting percentages are really shiny.  The question with Woldetensae is, how often will he be able to get a shot off, and how contested will they be?  Therein, as the Bard said, lies the rub.  Woldetensae hasn’t shown much high-level athleticism.  He’s from Italy, but this isn’t a thing where a European kid realizes a little late that he’s got the talent to play stateside, and lands at a juco for lack of any other expeditious options.  Woldetensae played high school ball in Florida.  If he had ACC-level athleticism with that kind of shooting, he’d have been found out ages ago and juco would never have been in the picture.  Forget the Atlantic Coast – he flew so far under the radar that the Atlantic Sun didn’t see him, either.  

So there’ll be legit questions about how well his game will translate from junior college in Iowa to the courts of the ACC.  He’s 6’5”, which made him usually one of the tallest players on the court in juco.  When he runs into some 6’10” rim protector, will his game around the rim suffer?  He needs to beef up a little and will have to find ways to finish over taller players than he’s used to seeing.  He can be a little slow in his shooting motion; will he be able to get his shot off with far superior athletes (relative to his previous competition, that is) chasing him off those screens?

His defense is also a concern, in that we really have no idea what it looks like.  Preseason whispers go both ways on this.  Maybe he’s struggling to keep up with higher-level athletes – or maybe he is soaking up the concepts like a sponge.  With Tony Bennett, this is always the main concern – and since it’s such an unknown right now, it has to go in the weakness column.

Role

I read the fact that he was taken off the ball in his second year at Indian Hills, as a little ominous for his future as a point guard.  If you’re a juco coach and you have a D-I talent, you put the ball in his hands as much as you can.  Woldetensae will likely play mostly off the ball, coming off screens as Guy once did, allowing Casey Morsell to be the primary ballhandler on the rare occasions Kihei Clark isn’t on the court.  He’ll look a lot like what Kody Stattmann was hoped to be, and his mere presence on the floor will hopefully force defenders away from the paint – especially with the three-point arc being moved further from the hoop.

Reasonable Expectations

Hoo fans should probably temper their hopes a little, at least at first.  He’s likely to be a step slower out of the gate, and will learn the hard way a little bit about competition level.  He’ll need time to feel out the game.  I’d pencil him in as at best the third option – first off the bench and maybe second depending on how Justin McKoy is used.  He’s likely to be about a 10 mpg player, but also likely to see his minutes increase rather than dwindle as time goes on.

Optimistic Expectations

If Woldetensae can defend and be in the right place at the right time, he’ll get all the time he needs to get comfortable on offense.  It’s not at all out of the question to see him in the starting lineup for a few games (even if for no reason than to satisfy Tony’s need to experiment) and earning 20+ minutes, all while shooting the damn lights out.  I could see an 8-10 ppg player – still not the primary option, but the kind of guy who will go off for 16 (which counts as “going off” in Tony’s legendary game pace) if you sleep on him.

Final Analysis

Shooting and passable defense – that is what we need to see.  It’s well within reach.  Woldetensae drew the attention of quite a few Power 5 programs; Illinois was on him hard and Nebraska and Iowa State paid a lot of attention too, until the reigning national champs came calling, so this is not some diamond in the rough that still looks a lot like coal.  You’re not going to see him glued to the end of the bench with the green team.  The backcourt is too thin and his shooting too valuable.  If his defense passes muster, he’ll have every chance to show he can contribute as an extremely valuable role player.