Hoo basketball fans get to go into the weekend with some great recruiting news to enjoy, as Friday afternoon saw Tony Bennett get a verbal pledge from one of the fastest rising prospects in the 2022 recruiting class, Milwaukee-based wing Leon Bond. UVA beat out quality rivals Cincinnati and Marquette for the big guard’s commitment, and a critical piece of the roster-building puzzle is now answered.

The Recruitment

Bond exploded onto both the UVA and the National radars the last two months. He entered May as 247sports’s 147th ranked player nationally. But as the live periods got underway, as 247’s Eric Bossi put it, “nobody has helped themself out as much this spring as Leon Bond.

He came to UVA on an unofficial visit in June. Given how few players have come through UVA these days given how selective Tony Bennett is being, that alone sounded big alarms that this was going to be a name for UVA fans to watch. He left without an offer, though, and that dampened some enthusiasm at the time.

Bond’s stock continued to rise, however, and he rocketed to #42 in 247’s national ranking, earning praise from analyst Travis Branham in identifying Bond as one of the year’s biggest risers.

Bennett and the staff became a fixture at his summer events, watching him live against top competition, and whatever remaining questions they might have had were promptly erased. On July 12th, Bennett came through.

Word came quick that he would be committing before too long and things looked great for UVA. But first hometown Marquette, led by new head coach Shaka Smart, made one final hard push for the wing. As recently as the beginning of this week, the general consensus was that Bond might stay home and be part of Shaka’s first big class, and UVA might be looking elsewhere for a wing pledge.

But in the last 48 hours, any lost ground was made up by Tony and staff. And less than a day after UVA fans celebrated the new NBA careers for Trey Murphy, Sam Hauser, and Jay Huff, we got another piece of great hoops news when Bond announced for Virginia.

 

The Player

Bond is going to fill the role of a big scoring wing, putting his 6’5″ frame and college-ready physicality to use at the 3-spot. Watching his tape, you see a player who contributes in all phases of the box score, a dynamic scorer playing downhill, a willing facilitator, a rugged rebounder, and a versatile defender.

Offensively he’s a downhill player, not coming in as a 3-point marksman like we have with fellow ’22 commit Isaac McKneely. Not to say that his 3-point shot isn’t workable, just that it isn’t his forte as of today. Bond wants to play off the dribble drive, scoring on pull-ups and at the rim, so ideally we’ll see him in an offense that has 3-point shooting at a few other positions on the floor. He’s going to benefit the most from being in an open offense. He’ll also excel in transition. His handle is solid; he’s not a lead guard, but he’ll be a plus ball-handler for a wing, able to take bigger defenders off the bounce.

Defensively he’s an ideal switchable candidate, probably eventually able to cover 1-4. We don’t have exact measurables yet, but Branham did refer to him as a forward so there’s reason to think he’s got the length to cover some larger guys, either switching or in smaller lineups.

We’ll slot him as a pure small-forward for now, similar to how we once tagged Marial Shayok (different players, mind you, but similar usage). Hard to compare him directly to any UVA players under Bennett, there are subtle differences all around, maybe a more refined but less explosive Justin Anderson. Maybe a bigger, higher ceiling, smoother Marco Anthony. I’ve seen comparisons to Michigan State’s Aaron Henry. I also like him as a faster, smoother version of Ohio State’s Musa Jallow, whom Tony once recruited.

I do think he’ll have the readiness to contribute off the bench as a freshman, with the hope that he can expand into a major role as a sophomore. Whether he starts by his 2nd year may depend a lot on the roster around him, especially accounting for incumbents; as I mentioned earlier, he’s ideally paired with shooters, so we’ll see who we have playing at the 1, 2, and 4 that year.

 

Roster and Recruiting Impacts

As we always do in these pieces, let’s start by taking a look at the roster picture with Bond inserted into the 2022 class.

2022-23 Basketball Roster with Leon Bond

Reminder that on my color coding, green means I feel confident that player will be able to give us major starter-level minutes that season, and yellow means they might be best predicted for a reserve / specialist role that year, maybe in the interest of a little further development or need for more proof of readiness. I acknowledge it’s all fluid and largely educated guesswork at this stage. Also acknowledge there’s a lot of semantics involved in positional slotting.

The real complicating matter here is the Super Senior eligibilities. Of course the way the COVID eligibility relief worked is that last season counted against no one’s “5 years to play 4” countdown, so all of Clark, Stattmann, and Gardner are eligible to return for a bonus season next year. If I had to guess today, I’d wager Clark and Gardner are more likely to do so, whereas the international Stattmann may elect to move on to his international pro career, degree in hand, as Tomas Woldetensae just did (signing with Lux Chieti 1974 back in Italy.

This means that counting scholarships, Tony has to assume most everyone on this upcoming season’s 10-man roster could return, capping our potential 2022 class at around 3 or maybe 4 players. Along with the January commitment of 4-star guard Isaac McKneely, this gives UVA two pledges, both primarily backcourt players.

At this stage, the overwhelming priority is a big man. 4-star forward Isaac Traudt is the major name to know here. UVA’s been on him like glue for months now, and even scheduled McKneely to join him on an Official Visit to Charlottesville back in June. Traudt also visited the hometown Nebraska, UNC, and Michigan State, and is also weighing more visits to places like Kansas and Michigan. His recruitment looks competitive enough that maybe Hoo fans shouldn’t get overly excited, but there are reasons to think Tony is at least even with the field in this recruitment. Hopefully this gets announced by this fall.

Bennett is scouting other bigs as well, but no committable offers at this point. Forward/Center recruiting will continue to be watched, but we’ll also see Bennett begin to put more focus on the 2023 class as well, especially at lead guard where we’ll perhaps need to replace a 5th year Kihei.

Summary

All in all this is great news. Bond gives UVA a great versatile wing presence to build around, a player who should be a great fit in the locker room and also expertly complement other commits on the roster around him.

We’re excited to watch the final year of his high school career, and then see him accomplish great things as part of UVA’s continued winning tradition for years to come.

Now let’s watch some more highlights, shall we?