UVA Basketball welcomes Grad-Transfer Ben Vander Plas, 1st-Team All-MAC forward.

It was a good weekend in UVA sports. Men’s Tennis won an ACC title. Men’s lacrosse wrapped up a regular season conference crown. Baseball and softball both completed weekend sweeps. Women’s tennis made a run to the ACC finals and finished league runners-up. And over at Scott Stadium, an impressive crowd turned out for football’s Spring Game, reflecting renewed energy at the beginning of the Tony Elliott era. By Monday morning the women’s hoops program was celebrating the first 4-star commit of Coach Mox’s tenure in Yonta Vaughn.

So it was somewhat lost in the shuffle that we saw Men’s Basketball get a transfer pledge from Ben Vander Plas, a rising 5th year senior from Ohio, compared to the usual fanfare when our Champs land a new top player. Here’s how it went down.

The Recruitment

Huge addition to the portal:

Ohio senior forward Ben Vander Plas – who averaged 14.3 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game.

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) March 28, 2022

The day after the Elite Eight concluded, the senior All-MAC forward put his name in the Portal. After four productive years for the Ohio Bobcats, Vander Plas had accomplished everything there was to do in the Mid-America Conference and elected, with his bachelor’s degree ostensibly wrapping up this spring, to take his super-senior COVID bonus year to a high-major conference.

UVA fans were curious about this development for a couple of reasons. One, we may painfully remember his name from the 2021 NCAAT First Round, when Vander Plas led the Bobcats in scoring en route to a 13-4 upset of the COVID-affected Hoos.

The second interesting aspect is that Vander Plas has deep ties to the Bennett family that made for quality human interest stories last spring when UVA and Ohio drew each other in the Dance (What’s in a name?). In fact, Ben is short for Bennett, and he’s named for the Bennett family. Ben’s father Dean played for Dick Bennett at UW-Green Bay alongside Tony, and was even in Tony’s wedding. The families have been close for a long time.

At the time of Vander Plas entering the Portal two weeks ago, those ties were not enough by themselves to invest in the potential for a UVA – BVP matchmaking. But the week of April 11th rumors started to swirl that UVA was going to be hosting some visitors that upcoming week, including potential transfer targets. Eventually it leaked that Vander Plas would be one of those guys.

Now, at the time, there was still the possibility the visit was just a courtesy due to the family ties. With UVA returning the bulk of its lineup, many were skeptical there was really a depth chart fit for a guy who could walk into a starting spot at many P5 programs. Ben left uncommitted and proceeded to take visits to Wisconsin and Iowa State last week.

But come Friday, word started to get around that Wisconsin and ISU were both out. Process of elimination left UVA as the likely destination, and come Saturday afternoon the news finally broke in the Hoos’ favor.

Excited for my next chapter!!?? #GoHoos
(please credit @PMTsportsbiz ) https://t.co/iJX5oWS2aG

— Ben Vander Plas (@benvanderplas) April 23, 2022

The Player

Alongside guard Mark Sears (since transferred to Alabama), Ben was one of two Ohio Bobcats to make the all-conference 1st team in the MAC. Ben relied on one of the most balanced stretch-big games in D-1 to do so, scoring effectively at multiple levels to finish 2nd on the Bobcats in scoring.

At 6’8″ and 232 lbs, he’s solidly built to handle himself in the paint against most big men he’ll face. Ohio deployed him exclusively at the 4 and 5, the majority as the Bobcats’ stretch power forward.

Obviously the first thing you’ll notice with his stats is his scoring prowess. Now, his 3-point shooting does get some pub, and it’ll be nice to have a big man who can stretch defenses, something we lacked this past season. But first let’s talk about how he plays downhill, where his unique blend of strength and touch allow him to work through traffic to get to the rim repeatedly. Synergy Sports Tech ranks him in the 80th percentile of D-1 or better scoring the ball as the Pick-and-Roll roller, off Iso moves, attacking off a screen with the ball in his hand, and posting up alike. Altogether he finished in the 89th percentile nationally around the basket at 1.39 ppp. He gives us another weapon who can create offense on the interior, something I yelled during the 2018 offseason when I felt UVA’s offense had become too Live By The 3 / Die By The 3.

Of course, as we saw with last year’s offense, there is a point where we’ve sacrificed shooting too much, and we suffered with a lineup featuring big men who couldn’t score more than 15′ away from the basket. Vander Plas adds another dimension here. Effectively half of his FGAs last season were long balls, which he hit at a pedestrian 33.5% on the season, though the year prior he hit on 36% from range, including 39% in conference play, so he’s got it in him. He’s best when he can pick-and-pop, scoring at a 1.11 ppp clip as a spot up shooter last year, a rate that finished in the 85th percentile nationally.

A criminally underrated aspect to his offensive game is his passing, where he finished 2nd on the Bobcats last year in assists at over 3 a game. He’s not quite a point forward, but does know how to recognize double teams and collapsing help to get the ball to the open scorer. Vander Plas even posted a 10-assist game this year, part of a triple-double against Central Michigan. He’ll give us another willing passer to facilitate good offensive flow.

On the other end of the floor he’s a plus defender given his experience, Synergy scoring him again at the 80th percentile as a defender. His size makes him a good challenger against jump shooters, though he won’t block a ton of shots. He guards the pick and roll very well, and should pick up the Pack Line responsibilities fairly quickly in that respect. Ben does struggle in post-up defense, doesn’t play incredibly vertically, so he’ll need to improve there against bigger foes, and in isolation he’s merely adequate given his relative lack of lateral quicks against smaller foes. He does have good hands, though, and led Ohio in steals last year. He’s also an excellent defensive rebounder, notching a defensive rebounding rate last year of 19.6%, and has been in the Top 15 of the MAC every year of his college career in DR%, a non-negotiable skill for a Tony Bennett big man.

One additional aspect of Ben’s career thus far is his durability and endurance. He emerged into the starting lineup as a true sophomore and has started 87 of Ohio’s last 88 games, averaging 33, 34, and 35 mpg in those three seasons respectively. With continued good health, UVA can count on him to carry just about as many minutes as we need him to.

The obvious comp is Sam Hauser with a less consistent outside shot. It’s that lesser shooting percentage on 3’s that differentiates Ben and Sam’s respective pro upsides (Sam’s shot earning him time with the Celtics this year). Otherwise the two Wisconsinites are remarkably similar players both in skill sets and in how Bennett will use them. Both are very 50/50 inside/outside scorers, both measure about the same in height, length, and agility, both figure best as stretch 4’s in a ball screen offense.

Anyways, see for yourself:

Roster Impacts

So, this is where things get interesting.

As mentioned above, Vander Plas is a 5th year Super Senior who slots as a stretch 4 Power Forward. Of course, Jayden Gardner is also a 5th year Super Senior power forward. Both can play some small-ball 5 in a pinch, but Vander Plas does have some extra height so I’ll make him a 4/5 F/C for the roster matrix graphic to work out, but it’s semantics. They’re both bigs.

And before you ask, no, we don’t want either of them playing the 3. I don’t want to see either trying to stay in front of ACC-level small guards on the perimeter. They’re good defenders for their position, but you have to recognize limitations here.

So here’s what we’re looking at for this upcoming season.

1. Rising 5th year Jayden Gardner, who’s never played fewer than 30 mpg in his career, and played 33 mpg for us last season.
2. Rising 4th year (redshirted) Kadin Shedrick who ramped up to over 20 mpg this past season and projects to continue to log starting minutes at the center spot, finally healthy and continuing to mature.
3. Rising 5th year (redshirted) Francisco Caffaro who added 19 mpg at the center spot and projects to continue to improve as he finally settles into a comfort zone with the added experience and gets a full offseason with the team.
4. Rising 5th year Ben Vander Plas who hasn’t played fewer than 33 mpg the last three seasons and had his choice of top programs where he could be a key starter, likely not looking to demote himself as a result of this transfer.
5. True Freshman Isaac Traudt, a high-4-star big man in the 2022 class, ranked a lofty 43rd nationally in On3’s 2022 class rankings.

Something’s gotta give. Either Tony Bennett is going to put a lot of egos aside and platoon these guys for 20 mpg apiece. Or one of these guys is going to play a lot less than he did last year.

And that might include the possibility we could have unannounced news about one of those players not being in next year’s lineup. This is not to speculate about any player in particular, just acknowledge that bringing in a 1-year rent-a-senior into a front court that has three incumbent upperclassmen is maybe a little fishy.

Or maybe not, and maybe I’ve just got tinfoil on my head.

The nice thing is that you can mix and match almost any 2 of those 5 at a given time and their games will be complementary, the only exception really being a pairing of the two true-5s in Caffaro and Shedrick. In many respects the “too much depth” here could turn out to be a good problem to have.

Anyways, as I said, Ben’s a 1-year rental, so after this upcoming season he’ll have no impact on future recruiting, so there’s still plenty of room for Tony to go recruit big men in the 2023 class and potentially be chasing more transfer big men again this time next spring.

Summary

It’s always a joy to bring in new players to the UVA hoops family. It’s even more exciting when those players are as talented and proven as Vander Plas is. Evan Miyakawa ranks him as the 45th best transfer player available. ESPN ranks him 33rd.

We have no choice but to wait and see what this means for the frontcourt rotation, how five high-quality players share limited time. But the implications of this transfer are clear; Tony Bennett wants badly to get back to the Dance next season, and will plug his roster with an instant impact one-year grad transfer to do it. I’ve got my quibbles about this potentially hampering the opportunities for development for the ’22s, as we’re setting ourselves up for another rocky transition next offseason with too much of the rotation expected to graduate. (I talked in detail in Part 2 of my offseason series a couple weeks ago about the importance of year-over-year roster continuity in deploying an effective Pack Line.)

But maybe I’ll just worry about that season, the 2023-24 season, in another 10-12 months once this upcoming season is winding down. For now, Tony saw a top player who can give UVA the improved floor spacing it needs, who’s going to be a great fit for the locker room and a great mentor for the young guys, and who he believes can be a key piece to getting us back to the right side of the cut line come next Selection Sunday. And for right now, that’s more than enough for me.