Carla’s Been Cooking

When I think about current UVa athletics, Carla Williams is one of the first names that jumps to mind. Look at those trophies! Our men’s and women’s teams were ranked (and may still be) in every single Spring sport at one point this season! Swimming, Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Soccer, etc., etc. Complete dominance. But when I think of UVa Men’s Basketball I, incorrectly, rarely think of Carla. Perhaps it’s because CTB pre-dates her and is such an over-arching personality who is so visible for the program. His finger is on the pulse and most all decisions related to UVa Men’s Basketball go through him. As such, it’s easy to lose sight of the broader institutional support that he has.

In fact, I just wrote a (seemingly interminable, for some) lengthy State of The Program outlining the challenges that the program faces an opportunities for improvement and focused almost exclusively on CTB and his team. But, while the extent to which the impact will be felt is still to be determined, it’s clear now that Carla Williams has been absolutely grinding behind the scenes to position UVa Athletics, in general, but for the purposes of this blog, our B-Ball program competitively. At the forefront, even, of the modern NIL discussion. The most vivid strokes of this picture have been painted over the past year or so, and I thought it would be interesting to gather them chronologically and within the context of the basketball program to speculate a little, but mostly just to shine the light on her role in where we are and where things appear to be going.

Cav Futures, the official NIL Collective of UVa was founded back in 2022, but that partnership wasn’t official until March, 2023, just over a year ago. That announcement took place just days before the official news of the transfers out of Kadin Shedrick, Isaac Traudt, and Francisco Caffaro last season. There was some hand-wringing at the time that our lack of NIL funding was the reason for these departures. In actuality, what I discovered at the time when diving into this (and has become apparent since) is that NIL was not a significant factor in any of these three departures and that UVa was low-key quite competitive in that regard even before the NIL partnership between Cav Futures and the university became official. At that time, we were on par with and similar in structure to what Indiana was doing with their collective but not as outwardly communicative about it. Perhaps not as well funded or financially-focused as some programs, but quietly with much more to offer than others.

So why was there this perception out there that UVa was so far behind on NIL? Well, for one, UVa has always been a compliant school and CTB paves the way with regard to ethics. Followed to the letter of the law, using NIL numbers directly in recruiting pitches was supposed to be considered inducement (although seemingly neither regulated nor enforceable) and I’m sure we were reluctant to dip our toe too far into those waters. Contrastingly, we know that across the board during that offseason of 2023, NIL was the first point of conversation between many schools and portal prospects. It was the first question many players were asking. Some schools were flat out leading with offers like a “minimum of $100K and a car,” some players had higher price points to even get their attention. Players had agents. The world had rapidly changed… but that change wasn’t just in the rules, it was also to the culture of the sport.

Meanwhile, CTB was not fully on board. Not that he had anything against players making money; he didn’t. He was always supportive of the collective and of other sponsors interested in partnering with the players and wanted them to have access to every opportunity afforded to them; but he was also wary of players whose top priority was NIL and he viewed the mechanism of compensation (and the discrepancy of it) as a potential threat to his pillar of Unity (as he alluded to publicly in this interview back in 2021). And, as such, NIL was an afterthought in his recruiting pitch; which we basically heard the Cliffs Notes of in his public comments over the years. Come to UVa where you can get a great four-year education from one of the best public schools in the country, benefit from our player development, and thrive whether or not you have a basketball career afterward. And, oh, by the way, there’s also NIL and all of the opportunities that come with that, as well. That recruiting pitch had been CTB’s mantra for years (minus the NIL add-on); the foundation of what made us a competitive landing place for the type of player who is “about the right things,” and it had been highly effective in a pre-NIL world. But in a semi-professional world where the most talented players have a vested interest in pursuing both their short-term earnings potential as well as that of their long-term (and, in the case of guys who might not be NBA prospects, their short-term earnings potential might be where they max out on a year-by-year basis over the rest of their lives), that message loses its potency. A degree from UVa is, no doubt, valuable, but if a player’s income potential through NIL over the next 3-4 years far surpasses expected income from a job gained from that degree, that’s naturally going to be of bigger interest. Despite all of the advantages that UVa has to offer as a program between the institution itself and the coaching staff, a pitch without a NIL emphasis wasn’t as competitive and effectively limited the interested player pool.

Insider account Trilly Donovan alluded to all of this in a post from January where he highlighted CTB’s reluctance to embrace NIL and said that Virginia (by which I assume he meant UVa’s collective and donors at that time, which would have been true) was capable of footing the NIL bill. His phrasing did create some confusion, however, with plenty of folks pointing out that UVa themselves couldn’t foot the bill and that coaches weren’t supposed to be engaged in those discussions; which highlighted the general ambiguity and confusion across MCBB about how NIL was working, what conversations were taking place, who was participating in those conversations, and what conversations should and should not be happening. The fact of the matter was, teams were finding ways to communicate and emphasize their NIL capabilities with recruits, while with us it was still an afterthought in recruiting pitches.

We didn’t really feel much of the ramifications in the 2022 portal cycle for a variety of reasons. We kept the majority of our team (a testament both to the program itself and to the quality NIL that we had in place) and didn’t need to fill many needs through the portal. The player we did land, Ben Vander Plas, was well-regarded (the #33 transfer in Evan Miya’s rankings for that year) but also had heavy connections with CTB so it wasn’t the best gauge of our ability to draw in the portal. But the 2023 cycle saw the changes manifest most significantly and, for the first time (arguably – but I’d make the argument) in the CTB era, our talent opting to leave the program outweighed the quality of talent with which we were able to replace them.

This, in no small part, attributed to the sobering results we saw this past season where the margin of defeat was hefty at times and we looked uncompetitive against the best teams on our schedule. And, while I disputed in my piece that it had to play out to that extreme and that there were certainly other contributing factors, it’s impossible to deny that having a more competitive pull across the talent in the portal could have helped. CTB almost seemed resigned to this idea after this season when he commented that he thought the team had mostly peaked (a thought I disagree with but a good indication of what he thought about the talent-level on the roster).

So, that was the environment throughout much of the 2023 offseason. Now let’s back up: In March of 2023, Carla Williams announced the official partnership with Cav Futures; making the relationship official and giving it the support of the University but still ostensibly leaving the ball in their court. In September of 2023, coincidentally or not, right after that challenging portal cycle, she also hired Wally Walker to be the Deputy Athletics Director in charge of working with Cav Futures to foster partnerships (fundraising) and maximizing revenue generation. Basically, this was an early sign that Carla, who has a basketball background herself, was re-doubling our NIL efforts and strategy. If you’re not familiar with Wally (or are but just through his playing days at the school), he was the General Manager (and eventual President and CEO) of both the Seattle SuperSonics (’94-’06) and Seattle Storm (’01-’06). He helped to construct and was in charge of the Gary Payton/Shawn Kemp years for the Sonics including the ’96 team that lost to the Bulls in the finals, and he finished second in Executive of the Year voting after the 97-98 season. He also drafted Sue Bird to the Storm, culminating in a WNBA championship in 2004. With a background in finance prior to these roles, he’s basically exactly the person you’d want in that position; overqualified, even. His role is focused on partnering with Cav Futures to drive NIL opportunities, fostering relationships of which I’m sure he has many from his time in the league(s); but he’s also a fantastic talent-evaluator should CTB and staff care to consult him on that front, as well.

This hire was significant and, while I believe most observers regarded it with a “wait and see” approach, if having it register at all, and while we don’t have full transparency everything he and Carla have had their hands in; the “see” part has already been on display.

Fast-forward to the week of February 19th, fresh off of that brutal loss @VT, CTB flew down to Palm Beach with Carla, Wally (and others) for a special fund-raising event. In his Coach’s Corner interview with John Freeman the following week he mentioned the trip and that it was an opportunity to discuss the team’s vision with donors as well as the needs, but he also mentioned that he normally doesn’t do those events mid-season. This was one that Carla thought was significant enough to pursue, despite that, and so he did. That should raise some eye-brows, full stop. We know that most coaches, but CTB among the most, aren’t big fans of that element of the job nor do they welcome distraction in the middle of a season (especially when the team just played so poorly). He also joked on the same show that they played like they did against VT on purpose to illustrate the issues. Accounts from that event (which also included Coach Elliott on the football side) were that the message was that CTB had turned the corner on NIL, was willing to embrace the current landscape, and that we had the ability to be very competitive in that regard with the continued support of our donors. Now, that’s a radically different message and philosophy from the one CTB had been communicating publicly previously (all the way back to that 2021 interview), and I’m sure he adapted from the lessons he’d learned on the recruiting trail but, no doubt, was also influenced and encouraged by Carla and/or Wally’s input and direction.

But, though significant progress, it wasn’t just getting CTB on board with a more modernized approach to NIL; UVa is one of 10 schools in consideration to be one of the first 8 schools to participate in The Player’s Era Tournament which would pay $1 million to the collectives of each team to go directly to the players, and another $1 million to the winning team. Selected or not (the tournament will reportedly expand to 16 teams in 2025), it’s a big opportunity for the school, creates visibility, is an enticing potential for current and prospective players, and is another signal that we’re connecting and exhausting new efforts and avenues of opportunity on the NIL front.

Last but certainly not least, it was just recently that we saw how wide-ranging and perceptive that Carla’s vision extended. Less than a week ago, the state of Virginia signed into law that schools will be able to directly pay student athletes via NIL deals. This policy goes into effect July 1st and what it means practically is that athletic departments, not just the collectives of the schools, can offer deals and payment to players; an added pool of potential funding while furthering the efforts to remove any ambiguity around what schools can directly or indirectly discuss about compensation when recruiting a player. This law makes it clear that those discussions could be forthright and proactive, allowing Virginia schools to directly present offers to players prior to their enrollment either through a collective, directly from athletic department funds, or both. This is a unique advantage to schools in Virginia around their ability to fund player compensation and work directly with donors to do so but, also, for schools wanting to make sure that they do things the “right way,” (like ours) it eliminates many of the gray areas of impropriety. It’s also more permissible than other, similar, legislation as yet to be approved in other states which still defer to NCAA guidelines. The state of Virginia does not. This was not just a fortuitous circumstance. The brilliance is that Carla and her team (shout out to Jason Baum), motivated to pave the way through the current ambiguous guidelines and to maintain a competitive advantage, actually drafted the legislation and then collaborated to get it passed.

For a basketball program that adopted more of a “wait and see” philosophy to NIL and was reluctant to eschew traditional values in favor of the dramatic changes, I was awed to see the vision that Carla Williams had at the helm, guiding all of this. It was the definition of forward-thinking while gracefully navigating all of the personalities involved. She surveyed the landscape and proactively drafted the most permissive legislation around school-involvement in NIL in the country, while hiring a former NBA/WNBA President and beloved former player to guide that ship, while leading her future Hall of Fame Head Coach from reluctance toward acceptance.

Of course, there is still room for growth and improvement on the NIL front (and many creative ways in which it could be developed to both align with program values and create a competitive advantage) and how it all shakes out remains to be seen. At first this offseason, we didn’t have anyone enter the portal which was rare by today’s standards even among successful teams. All accounts were that both Leon Bond and Dante Harris preferred to stay, but eventually entered their names in the portal when confronted with the prospects of their playing opportunity and getting recruited over. That speaks well to the program’s current ability to engage and retain, as well as CTB’s ability to deliver the difficult conversations that lead to opening targeted scholarship slots. But, as to incoming recruits… we haven’t landed any yet, so it’s hard to say. Clearly, we’re not yet where we’d want to be considering roughly 60% of the top 100 prospects in the portal have already committed somewhere and we still have four open roster slots. There is encouraging news, however. We do seem well-positioned to (hopefully very soon) land our first McDonald’s All-American since Kyle Guy, in Trent Perry. And I’ll also say this: considering how our season ended and how we looked on national television against CSU – giving a lot of visibility to the national narratives about our offense, system, and pace of play – having the quality of players we’ve had visit already this offseason be so much stronger than it was all of last offseason should be a sign that these other factors we just discussed are doing some lifting. I understand reluctance to believe until there’s some ink on paper, and I’m not here to suggest that this is a potential fix for all of the challenges that the program faces (and I’ve outlined previously). I don’t think we’ve yet seen that payoff of program prestige and draw coupling with NIL development and pull; but I do think that there’s some positive momentum on this front when putting all of the pieces together. If last offseason was the valley with regard to our ability to pull the kinds of players we want/need, I expect that this offseason will represent the beginning of that climb back out but, still, an upward trajectory and it remains to be seen how fast we are at climbing.

But, and this was really the main purpose of this piece, while I’m hopeful and optimistic about the direction and developments; at the very least, I’m grateful and reassured to remember that we have one of the best Athletic Directors in the country working every bit as hard (if not harder, honestly – Wally Walker is a fantastic hire from a pure hoops perspective) to support this program as the others. It’s funny, one of the things I’ve always admired about CTB as a leader is his ability to evaluate the landscape for his players and then guide them into a position to thrive. Xs and Os over the years, sure, but specifically, thinking about how gracefully he navigated the loss to UMBC and helped his guys see the light at the end of the tunnel so that they could have redemption the following year. Watching the past year unfold, Carla Williams has done exactly that for CTB! She’s worked (really gone above and beyond expectation) to create an environment in which her Hall of Fame coach has an opportunity to thrive despite a landscape that’s less friendly to his inclinations than it was five years ago. To a coach like CTB, NIL represents true adversity; but Carla is there shining a light at the end of the tunnel, illustrating a way that it can be an advantage while still doing it the right way, with the full support and legality of the state of Virginia, and a former President and CEO of two professional basketball teams backing them up.

As someone who, at least with the Men’s Basketball Team, has mostly been behind the scenes, I hope she gets a little shine for her efforts. She’s a skillful steward and, with her, our program is in good hands… layered underneath more good hands… layered underneath Hall of Fame hands.