Virginia took a relatively small 2021 hoops recruiting class, bringing in only two new rookies this year. Additionally, both were international prospects, which would potentially raise eyebrows about Tony Bennett’s domestic recruiting, if he didn’t have four US recruits already pledged for his 2022 class.
With that said, this space isn’t intended to discuss recruiting per se. It’s intended to (re-)introduce you to the two newest freshmen (sorry, first years) to join Tony Bennett’s club.
What I want to do here is revisit what we wrote in our commitment articles for our two rookies, wing Taine Murray and forward Igor Milicic. With that foundation laid, I’ll then update our thoughts for their contributions for the coming season and their career arcs based upon what’s happened since and what we’re hearing going into the season.
Taine Murray
What We Said About His Recruitment
Sometime in the wee hours of the US night last fall, an Instagram post went up from the other side of the globe. It announced the pledge of Taine Murray, a 6’5” guard from New Zealand, to join UVA as a member of the 2021 recruiting class.
“Another international player?” you say. Correct. Murray will be the second Kiwi that Bennett has coached at UVA (Jack Salt being the first from 2014 to 2019), and continues a trend of international flair on our roster that has also boasted Kody Stattmann (Australia), Francisco Caffaro (Argentina), Tomas Woldetensae and Francesco Badocchi (Italy), Marial Shayok (Canada), and Mamadi Diakite (Guinea) since Bennett arrived. Tony also coached a few international players at Washington State as well, including current NBA big man Aron Baynes (Australia).
This was an interesting recruitment to watch unfold as UVA had not been long-linked to Murray. Granted, international recruitments are always lightly reported, and as recently as last spring Murray wasn’t divulging who was recruiting him. But the general consensus was that when UVA really dove in with both feet, they were the party-crasher. Stanford and Maryland had both been on him for a long time, and both felt like they had a strong foot in the door. Maryland was giving him the option to come in last winter and spend the spring semester redshirting and working on acclimating to the US game before debuting this year; Virginia didn’t have a spare scholarship to do the same.
But ultimately, Murray picked Virginia over his other two finalists the Cardinal and Terrapins, and he reportedly also boasted offers from other high major programs like Purdue, Creighton, and Cal. UVA has deep ties to the New Zealand community; Tony Bennett played and coached there after he left the NBA, he brought Thomas Abercrombie to Washington State in 2007 and Jack Salt to UVA in 2014, and he’s recently hired New Zealand hoops legend Kirk Penney to be a part of the UVA basketball staff. At this stage it’s unclear which if any of these factors helped UVA in the recruitment, but it may come out in time.
What We Said About His Game
Taine is a 6’4” or 6’5” (depending on the source) wing [now showing at 6’5″ and 207 lbs on the official UVA roster]. You may occasionally see some speculate he could run some point, refer to him as a combo guard, but I’m not going there yet. If he did run any point on some of his past teams, it was probably only because he was so head-and-shoulders above the rest of the competition he could get away with it, akin to the stud HS football athlete who plays quarterback purely because he’s so advantageously gifted you want the ball in his hand every play, even if he doesn’t project as a QB in college.
No, Murray is a scorer, 110%. He’s just at home as a shooter coming off screens as he is playing downhill and attacking the rim. It’s to be determined how effective he is at the rim against ACC-level shot-blockers, but he’s got good size and length so there’s potential.
The comps being thrown around for Murray include former Hoo / current Brooklyn Net Joe Harris and Iowa State alum / current Toronto Raptor Matt Thomas. Both were pure wings with good size, excellent shooting strokes, an underrated downhill game, and a fantastic work ethic and hustle to compensate for being not-quite-as-athletic as some of the NBA talent they were defending.
As such, we’re calling him a 2/3, or a G/F, for the purposes of slotting. He’s got plus length, I’ve seen his wingspan referred to as around 6’9” which is going to let him guard at least 1-3, maybe 1-4 against smaller teams. He’s not going to be a lockdown defender off the bat, but if he works hard he’ll be a competent one who fights through screens, uses his length effectively, and plays his role in the Pack Line’s collective effectiveness.
In our offensive systems, he’s probably not going to be a big Pick-And-Roll guy, either as the ball handler or the roller, but with his shooting stroke and IQ he’ll be fine as the off-ball option in those actions for catch-and-shoot opportunities (much as Kyle Guy was used during the 2019 title run), and in a Sides offense he’ll thrive coming off pindowns.
There’s always concern with an international prospect regarding how well or how quickly their game is going to translate to the US level of competition. Some of our international players (Diakite, Badocchi, Shayok) had the opportunity to prep at a US high school first. Woldetensae honed his game at the US junior college level. Caffaro attended the NBA Global Academy.
Stattmann and Salt, however, came straight from the high school level in their countries, only having some limited exposure to international competition (FIBA, Basketball Without Borders) or internships with pro clubs (Salt working out with the NZ Breakers) to play against anything even close to D-1 talent, and frankly it showed for both.
Murray, however, is taking another path altogether. He’s been playing professionally as an amateur (meaning he’s playing in the pro ranks, but not taking a paycheck to preserve his amateur status). Last year, at just 17 years old, he played on the Southern Huskies in the New Zealand National Basketball League (NZNBL, not to be confused with Australia’s NBL, which we’ll talk about next). It’s not an elite international pro league, made up primarily of aspiring Kiwi’s mixed with some international veterans without top-level pro ceilings. Hoo fans may be familiar with this as Isaiah Wilkins played the 2018-19 season for the league’s Canterbury Rams, winning the league’s DPOY honors and scoring 11.3 ppg in his one year there.
So for context, a 24 year old Hoo alum who was a starter on an ACC Championship team scored 11.3 ppg in that league. A year later, Murray at just 17, would score 17.8 ppg in that same league against the same level of competition.
His stats tell a tale. On high volume, he shot 45% from 3 (remember, he’s be shooting 3’s all along from the international distance, whereas US players have only been adjusting for the last year). Despite being the youngest player in a lineup featuring guys in their 20’s and 30’s, Murray led the team in minutes and was second in scoring, behind only former Sacramento State PG Izayah Mauriohooho Le’Afa. His stats were pedestrian in non-scoring metrics, not excelling in his assist, steal, or rebounding totals, though he was described as a willing hustle guy.
Here are his highlights from his season in the NZNBL:
For the 2020-21 year, Murray leveled up to join the New Zealand Breakers as one of their designated developmental players in the National Basketball League of Australia (the higher-level NBL). The NBL has skyrocketed in notoriety in recent years as it’s become the preferred landing spot for some of the US game’s best prospects looking for a non-college route before going pro. Most recently project 2020 Lottery Pick Lamelo Ball scored 17 ppg in the league for the Illawarra Hawks. Murray wasn’t expected to dominate the older players in the NBL the way he did in the NZNBL, it’s a significant jump up in competition level. But perhaps if he could carve out any sort of consistent role, it’s going to speak volumes. The NBL’s level of competition is actually pretty comparable to NCAA Division 1, and even if he’s just there to scrimmage the vets in practice, it’s going to be an incredible learning experience.
So back to his readiness timeline in the ACC.
Ordinarily an international player needs two years to soak at the highest levels of US college ball before you really want to lean on them. This is just as true at Virginia as it is at peers like Gonzaga or Kansas, schools that have excelled by being patient with international stars. For Taine, I’m going to be a little bullish for two reasons.
One is the NBL experience we already talked about, a level of competition much more challenging than anything most (non-Canadian) international players face, to say nothing of also getting pro-level strength and conditioning coaching. The other is that Murray is older, already 18 and will be 19 long before he arrives in Charlottesville next summer. As such I doubt we need to wait two years for him to make much of an impact.
With that said, don’t go betting on him to be instant impact either. Offensively I think he can probably hold his own, at least in a limited reserve capacity, early on. But defensively I see his first year being a learning year. I doubt a redshirt is in order at this stage. But all the same I think the speed of guys he’s asked to defend, to say nothing of mastering his Pack Line help responsibilities, keeps his first year minutes lower. And that’s okay, because [projecting at the time of commitment] we’ll likely already field a roster deep with wings that can buy him that first year, with Kody Stattmann, Casey Morsell, Carson McCorkle, and Jabri Abdur-Rahim possibly all returning at the 2 and 3 spots (and that doesn’t even consider PG Reece Beekman playing some 2 alongside Kihei Clark).
Most likely I think Murray’s breakout comes his second year, the 2022-23 season, when Stattmann and Clark have graduated (meaning Reece is spending all his time at the 1). There might still be some “rookie” moments there early in his sophomore year, but come tournament time, whether starting or off the bench, Murray’s going to be a perfect option to give us a number of strong seasons at the wing.
What We’re Thinking Now
The important context here is that the previous sections, those adapted from his commitment article were written when he pledged to the Hoos in the fall of 2020. That was before the 2020-21 season, of course, and a year has gone by since then, so there are two big things to discuss.
First, Murray’s time in the NBL was ultimately a bit of a dud. Now, this needs some context. COVID precautions in that part of the world are far stricter than we see here in the States, and for the New Zealand team to even play on the Australian continent was a huge deal. They had to basically treat the entire season as a road trip, staying quarantined in Australia for the Breakers’ entire 36-game season. This kind of bubble life would be hard on any player, but for an 18 year old kid like Taine who didn’t have a history with his teammates, couldn’t even so much as go on dates or hang out with friends his own age or family, it had to be incredibly difficult.
Ultimately, Taine would only make two brief garbage time appearances for the big club, not registering a single statistic in either of them. Hard to say whether it was the COVID restrictions affecting his play, or just a general lack of readiness to play at that level. But either way, our hopes that Taine might get to season himself at a quality pro level before coming to the ACC didn’t come to pass. It’s not to say that the practice experience against the Breakers wasn’t beneficial, but I’m of the mind that there’s no substitute at the end of the day for live game minutes. And if you’re going an entire season without playing live game minutes, and even worse if you’re instead getting beat up on by older, bigger, better players, there’s a risk it’s going to screw with your confidence when it’s time to get back out there. Long story short, expect a lot of rust.
With that said, the second issue at play here is that the depth chart in front of him is a lot more open than we projected it might be this time a year ago. Starting small forward Trey Murphy went pro early, and backup wings Casey Morsell and Jabri Abdur-Rahim transferred away. We did bring in Armaan Franklin as a transfer guard from Indiana, and Franklin’s skillset is very similar to Taine’s as a score-first 2/3 wing.
I think predicting a starting 1-2-3 for the Hoos this season of Kihei-Reece-Franklin is a damned safe bet. That’s three proven P5 starters. But those guys aren’t all playing 40 minutes a game for 30 games. Kody might take some minutes at the 3, but at 6’8″ could see a lot of his time at the 4-spot in more perimeter-oriented lineups (if he’s even healthy finally this year). So long story short, there’s room for at least one guard to step up into major minutes off the bench, maybe two, and even to be a potential starter should any of the vets miss time.
Taine’s going up against Carson McCorkle here for those backup guard minutes. They’re not identical players; Carson’s smaller and quicker. But as these things go, it’ll likely come down to who’s got the best handle on defensive responsibilities and is playing best within the offensive sets. Off the get-go, Carson probably gets it on experience, even if I think the two have comparable upsides.
Taine will still play this year, though. With only 10 scholarship players on the roster, we have to expect all 10 to be needed to varying degrees this year, especially if there’s any missed injury time during the season. So the usual quiet first years we bank on for international players, especially those without the benefit of US prep schools? Throw it out the window.
The only question left will be how quickly he looks the part of an ACC player, or whether the light doesn’t fully come on until next year. Certainly he’s going to get plenty of opportunities to show us one way or another.
Igor Milicic
What We Said About His Recruitment
Virginia recruiting sleuths first started paying attention to Igor this spring when official UVA twitter accounts started following him on social media. It’s 2021, and that sort of thing now credibly passes for a lead, and outlets slowly started to let on that the UVA interest was real.
What’s the UVA connection here? The most prominent is Isaiah Wilkins, who was at the time playing professional ball in the German Bundesliga league, the top league in the Deutsch Republic. Milicic had done what many top young international players do, and that’s intern with a top professional team to gain experience playing with/against top adult competition, though doing so in such a way that maintains their amateur status, much as fellow 2021 Hoo commit Taine Murray did in the Australian NBL earlier this year. Milicic saw spot time with the Ratiopharm Ulm where Wilkins was a regular rotational player in the front court.
At the time, little was know about how long UVA had been recruiting Milicic (The Athletic would later detail the backstory($)), or the specifics of the relationship, only that things happened quickly and before we knew it, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony broke the news.
Igor Milicic, one of the top European prospects pursuing the NCAA route, has committed to Virginia, he told ESPN. Milicic, a 6'9 forward with guard skills, made his debut with the Polish senior national team in February.https://t.co/ETPyMdsaFG
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) May 1, 2021
What We Said About His Game
Standing 6’9″ and 220 lbs [now showing at 6’10” and 224 lbs on the UVA roster], Milicic is just built like a power forward. There’s certainly some finesse to his game, as he’s trained to be a perimeter oriented player, but I think it’s a stretch to think he’ll be deployed as a lengthy 3-man as we’ve done with Murphy and Hunter in recent years.
He does have some face-up to his game. He’s comfortable offensively shooting off spot ups, pick and pops, or curls, though at this stage in his development he’s way more effective in the mid-range than he is on 3’s. In his semi-pro international play the last two seasons, he’s shot 55% on 2’s, up to 58% this most recent season, hitting both at the rim and on short jumpers. Going out to the international 3-point line, his percentage drops to just 31.5% for the last two years, though that was at least 33% this past season. He’ll likely be used as a pick-and-pop big, a Nolte type, though we’ll have to see how well his 3-point shot translates and develops over the next couple seasons to see what kind of offensive ceiling he truly has. Playing downhill and at the rim, there isn’t a ton of athleticism to work with relative to most ACC defenders, and while his savvy will come in handy at times, he’ll still struggle against more vertical defenders.
Defensively, depending how fast he puts on muscle, he can guard either the 4 or the 5 in the ACC. In Europe he does some switching onto 3’s, but coming to the ACC he’s going to struggle to stay in front of smaller, faster opposing wings. He’s best utilized as a big man defender, whether on the blocks or guarding rival pick-and-pop bigs. He’s only blocked 14 shots in 42 games over the last two seasons, posting a block rate of just 2% last season, which isn’t anything to write home about, so don’t expect a rim protector defensively. His value will be provided with positioning and rebounding, where he posted a healthy OR% of 10.7% to go with a solid DR% of 18%.
Earlier we mentioned Milicic’s experience interning with Ratiopharm Ulm in the top German league Bundesliga. It should be noted he’s only played 23 minutes for that club this year. Most of his game experience came with Orange Academy Ratiopharm, which is effectively a minor league club for the Ulm team. At Orange Academy, he played 23 minutes a game over 21 games (17 starts) this past season, after playing 19 mpg over 15 games (6 starts) the season prior. You can see his international stats: here.
For Orange Academy, Milicic ultimately posted a stat line this most recent season of 13.3 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 1.8 apg, and 0.5 blkpg. As an interesting comparison, his teammate there was Jeremy Sochan, a 4-star PF committed to Baylor as part of the 2021 recruiting class, whose stat line was only 9.8 ppg and 3.8 rpg in similar minutes (24 mpg in 21 games, 15 starts) against the same competition.
Here are a few clips of Milicic getting some garbage production with the senior Ulm club towards the end of his final Euro stint:
Igor Milicic got 10 minutes in a blowout win against Giessen. 2002 prospect finished with 11 pts and 5 rebounds. #koszkadra #plkpl pic.twitter.com/T2pQ0ry9b1
— StanisĹ‚aw WoĹşniak (@stanio2002) April 11, 2021
What We’re Thinking Now
It’s rare for international players to be instant-impact at the high-major level, at least when it comes to those that haven’t prepped in the US first. This isn’t just at UVA, as we’ve seen peers like Gonzaga, Kentucky, Kansas, and others need a year or more to bring along their international prospects as well.
With that said, if you’re going to bring in an international prospects, Europeans usually need the shortest runway, as their level of instruction and competition is the best of any international region. It’s hardly scientific, of course, but after the US it’s European nations that most frequently medal in Olympic and World Cup basketball events, after all.
So Milicic’s opportunities with the Bundesliga A and B clubs are just as relevant if not more so than Murray’s with the NZNBL and NBL.
The early reports out of Charlottesville this fall seem to be backing that up. Milicic may not be tearing things up, but he’s apparently also not overmatched or otherwise too slow or stiff to keep up with his peers. His 6’10” and 224 lb frame certainly passes the eye test for a combo big.
The front court depth situation does lend itself to some need. Of course Jay Huff and Sam Hauser, last year’s starting 4 and 5, have graduated, and small-ball-4 Trey Murphy is off to the NBA as well. Heir apparent to the 4-spot Justin McKoy defected for Chapel Hill via the transfer portal. Virginia’s big man rotation at this point consists of ECU transfer Jayden Gardner (first team all-AAC, but still a bit undersized and now moving up a level of competition), and the 5-man pair of Kadin Shedrick and Francisco Caffaro (both with injury histories and neither with any real historical production at the collegiate level). At 6’8″, Kody Stattmann could ostensibly play some front court ball, but at only 200 lbs listed, he’s not well built for any consistent play on the blocks.
So ready or not, expect Igor to see some playing time in a reserve 4/5 capacity, upwards of 10-15 minutes a game even if the other bigs are healthy as well.
With that said, do not expect them to be the prettiest minutes. The step up in competition, the speed and physicality of ACC play, is going to make Igor’s learning curve a steep one. The more I hear about him, the more convinced I am of his potential. But that doesn’t mean some of those early contests won’t be eye opening for him, especially quality non-conference opponents like Houston and Iowa.
Should injuries to the vets push Igor into a major role, I’m going to be holding my breath, especially should that occur early in the season before he’s really up to speed. But so long as Tony Bennett’s roster allows Igor to stay in a well defined role off the bench, I think this season will be a productive growth opportunity for him, with some encouraging glimpses for us to enjoy along the way to preparing him for bigger responsibility later in his career.