Assistant Coach Johnny Carpenter, a buttress of the Virginia men’s basketball program whose fingerprints on the team trace back as far as Coach Tony Bennett’s, is leaving the program after 15 years, he announced Friday via Instagram.
The program’s official Instagram account, in its farewell post, tagged the Memphis Grizzlies, suggesting that Carpenter had taken a position with the organization. Neither Carpenter nor the Grizzlies have confirmed the move.
In 2009, Bennett arrived in Charlottesville and commenced the work of transfiguring a bruised and dejected program into a perennial national power. Carpenter also arrived that year, but as a student, expecting to move on after four years.
Carpenter served for four years as a student manager, then for one season as a graduate assistant for the women’s basketball team. He then left to work as an assistant video coordinator for the Dallas Mavericks, where he remained for a year before returning to Charlottesville as a video coordinator and scouting assistant for the men’s basketball program. In 2017, Bennett elevated Carpenter to director of player personnel, and in 2023 to assistant coach.
Now, 15 almost uninterrupted years later, the student manager-turned-assistant coach is finally leaving. His relatively hefty Instagram caption ended by summarizing the trajectory he and the program have traveled over those years.
“From the bottom of the ACC to the top of the country — from student manager to assistant coach,” Carpenter said. “Thank you to everyone who helped me live out my dreams and for supporting me in this new chapter. Family forever.”
The post triggered a torrent of short but loving comments from the players Carpenter impacted during his time at Virginia. Nearly every player who has cycled through the program in the Bennett era has come into contact with him. He is as embedded in this program as just about anyone, just as much a Virginia mainstay as the pillars at John Paul Jones Arena’s entrance.
Carpenter’s departure leaves a key coaching vacancy with the season steadily approaching. His story, in a way, represents a difficult but familiar path — a student manager, after years spent absorbing the teachings of a renowned coach, emerges as a coach himself. What is perhaps less common is the impact on his players that Carpenter made as he traced that trajectory. A devastating starting five could be crafted from the players who commented on his announcement post — or perhaps seven devastating starting fives. None of these players, most of whom left the program years ago, had to say anything. They all wanted to.
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