Caffaro to Miss Monmouth Game to Play for Argentina in World Cup Qualifier
When Virginia takes on Monmouth on Friday in the second game of the season, the Cavaliers will be without 7'1" center Francisco Caffaro, who will be spending the next few days with the Argentina men's national basketball team.
Caffaro will suit up for his home country of Argentina against the Dominican Republic on Wednesday in a qualifying match for the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup. Caffaro, who also played for Argentina's basketball team in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, will be away from the UVA men's basketball team from November 8th to November 11th, which means he will miss Virginia's next game against Monmouth on Friday night.
Caffaro's absence could shake up the UVA rotation quite a bit, as Caffaro would normally take up all of the reserve minutes at center behind Kadin Shedrick. In the season-opening win over NC Central on Monday, Caffaro gave the Cavaliers a solid lift off the bench, recording 10 points, four rebounds, and one assist. He shot 3/3 from the floor and made four his five free throw attempts.
Kadin Shedrick played 27 minutes against NC Central and Caffaro played 10 minutes. In those three minutes in which neither Shedrick nor Caffaro played, UVA went small with a lineup of Kihei Clark, Isaac McKneely, Armaan Franklin, Jayden Gardner, and Ben Vander Plas, with the 6'8" Vander Plas playing center. That lineup was only feasible because NC Central did not have its 7'1" center Brendan Medley-Bacon in the game at the time.
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With Caffaro out for Friday's game against Monmouth, Tony Bennett and the UVA coaching staff must decide how to handle the stretch of time in which Shedrick is resting on the bench - it goes without saying that it's pivotal that Shedrick stay out of foul trouble in this game. Virginia can further experiment with small-ball lineups, but this game also presents an opportunity for highly-touted 6'10" freshman Isaac Traudt to get into the game after not playing in the season-opener.
Either way, it will be be very interesting to see how Tony Bennett chooses to manage this intriguing one-off lineup debacle. This unique challenge could prove to be an opportunity for the Cavaliers to test the limits of their roster depth.
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