![]() ![]() Remember, Bennett’s Cavaliers also suffered tournament disappointments in 2017 (losing by 26 points against fourth-seeded Florida), 2016 (falling in the Elite Eight to 10th-seeded Syracuse), 2015 (losing to lower-seeded Michigan State), and 2014 (also losing to lower-seeded Michigan State).īut Virginia didn’t panic. Many fans and media members blamed the loss on the Hoos’ style of play, as Virginia coach Tony Bennett favors a slow, methodical approach that many felt gave an underdog a better chance of keeping pace. Players could have transferred out in shame, seeking to restart their basketball lives somewhere less cursed. Some schools might have fired their head coach after such a gruesome, historic tournament failure. But no-UMBC came out and straight-up trucked Virginia 74-54. I thought it would be some improbable triumph clinched via controversy or buzzer-beater. 1 seed, but I never thought it would happen the way it did. The 2019 NCAA Championship Looked a Lot Like an NBA Playoff Game Virginia Won Its First National Title and Rewrote Its Program Legacy The Hoos held KenPom’s top spot from February 7 through the end of their season-which, for some reason, was a 20-point loss to a UMBC team far worse than the dozens of the squads they effortlessly demolished all year. It likewise had two regular-season losses, a 68-61 defeat at West Virginia, which went on to make the Sweet 16, and a 61-60 overtime loss against Virginia Tech, which went on to become a no. Of course, Virginia was also the best team in college basketball last season. But Duke looked deeply flawed in Zion Williamson’s absence and in its subsequent NCAA tournament run. ![]() Virginia had only two regular-season losses, both against Duke, as the Blue Devils were really the only team that had any claim to the throne alongside the Cavaliers. According to Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, the Cavaliers held that distinction for most of 2019, sitting atop KenPom from January 15 through February 9, and then again from February 23 until now. Virginia was the best team in college basketball this season. The Cavaliers proved that college basketball’s greatest fluke might be when the sport’s best team wins six consecutive single-elimination games to become national champions. In 2018, Virginia lost by 20 points as a massive favorite in 2019, it pulled off miracle after miracle as the outside world waited for it to crumble. 16 seed that beat a group of coaches and players who one year and 23 days later would be crowned national champions. ![]() Instead, Virginia guaranteed that we will never forget how historically strange that result was. If Virginia’s loss to UMBC would have been the last that we’d ever heard of the Cavaliers, the luster of the upset would eventually fade. What if the UMBC loss was Virginia’s last major letdown before the dawn of a dynasty, the fuel for a fire that burned brighter than any other in college basketball? What if that was the moment that freakishly bad things stopped happening to Virginia in March and freakishly good things started happening instead? What if the Book of Job ended with Job dunking while Satan wept during the “One Shining Moment” montage? (Job’s garbage friends, who argued that God would not punish an innocent man and therefore that Job must have sinned to deserve so much pain in life, wrote the original “Virginia’s system explains why they lost to UMBC” takes.) ![]() But they also knew that failure didn’t have to be the whole story. The Cavaliers’ coaches and players had to know that they would always be linked with that failure. 16 seed, snapping a streak of 135 consecutive 1-over-16 NCAA tournament victories. In doing so, it all but ensured that its March 16, 2018, loss to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County will forever be remembered as the greatest upset in college basketball history.Īfter the final buzzer sounded in that game last year, the Cavaliers became the first no. Virginia beat Texas Tech in a very important basketball game on Monday night. ![]()
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