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Frankie Valli had The Four Seasons.
Tony Bennett – the Virginia men’s basketball coach, not the iconic singer – has The Six Seasons.
Go back six seasons ago. Go back to November of 2013 and the start of the 2013-2014 college basketball season.
Imagine how the next six years of college basketball would unfold.
Imagine saying at the time that Wichita State, after making the 2013 Final Four, would make three more Final Fours. You would have been laughed out of the building.
That never came close to happening.
Imagine saying in November of 2013 that Cuonzo Martin would make a Final Four at Tennessee. You would have been laughed out of the building.
That, too, never came close to happening.
Imagine saying in November of 2013 that the Pac-12 would become the best conference in college basketball. You would have been met with rolling laughter.
Imagine saying in November of 2013 that Alabama would become a basketball superpower, or that Boston College would win an NCAA Tournament game, or that Nebraska would reach the Sweet 16.
I am making all of these wacky, way-out-there statements to prove a point and set up the money ball, the mic drop, the kill shot, the boom-goes-the-dynamite punch line:
Imagine saying in November of 2013 that the Virginia Cavaliers would be the No. 1 seed at the ACC Tournament in four of the next six seasons.
Come on, don’t argue here and use revisionist history: You KNOW that statement would have sounded just as absurd back then if anyone had made it.
I didn’t make it then, but if I WOULD HAVE, you would have responded by laughing at me and thinking I had lost all my marbles.
So here we are: Virginia has in fact gained the No. 1 seed at four of the last six ACC Tournaments after defeating the Louisville Cardinals on Saturday afternoon.
If anything defines Tony Bennett as an elite college basketball coach, the best of the best, it is that fact. Yes, I know, the NCAA Tournament truly defines coaches and their legacies – it does. Until Virginia makes a Final Four, something about this era of UVA hoops will be incomplete and unfulfilled. I know that. We know that. Virginia fans know that.
Nevertheless: 30 or more games precede the NCAA Tournament. They are not worthless. They represent a lot of time, toil, aspiration and effort. What Virginia has done in the past six regular seasons is a phenomenal achievement which is hard to describe or put in adequate perspective.
This column’s structure and framework, by raising a million different absurd statements from November of 2013 if anyone had dared to make them, is my attempt to try to put Virginia’s accomplishment in focus.
It is bigger than any of us can easily imagine.
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