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For nearly a full year, the Virginia Cavaliers had to think about the first game they would play in the NCAA Tournament.
UMBC. UMBC. UMBC. That was the only thing the national media and a lot of outside observers associated with the Cavaliers. This was not a problem or a flaw or a defect, merely a natural product of becoming the first No. 1 seed to lose to a 16 seed in the history of the men’s tournament. (Stanford lost to Harvard on the women’s side in 1998, but the women’s tournament exists in its own universe. “Crossover” NCAA Tournament realities don’t gain much traction.)
It was impossible to avoid and unrealistic to expect the avoidance of it: Virginia knew it would have to deal with “The UMBC Question” throughout the college basketball regular season and the ACC Tournament. Arriving at the round of 64 against Gardner-Webb was something Virginia had to do and knew it would need to handle, but that was not the goal or the endpoint of this 2019 Virginia journey.
That game against Gardner-Webb, with the shadows of UMBC towering over the Hoos, was the game Virginia had to get through, like a visit to the dentist.
This upcoming game against Purdue in the South Regional final, for a trip to the school’s first Final Four since 1984, is the game Virginia HOPED to play, the game Virginia WANTED to play.
Gardner-Webb was a game of pressure and history and old demons and constant questions from the media.
Purdue is a game of aspirations and opportunities. Demons, yes, but not in the same way. This is a game filled with a very different kind of pressure. This isn’t the “Are you going to lose again to a 16 seed?” game. This is the “Are you going to stand up and take your place in history?” game.
This, for Tony Bennett and his veteran roster, is the “Are you going to create basketball immortality?” game. This is the “Are you going to finish the job?” game. This is the “Are you going to seize greatness when it is there in front of you, waiting to be claimed?” game.
This is the game coaches and players have to conquer in order for college basketball programs to become great or return to greatness.
This is no trip to the candy store, but it also isn’t a trip to the dentist.
This will be tough. This will be packed with pressure. The pressure, however, is pressure in the form of achievement, not filtered through the lens of avoiding failure. That was Gardner-Webb, a game in which Virginia clearly felt burdened. That was also Oregon on Thursday night. Virginia felt the weight of trying to get back to this Elite Eight spot against a team which could play defense every bit as nasty as the Hoos can.
If Virginia felt the full enormity of trying to get back to this spot and the Elite Eight, the Hoos don’t have to frame their situation in terms of earning another chance to play for the Final Four.
They have done that. They survived. They survived Kyle Guy failing to find his shooting stroke. They survived De’Andre Hunter — the man they so dearly missed against UMBC — also lacking a shooting touch.
The Hoos have simply but powerfully and plainly survived long enough and far enough to get here.
Now the pressure is framed not in terms of “Will you stumble on a massive scale and become part of another extraordinarily rare March upset?” That is a question in which the right answer merely means avoiding a massive embarrassment.
The question on Saturday is not about losing to a double-digit seed and wearing a cream pie of humiliation on one’s face for the next 51 weeks. The question on Saturday is rooted in the potential to accomplish something magnificent:
“Will you get to the Final Four?”
This is the game Virginia WANTED to play, not the game Virginia HAD to play.
Only Jack Salt was part of the 2016 team which took a fat lead over Syracuse and then crumbled against the Orange’s full-court press in the second half of the Midwest Regional final in Chicago. Everyone else isn’t playing with the specific memory of that haunting game… but Tony Bennett is definitely coaching in the shadow of that memory. Demons exist, but for most of the players on this 2019 team, Saturday — while certainly soaked with a ton of pressure — is more about creating a new reality than avoiding a slip on the banana peel and a humiliating stumble.
This is not about failure, but achievement.
Virginia is exactly where it wants to be, and now it can try to play as though it can attain something good instead of merely avoiding something horrible.
We will see if Virginia is exactly where it wants to be at roughly 11:15 p.m. on Saturday night in Louisville.
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