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Let me be very clear about this: Fans of a conference should not be expected to root for fellow conference members. SEC fans do that a lot, and Big Ten fans are usually very good about NOT doing that. If you want to do that, it’s a free country, but I do not expect or demand that “good fans” root for fellow conference members.
When I say that the national championship won by Virginia has resonance throughout the ACC, I don’t mean that other ACC fans should be happy for Virginia. I am making a much more precise point: Other ACC schools can take heart and learn from what Virginia has done, so that they can find hope in the future.
Virginia — by winning a classic Elite Eight game on an iconic play by Kihei Clark and Mamadi Diakite, and then turning it into a national championship — just joined Duke from 1992. The Blue Devils knew what it meant to make an improbable play under immensely difficult circumstances, when all seemed lost. Of the five national titles Mike Krzyzewski won, that one was a back-to-back title containing immense historical weight and significance. One play more than any other is associated with that 1992 championship. Virginia’s endgame magic in the Elite Eight now becomes historically transformed and elevated in its own right.
Virginia — by winning a late-stage NCAA Tournament game thanks to an officiating error — joins Georgia Tech from 1990 as a team which caught a break but made the most of it.
Georgia Tech fans — like the fans of any other team in any sport, anywhere and anytime — can look at the larger workings of history and say that for all the rough luck they endured, for all the gut punches and the misery and the unfairness of it all, they deserved at least one Final Four in that era of Yellow Jacket basketball. Bobby Cremins’ career certainly deserved a Final Four. That 1990 Southeast Regional semifinal against Michigan State, in which Kenny Anderson’s shot was released after the horn sounded (at a time when college basketball did not yet have tenths of seconds on game clocks or red lights near the backboard), was the fates’ way of paying back Cremins for all the other March Madness journeys in which Georgia Tech met an unhappy ending.
You’re damn right Cremins deserved a Final Four, much as this Virginia program deserved what it achieved. The missed double-dribble against Ty Jerome was someone’s way of paying back the Cavaliers for the brutal luck they endured in previous seasons. I don’t think Georgia Tech fans are really thrilled for Virginia; I am merely saying that there is something in UVA’s title Georgia Tech fans can relate to.
Virginia Tech fans — while DEFINITELY not happy that UVA has won a national title — can look at where UVA basketball was 10 years ago and hope that Mike Young can steadily build the Hokies to a Final Four level. Young is not likely to hop to another job. If he is coaching 10 years from today — much as Tony Bennett is coaching the Hoos 10 years after he first came to Charlottesville in 2009 — that will tell everyone in the ACC that Virginia Tech is in a good place, despite the exit of Buzz Williams.
Virginia’s title shows that a great coach can make everything come together. Are you listening, Boston College and Wake Forest?
Virginia’s championship — with Tony Bennett finally overcoming so many rough March moments the past five years — shows that Chris Mack’s time could be just around the corner at Louisville.
The Hoos’ national title shows that programs which keep knock, knock, knocking on the door can eventually knock the door down. Florida State and Leonard Hamilton need that reminder today. Mike Brey and Notre Dame can use that reminder as well.
Virginia’s national title — and its run to a first Final Four in 35 years — shows North Carolina State fans that a program which enjoyed supremely luminous moments in the early 1980s, and has forgotten what that feeling is like, can reclaim it. Kevin Keatts might be more confident on April 9, 2019, that he can recapture the Jim Valvano standard of quality in Raleigh. Tony Bennett has obviously eclipsed what coach Terry Holland and program icon Ralph Sampson achieved in the early 1980s.
Pittsburgh was a No. 1 seed at the start of this decade. Miami made a Sweet 16 just three years ago. Clemson made the Sweet 16 last year. So did Syracuse. North Carolina lost as a No. 1 seed in the Sweet 16, which Tony Bennett and UVA endured in 2014, when they began to realize how tough it was to go all the way in this tournament.
The other 14 ACC programs currently looking up at Virginia can all draw a valuable lesson from what the Hoos achieved.
ACC fans don’t have to like the fact that the Cavaliers are champions, but their programs can all derive something of value from this journey, in 2020 and beyond.
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