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This installment of All Sports Discussion’s coverage of the Virginia Cavaliers at the 2019 Final Four deals with a “quiet” fact, the kind of fact which is easy to miss in the larger celebration of the Hoos’ return to college basketball’s biggest stage.
Would it be so much more significant in a larger sense if Virginia’s Final Four drought had been 30 years, since 1989, instead of 35, since 1984? In many ways, it would not have been earth-shaking. (Side note: Virginia made the 1989 Elite Eight, so this almost WAS a 30-year drought.)
However, those five years do mean something notable: This will be Virginia’s first Final Four in both the shot-clock and 3-point eras of college basketball. Neither reform had arrived in 1984. The shot clock was introduced in the 1985-1986 season, the 3-point shot in 1986-1987.
The Purdue team Virginia defeated in the Elite Eight also would have made its debut in the shot-clock and 3-point eras had the Boilermakers finished that game a week ago in Louisville.
Georgia (1983) sits in the same boat as Purdue, the boat UVA finally escaped from. Iowa (1980), DePaul (1979), Notre Dame (1978), Rutgers (1976), and Florida State (1972) are other power conference programs which have yet to play a Final Four game in the shot-clock and 3-point eras. Other examples exist from the more distant past, such as Iowa State (1944) and Baylor (1950).
It is fascinating to contemplate how different the history of college basketball would have been if merely the shot clock OR the 3-point shot (let alone both!) had existed earlier.
1985 Villanova and 1983 North Carolina State — two huge upsets which created the legend of March Madness — very likely would not have existed with either of those two reforms.
None of this has no direct or immediate bearing on the 2019 Virginia team and how it plays Auburn on Saturday. It does mean, however, that this game marks — in a profound way — the new era Tony Bennett has brought to Charlottesville. No matter what happens in this game or at this Final Four, Virginia basketball has been able to turn the page. It can now build a Final Four history on the other side of the shot-clock and 3-point changes of the mid-1980s.
We will see how well the Hoos write the next chapter of their story at college basketball’s ultimate weekend party.
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