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The Virginia Cavaliers — players, coaches, trainers, support staff — are necessarily and completely focused on the Final Four in Minneapolis. They should be. Why would they not be? It’s all business for a team in search of making more history and redefining the way the school is perceived on a national level. The future can wait for everyone in Minnesota right now. The present moment is the only thing which matters.
Of course, I — being a sportswriter — can sit here and type a piece on what Virginia needs to be mindful of in the future: not next year or the year after that, but the next 10 to 12 years.
It is worth asking the question: Where do Virginia fans expect the program to be in 10 years?
Everyone can have a different answer. Plenty of people WILL have a different answer.
My main point of emphasis: I think every UVA fan would like to have a 10-year period in which this 2019 Final Four does not become an isolated moment of supreme success. That would seem to be a reasonable point of agreement between an ACC columnist sitting in Phoenix, Arizona, and a large fan base in Charlottesville.
Plenty of cases exist in which programs make the Final Four after many years of struggle and then continue to make the Final Four. That’s obviously what Virginia would like to achieve. Yet, making the Final Four will make UVA a bigger target. Duke might have underachieved over the past 15 seasons relative to the Final Four, but if Coach K gets on one more hot streak, it will be harder for the Hoos to return to the Final Four on a regular basis.
It is worth pointing out that noticeable breakthroughs don’t always lead to a steady stream of top-tier successes at high-major programs.
Here are a few examples Virginia and its fans will hope to avoid:
Start with DePaul.
Wait a minute — DePaul sucks, you say! Well, in the present moment and in recent times, yes, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s, DePaul was a roaring engine, one of the powerhouses in college basketball. Normally a top-two seed in the NCAA Tournament at a time when the NCAA field was smaller and top-seeded teams had to win only three (not four) games to make the Final Four, DePaul reached the Final Four in 1979. It was overshadowed by Indiana State and Michigan State in the year of the Bird-Magic title game in Salt Lake City, but it returned to the Final Four for the first time in 36 years.
Ray Meyer made the Final Four in Year 1 of his long reign at DePaul in 1943. It took him until 1979 to get back. With Mark Aguirre and Terry Cummings and other future NBA players flowing through the Chicagoland program, it seemed DePaul would return several more times to the Final Four.
It still hasn’t been back, 40 years later. Upset losses in the 1980 and 1981 NCAA Tournaments robbed the program of its momentum.
That’s one example Virginia will try to take note of once this 2019 Final Four is over.
Another more modest example: Oklahoma, particularly under Billy Tubbs but applicable to the program’s past 35 years.
OU made the national title game as a No. 1 seed in 1988. It produced No. 1 seeds in the 1989 and 1990 NCAA Tournaments but lost before the Elite Eight both times. Tubbs never did return to the Final Four.
Oklahoma has made the Final Four three times in the past 31 years, with each of those Final Fours being 14 years apart: 1988, 2002, 2016. If Virginia makes the 2033 Final Four, great… but if the Hoos don’t make more Final Fours before then, this era will not have realized its potential. That is another example to file away.
Third and closer to home, West Virginia is another distinct example of a Final Four “island” on which a program can be stranded.
West Virginia made its first Final Four in 51 years when it busted through in 2010. Bob Huggins has still done solid work in Morgantown, but the Mountaineers have generally not gained NCAA Tournament seeds higher than 4 or 5. They did get a 3 seed in 2016, but lost in the first round.
West Virginia is instructive in that it shows why seeds matter.
Virginia basketball might not continue to crank out No. 1 or No. 2 seeds over the next 10 years, but the relevant aspect of the West Virginia story — for a program which has not returned to the Final Four in the nine years since that 2010 trip to the Big Show — is that in a program’s better seasons, a high seed needs to exist. One should not be expected to be a No. 1 seed every year or even most years. If Virginia is a 6 seed in 2022 and a 4 seed in 2025, that is not a crisis. What matters — and will matter — is that when the program flourishes in a given season, that act of flourishing needs to be a 2 or 1 seed, not a 4. West Virginia generally hasn’t been able to max out in that fashion, and that’s why the Mountaineers run into the Gonzagas (2017) or Villanovas (2018) of the world in Sweet 16 games.
Virginia’s draw in this tournament was favorable. The seeding mattered. UVA should not be expected to make the Final Four every year, but it is reasonable to expect a Final Four once every five years or so. Doing that means continuing to get high seeds when regular seasons produce teams capable of achieving richly. West Virginia’s better teams haven’t been able to get to the top two seed lines, with the exception of that 2010 group which made its way to the Final Four.
Virginia can’t be left on a Final Four island once 2019 ends: ask the people in Chicago, Oklahoma, and Morgantown.
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