I couldn’t believe that I let myself say it out loud. “OK, I’m willing to concede it, now. It’s over,” I said to my friend and fellow sportswriter, Scott German, who has been covering UVa. sports with me for Augusta Free Press for the past 10 years, and has a history with UVa. media dating back more than 30 years.
(Scott covered both UVa. Final Fours, in 1981 and 1984. The latter one was in Seattle. Scott will travel as long as it involves orange and blue.)
But neither of us had been to an ACC Tournament Championship Game with a UVa. team in the lead in the closing seconds. The only time that had happened previously was 1976. I was 4 years old, and because my sister had had some issues at birth that were treated at the UVa. Children’s Hospital, I’d already decided that I was going to go to college at the University of Virginia, at least that’s what my mother tells me, though I’d not yet grasped what that would mean as far as my sports allegiances were concerned.
The word heartache best describes it. Lots of good teams, lots of big wins, more big losses, plenty of that heartache. Boston Red Sox fans had nothing on us, and of course now the Sox are baseball royalty. But to be a UVa. basketball fan means having to strain to remember the good years, spanning 1980-1995, with two Final Fours, three Elite Eights and two more Sweet Sixteens part of the pedigree, because that can seem like so long ago.
OK, so it is so long ago. Since 1995, the program has been to four NCAA Tournaments, and won one NCAA game. And 1995 also happened to be the last year, going into 2014, that a Virginia team played on a Saturday in an ACC Tournament.
The 2014 ‘Hoos blazed past Friday and Saturday into Sunday, and a matchup with Duke, which was the tournament’s #3 seed. Virginia, upstart that it is, came in as the #1, but Duke was favored going into the game, with projected #1 NBA Draft pick Jabari Parker raising his level of play to finally make him look like the next LeBron James that we’d been told he will be since his junior year in high school.
Virginia was in control of this one from the outset, leading by as many as nine in the first half, and even when Duke took a brief lead (following a flurry by Parker), it still seemed like the game was Virginia’s to be won.
And yet it was still close, still just a four-point game as the clock approached the two-minute mark. And then Joe Harris, a fresh-faced youngster even as a senior on the team, one of the building blocks of Tony Bennett’s reconstruction of Virginia basketball, hit a three on a fast break to up the lead to seven.
Scott, a writer first, fan second, reversed those roles on that three. “It’s over! It’s over!” he said repeatedly.
I had to be the one to remind him. “How much UVa. basketball have we watched over the years? It’s never over. Look at this …”
Duke got the ball on a fast break to Quinn Cook, literally 10 feet from our seats on press row.
“This kid is going to make this three,” I said. And he did. Lead back down to four.
But Malcolm Brogdon scored on a layup on Virginia’s next possession, and Duke would come unraveled, with Rasheed Sulaimon getting a technical foul in the final minute, and Coach K conceding the game a few seconds later.
It was just before Coach K conceded that I finally was able to concede what was about to happen.
“I’m willing to concede it now. It’s over.” With 15.1 seconds on the clock, and Virginia up nine, with the ball.
It was over. The crowd, startlingly pro-UVa, started to sense it. The final buzzer sounded. The confetti started to rain down from the top of the Greensboro Coliseum.
Coach Tony Bennett had talked the day before about getting a text from Wally Walker, the star of the 1976 team that had won that lone ACC Tournament Championship, with the simple message: “We want company.” Now Walker has company.
The players on the floor, a generation away from being glints in their parents’ eyes, knew what it all meant to the fan base, even if they didn’t have their history right. I interviewed reserve point guard Teven Jones and forward Anthony Gill, and both referenced how the program had not won an ACC Tournament since Ralph Sampson, who in fact didn’t walk on Grounds until three years after the 1976 tournament win.
I mentioned that I was 4 and didn’t remember the win. Coach Bennett was just 7, and likely had never heard the words “University of Virginia” uttered in succession to that point in his life.
Bennett had talked on Saturday about how often he heard about 1976. A lot, sums up his answer. He had begun to feel like he was at the game, alums reminded him of it so often.
Now there’s a new set of memories to share. The faithful across the Commonwealth and the UVa. diaspora are no doubt updating computer and bank passwords already to include the numbers 2-0-1-4 in them.
I even had the chance to pay a little something forward on the way home last night. We stopped at a McDonald’s on 29 halfway between Danville and Lynchburg. Snow was ahead of us, and we needed something to steel us up for the rough rest of the trip home.
At the table opposite us was a young family – mom, dad and two young children, looked to be ages 4 and 6.
My media access had gotten me on the floor for the ceremonies, which both seemed to go on forever and also seemed to fly by way, way too fast.
On my way out, I picked up a few scoops of confetti from the floor.
“Here you go,” I said, handing over the confetti to the youngsters. “I have more, but I thought this might be something to remember today by.”
It was run-of-the-mill confetti, and very easy to lose, I’m sure.
“I first became a UVa. fan when I was about your age. Go ‘Hoos!”
I just hope they don’t have to wait as long to see their next one as I did …
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