Joe Lunardi can eat a, you know. So can Jay Bilas. The ESPN haters had Virginia out of the NCAA Tournament field. The actual selection committee, whose opinion is the one that matters, extended an invite.
The ‘Hoos (23-10) will face Colorado State (22-10) in a First Four game in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday night.
The winner of that game will face Texas (20-12), the #7 seed in the Midwest, on Thursday.
UVA is one of five ACC teams to get NCAA bids – along with North Carolina (#1 seed, West), Duke (#4 seed, South), Clemson (#6 seed, West) and NC State (#11 seed, South).
Left on the outside looking in: Pitt, which won at Virginia in February, but was almost certainly set back by its awful non-conference schedule (ranked 314th nationally) and its two Quad 3 losses – to Missouri, which finished with an 8-24 record, and Syracuse, which despite a 19-12 record was ranked 84th in the NET and had an average computer ranking of 73.7.
After the bracket gurus like Lunardi had Virginia falling out of the field following its 73-65 OT loss to NC State in the ACC Tournament semifinals on Friday, turns out Virginia wasn’t quite as close to the cutline as you would think.
Yes, the ‘Hoos are in the First Four, but they’re the highest-rated of the Last Four In – the other at-large play-in game has Boise State (22-10) facing Colorado (24-10) on Wednesday for the #10 seed in the South.
Bilas earned his shout-out in this column for his lengthy rant on the ESPN selection show about how there are several teams more deserving of an NCAA Tournament bid than Virginia.
Gotta say, the tears of Bilas and fellow Duke alum Seth Davis, who expressed a similar sentiment on the CBS selection broadcast, taste delicious tonight.
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Chris Graham
