I don’t know how, but the UVA Basketball team, left for dead a few weeks ago – seriously, it wasn’t a sure bet that the ‘Hoos would even make the ACC Tournament – not only gets to go to Charlotte, but it gets a bye into the second round.
It doesn’t feel deserved, after the listless 84-70 loss at Syracuse on Saturday night – that bad, bad Syracuse team never trailed, and led by double-digits for the final 28:41.
Ron Sanchez talked after the game about it being Syracuse’s Senior Night, as if that would make a difference – the Syracuse rotation has five seniors, and four of them transferred in this year (the fifth transferred in last year).
No, it wasn’t the emotion of Senior Night for a bunch of guys who’ve been on campus for six months.
Last night’s Virginia team just made last night’s Syracuse team look like Pearl Washington, Derrick Coleman and Carmelo Anthony, is what happened.
ICYMI
OK, so, going forward – Georgia Tech, on Wednesday.
I have to admit, didn’t realize Georgia Tech had 10 ACC wins this year until, like, yesterday.
I only paid attention to them ahead of the game in JPJ on Feb. 8, and they didn’t look good in that one.
Virginia won, 75-61, and it never felt like there was doubt to how that one was going to end up.
Whoever wins on Wednesday in Charlotte gets top-seeded Duke on Thursday.
ICYMI
Duke isn’t a good matchup, to say the least, for either of the teams in the 8-9 game – Georgia Tech lost by 26 at home, Virginia lost by 18 at home.
Let’s just say, though, for the sake of argument, that lightning strikes.
Get past Duke, and the other side of the bracket is the 4-5 – Wake Forest is the four seed, North Carolina the five.
For posterity, I’ll throw in the 12-13 matchup between Notre Dame and Pitt, the winner there advancing to play UNC on Wednesday.
The ‘Hoos beat Wake and Pitt, both on the road, and lost to Carolina (road) and Notre Dame (at home).
I don’t know how we possibly get past Duke – a flu bug? food poisoning? – but if that happens, Friday is doable.
Looking ahead, then, to the final: it’s the 2-3 bracket, Louisville is the two seed, Clemson the three.
Both beat the bejeebies out of Virginia, Louisville doing so twice.
The 7-10-15 teams playing into the Louisville side are Stanford (seven), Virginia Tech (10) and Cal (15); the 6-11-14 teams playing into Clemson are SMU (six), Florida State (11) and Syracuse (14).
Virginia’s record against that collection: 2-6.
I mean, if you get that far, that means you’ve already beaten Duke, so maybe all bets would be off at that point.
I still, for the life of me, don’t know how NC State did it last year – OK, I do: Isaac McKneely, poor guy, missed the front end of a one-and-one with 5.1 seconds left on Friday night.
iMac makes even just the first one, State fires Kevin Keatts last March, not this March.
The arc of the basketball universe is long, and it bends toward never making sense.
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Chris Graham
