The UVA Basketball team didn’t really cost the ACC a couple of million dollars over the next six years by putting Wake Forest out of its NCAA Tournament bubble misery on Wednesday night.
This Wake team seemed destined to find a way to play itself into irrelevancy.
Tonight was just the opportunity in front of the Wake kids.
A bad Virginia team, coming off a pair of blowout losses, went into a practically empty Lawrence Joel Coliseum – Wake fans, such as there are Wake Forest basketball fans, must have seen this coming – and played from ahead to an 83-75 win.
It’s a Quad 3 loss for Wake Forest (19-9, 11-6 ACC, NET: 64, one spot better than George Mason).
Is it finally time to move on from Steve Forbes, who is about to miss the Big Dance for a fifth straight year?
(Answer: who cares?)
Credit to Ron Sanchez and his group, which played like the team that had something on the line, in a game in which all it had on the line was pride.
UVA (14-14, 7-10 ACC) is really just playing out the string, hoping, modestly, to finish over .500, in a tough season that began with long-time coach Tony Bennett bailing, but not before leaving his long-time right-hand man a murderous schedule, and a depleted roster.
Seriously, the focus at this point is just on getting the season over so we can hire the next full-time head coach.
(Spoiler alert: it ain’t going to be Ron Sanchez.)
Back-to-back blowout losses to Duke and UNC last week seemed to portend an end-of-season fizzle, but the Cavaliers played Wednesday night like the team with its season on the line.
UVA took the lead for good at the 11:18 mark of the first half on a three by Isaac McKneely, who finished with 27 points (10-of-14 FG, 4-of-7 3FG, 3-of-3 FT) and five assists.
Yeah, the Virginia team that came in with a sub-.500 record, nothing to play for but Virginia Pride, led for the final 30-plus minutes.
The ‘Hoos led by as many as 14, withstood a Wake run that got it back to two under seven minutes to go, and … coasted home.
Doesn’t say much for Forbes and his group, which has now lost three of four – to FSU, NC State and now UVA – after a fool’s gold 18-6 start.
It’s going to take a minor miracle for the Deacs to get an at-large bid at this point, with just one meaningful game left on the regular-season schedule – at #3 Duke, which has a 63-56 win over Wake in Lawrence Joel already this season, on March 3.
Get that one, and hold serve in Quad 3 games with Notre Dame and Georgia Tech, and …
It would still take a deep run in Charlotte in the ACC Tournament.
At which point, how does Forbes keep his job, except because of general apathy?
The official attendance tonight in the 14,665-seat Lawrence Joel Coliseum was 7,851.
Which is impressive with the entirety of the upper deck a sea of empties.
Guess the folks down there in Winston-Salem didn’t foresee anything good coming out of this one.
(College basketball is still a business, which only works when people are willing to pay to be a part of it.)
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Chris Graham
