Let's make one thing very clear right now. Tomorrow's men's NCAA Tournament game against Albany is the biggest sports event in the last four years for Virginia. And if the Cavaliers win, Sunday's contest against the winner of Tennessee/Long Beach State will be the new biggest game.
With apologies to men's and women's lacrosse, men's and women's soccer, and even possibly football, no other sports game or tournament in the last four years even comes close. The NCAA Tournament is the granddaddy of college sports. Say what you want about the importance of college football BCS games, but the fact is that a relatively small number of schools take part each season. The Big Dance, however, features (very arguably) the 65 best men's basketball teams in the country, each putting its season on the line day after day until only one team remains standing to cut down the nets in Atlanta. Glorious!
For Virginia, this tournament caps what truly has been a dream season. Much has been written in this newspaper and elsewhere about the incredible turnaround Virginia coach Dave Leitao has orchestrated in just two seasons in Charlottesville. But the stats are worth repeating. Picked to finish dead last in the ACC a year ago, Leitao and the Cavs finished 7-9, good for 7th. This season, after being picked by ACC beat writers to finish 8th, Virginia compiled a crazy 11-5 record, good enough for share of the ACC regular season title with No. 8 North Carolina.
As spectacular as this regular season has been for Virginia, men's college basketball in 2007 is all about the NCAA Tournament, plain and simple. Just ask my hometown Kansas Jayhawks, who have won the last two regular season Big 12 titles, yet regularly face (deserved) criticism for laying a pair of first-round eggs to vastly lower-seeded teams in the last two NCAA tournaments.
It has often been said that there are two main aspects of coaching: teaching and playing. Through the rapid development of many of Virginia's players as well as the team's regular season successes, Leitao has proven himself an excellent teacher capable of extracting the most out of his players. Tomorrow, however, Leitao will have his first opportunity to show off the "playing" aspect of coaching. By playing, I mean the ability to prepare players for a one-and-done scenario and have his team ready to play on the nation's biggest stage.
Now here's the fun part -- and I guarantee I'm the only one saying this right now -- I think this year's Virginia squad could be a great fit for the NCAA Tournament. Two things have caused Virginia to struggle this season: 1) teams with great big men (à la Stanford) and 2) teams that get to play Virginia more than once.
Follow me on this one. First, none of Virginia's potential opponents this weekend feature dominant big men. In fact, they are all guard-oriented teams, against the likes of which Virginia has had success all season. Second, Virginia's worst conference losses came on the road at Miami and Wake Forest and against N.C. State in the ACC Tournament. The common thread between these three losses (other than being away from home) is that all of these teams had seen Virginia before -- and in the Wolfpack's case, twice. Leitao said it best a few weeks ago when he mentioned that scouting reports had started to catch up with Singletary and Reynolds and said the team needed to be more creative in getting them shots and offering more support on the offensive end.
Well guess what Wahoo Nation, scouting reports in the NCAA Tournament are terrible, especially in the first couple rounds. Teams scramble for game tape, talk to coaches who have played against their opponents and try to put some semblance of a game plan together in two or three days -- quite a departure from repeat conference matchups in which coaches know the other teams in the league as well as their own.
These two factors make me pretty freakin' excited for this weekend's games. I'll be in Columbus cheering on the Cavaliers (silently) from the press box. Check back Monday for a recap of this weekend's big wins, my thoughts on how Virginia played, as well as a column about what it's like to be at the NCAA Tournament.
Get excited Virginia. After all, none of us have ever done this before.
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