A friend made the t-shirts. Black background. Cool graphic of a basketball player, like one of those superhero posters. “Bryce” on the front. “Walker” on the back.
The family members in attendance wore them.
Then, senior guard Bryce Walker, on his Senior Day, entered the game with under a minute left. He drove to the rim. His family pulled out their phones to record, probably wearing the same big smiles that gleamed a few minutes later as they talked to The Cavalier Daily after the game. Walker scored.
“I’m super happy for him,” Kyndal Walker, Bryce’s sister, said. “He’s a guy who’s worked really hard to be in this position.”
After arriving at Virginia, Walker spent two years as a practice player, having turned down advances from a small crowd of mid-majors. He had always dreamed of this school, this program. Last season he earned a roster spot, something visible to go with his practice court contributions.
“He’s an instrumental part of this program,” senior guard Taine Murray said. “He serves us every day.”
Murray would know. His story is similar in some ways, “the definition” of the program’s fabled five pillars, according to junior guard Isaac McKneely.
Murray and Walker have both played at the same school for four years, something only a small handful of their associates elsewhere in the conference can say. Both have committed to helping the team over their own advancement. All that feels, simply, anachronistic.
“In college basketball today, you see people just transferring as soon as they don’t get what they want,” McKneely said. “But Taine’s really stuck to the grind. He’s made it work.”
Saturday’s Senior Day celebrated that steadfastness. The short ceremony is one that will stick with the pair, something their minds will teleport back to a decade from now, preserved with crystalline clarity. They will always remember it.
Mike Tobey certainly still does. The 2016 graduate, now playing professionally in Spain, even remembers his stat line from that day — which is confusing at first because, for someone who scored in double-digits in 41 games over his career, 15 points does not seem like a particularly enormous number.
Then the eyes pan to another number in the box score.
“The 20 rebounds was the bigger thing,” Tobey said.
Tony Bennett pulled Tobey aside in the week leading up to that game, for a meeting about his career. Tobey’s four years, Bennett knew, had not gone exactly according to plan, the player never seeming to sustain his flashes of potential. But now they had arrived at the “finish line,” Tobey explained. He had nothing to lose.
“Always remember, reckless abandon,” Tobey said, recounting Bennett’s message to him. “Just go play with reckless abandon.”
Tobey did, bulldozing in from every direction for all those rebounds. He played with a freedom, he remembers, to not overthink. It resulted in the best performance of his career.
Murray’s and Walker’s performances ended up not being quite as storybook as Tobey’s. Walker, of course, scored the last-second bucket. But Murray scored zero points in 24 minutes, settling for three rebounds and two assists.
His production has come and gone in spurts. He erupted early this season for 14 points against Memphis and 13 against American, trudged through eight games without scoring more than four points and then gritted his way to 20 against Miami and 10 against Virginia Tech.
His three previous seasons unfolded in similar fashion, explosion and then recession. Overall, though, this season is the best Murray has ever played.
“He's literally just an everyday guy,” Interim Coach Ron Sanchez said. “You never get a different person when Taine walks into the building. He’s the exact same person every day.”
Every day, though, is coming to an end. Senior Day, Murray said, crept up on him and was difficult to prepare for in the intense haze of focus each game brings. He tried not to let things slip by like this.
But this is, in sports, often the way of things. In high school, college, beyond. People tell you to cherish each moment, because it is all going to pass so quickly, and you hardly listen to them, and then suddenly your college career ends and it is you on the other side, you telling that to the youth, you trying to help them see it.
“It’s one of those things where it doesn’t really hit you until a big moment like a Senior Day,” Tobey said. “And then you’re actually walking out there. And you’re like, ‘Woah.’”
Murray and Walker may have had that moment Saturday. They each walked out with their family in tow — Murray’s having traveled roughly 24 hours from New Zealand — and reached the center of the court, collecting a framed jersey then lifting it above their head. A spotlight shone, and the early-arriving fans delivered a loud ovation.
Later, Murray, who started the game, sat alone on the bench for a fleeting moment, waiting for his name to be called, his starting lineup introduction reserved for last. He hardly looked lonely. But one might have thought of the other players who could have flanked him, the guys who transferred out of the program.
Tobey, in his year, graduated with four other seniors or redshirt seniors. Only one of them had played for more than one program.
That continuity is simply not the case anymore, in Charlottesville or elsewhere. Of Virginia’s nine current upperclassmen, five started their careers elsewhere. Players come and go, and that is simply the way of today’s college basketball.
Just not for Murray and Walker. Senior Day celebrated that.
“With NIL and the transfer portal, it seems to have changed so much,” Tobey said. “But I’m sure it still means a lot to those guys.”
Their family travelled 24 hours for this, in Murray’s case. They made t-shirts for this, in Walker’s case. It mattered just as much as it has in the past — and perhaps even more so than it will in the future.
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