🫧 Bubble Watch

@Raleigh_Hoo is keeping us up to date on his projected tourney field, and what UVA needs to do to hear their name called.

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Sailor Neptune Bubbles GIF by Miranda Javid

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This is very well written and thoughtful but I hate that I’m reading it

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Great work @Raleigh_Hoo! Am I overthinking it or would CTB’s legacy take somewhat of a hit for missing the tournament twice in 3 years? Really hoping (and believing) he can figure something out with this group down the stretch.

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Poop emoji this entire thread

Take this mans cake day away HGN

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I don’t think it matters that much if he turns it around and rips off another big. What does get a little iffy is that next years team might be much worse. So missing it three times in four years isn’t great

Also when the run goes Covid, lose to 13 seed, miss tournament, lose to 13 seed, miss tournament, things are pretty bad legacy wise. Throw in another missed tournament and it’s abysmal

How do you view Gary Williams’ legacy? Because that’s Tony’s comp right now.

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Except of course for the whole, you know, sorority girls thing

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Gary Williams made two final fours, but it’s a lot easier to get talent into college park. I feel a little down on where the program is right now, but what Tony has done he has done with quite a bit of headwind. Some is self imposed, but there are definitely a lot of institutional challenges at UVa that Williams did not deal with at Maryland.

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I’m a bit too young to have an opinion of his full tenure :slight_smile: but the first thing that comes to mind is the 2002 championship, and I do think Maryland fans consider him a legend overall

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It is too bad the 19-20 team didnt get a chance. That team was hot and had guys on the team who had just wont a championship and that experience would have helped big in the tournament that year.

The 20-21 team got hurt with the stupid COVID hit and couldnt practice and thus was very ripe for the upset. Take away COVID those would have likely been two good follow up years to the championship and could have kept the momentum going.

I am not sure honestly what to think at this point. I love Tony and am so glad he is leading the program. But it does feel despite star rankings etc, we dont feel the same the last few years as the previous 7/8. We had wave after wave from 13-14 to 20-21 and it feels like it has dried up. We have good players, but just not the overall depth of talent as we did in the past.

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I’m not sure how the 2020-21 team would have done in the NCAAT without the COVID situation, but I’m pretty sure we would have at least won the ACCT.

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That was a weird year. It was the first time in a decade under Bennett that it felt like the sum whole was less than the parts. I have mentioned before but that team had a lot of NBA talent on it and yet never really seemed to gel.

It’s memory-holed, but there was an ACC tourney in 2020, won by FSU:

Thanks John Swofford!

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Look at those champions. They didn’t even break a sweat!

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Some interesting ACC games tonight for us:
VT @ Syracuse - Syracuse has a NET of 85. A blowout win of VT here could move it closer to 75. Syracuse has been playing well lately and has a chance to get their NET to 75 with a strong finish, this would add a Q2 win to our resume. Pull for a Syracuse blowout.

Pitt @ Clemson - The main impact on UVA from this is in the standings. We lose basically any tie scenario with Pittsburgh. If Pitt wins this one, they have a legit chance to win out as their last 3 are @ BC and FSU and NC State at home. Pull for Clemson.

WF @ ND - ND is our lone bad loss but their NET Is up to 140. If that could get to 135 or better our bad loss goes away. WF has a NET of 25, our home win over them is a Q1 win. Probably best case is a narrow ND win. Enough to maybe get them into the top 135 and not enough to knock WF out of the top 30. Pull for close ND win.

NCSU @ FSU - NC State has a NET of 77. A win on the road at FSU would likely get that into the top 75, thus our home win becomes a Q2 win. Pull for NC State.

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How much would the Notre Dame loss becoming Q2 actually help us in terms of net movement? Or should I say removing the Q3 L moves us up how many spots?

Yeah, I’ve also wondered about how the committee looks at the games that are right on the quadrant borders. The team sheet lists the opponent NET, so they should be able to see when a game is right on the edge, but also they are human and have a lot of team sheets to look through.

A marginal change in opponent’s NET shouldn’t make much difference in the Strength of Record metric, since it doesn’t have this quadrant threshold at play.

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Am I wrong in thinking BC might decide our fate?

Assuming a Duke loss and GT win? We haven’t exactly finished strong, and I feel like a bad performance tomorrow night could leave us on the outside looking in.

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