Would you rather UVA never again wins a championship, or wins one championship every decade going forward but you have to pretend you’re a VPI fan for the rest of your life (no one can ever know the truth)
Interesting conversation starter, and here’s my take. I’m not too interested in the ranking. Yeah, I just did that. We aren’t number 1. That’s nova with 2 titles. I also don’t think a serious argument could be made for us being outside the top 15. So are we 6, 8, 12 in some subjective power ranking? Doesn’t really matter to me.
I do, however, care about the underlying issues of this argument because I know some folks will use it in their typical way to disparage the program Tony Bennett has built for us and we are very lucky to enjoy.
The heart of the issue here is sustained success and everybody is going to define that differently. Personally, I don’t weight the post season all that highly until the final four. I watch 98% of our games and it takes a truly extraordinary circumstance for me to miss one. A win is great and a loss sucks, regular or post season. But we sure do win a lot of games, and as a fan that is pretty damn cool. The Ohio loss didn’t sting that much more than the JMU loss. In my opinion, winning the ACC regular season is a far better accomplishment, especially in terms of sustained success, than making a sweet 16. Again, I watch every game I possibly can. And we win a really awesome percentage of those games. In the regular season we are winning those games against Carolina (usually) and Duke (sometimes) and some lesser rivals. Since Tony took over, we generally have dominated what has historically been the best conference in college basketball. To me, beating Carolina in a conference game outweighs winning a hypothetical 2nd round tournament game, especially if we aren’t really contending for a title.
Now, I acknowledge that on average our post season record has been disappointing. We’ve lost far too many games we definitely should not have lost. I don’t think many would argue the point.
That said, I think that in the aggregate our post season record is at least satisfactory.
Why?
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I sit right around this as well. I will say the loss to Syracuse in tourney was as close to inexcusable as it gets but you gotta remember the other team wants to win too
To your point being able to enjoy the entire season, especially in connference, and winning big game after big games is where I want to be.
in 19 I said that I hoped we lost in ACC tourney to lay it all out there in the NCAA tourney. having that sort of luxury tells me we are in that top 10 and I could care less where
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First time at an ATP event in a while … fun
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Football stepping up their Twitter game:
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I really don’t like redshirts (for most guards/wings and any big who doesn’t need remedial skill or body development), and I never have, and I think the new transfer rules make them an even worse idea. That said, I really don’t want to keep mucking up other threads just because a RS discussion is like a red cape in front of a bull, to me.
Instead, I will come here and rant and anyone who wants to yell at me and tell me they’re actually good for whatever made-up reason can do so here, and maybe that will be a small mitzvah to the world.
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In my view, the issue is that sitting at the end of the bench is a wasted year. But the reason the kid is sitting at the end of the bench all year, and never got any PT (vs the Non-RS scenario of PT in cupcakes, at the end of blowouts, for a cameo in real minutes) is BECAUSE of the artificial constraints of the RS year.
How often has the final year of eligibility in a voluntary RS paid off for both UVa and for the kid? Devon Hall. And he reclassed.
How often did it pay off for Villanova? I can’t think of any.
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Your not always redshirting a kid to get a payoff in the last year. Some kids just need to completely focus on the weightroom and skill development for a year
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I hear this a lot. And I’ve never understood why weightroom/skill development requires zero PT as compared to just minimal PT.
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Cause some kids arent ready physically and rarely do all 13 scholarship players play in a rotation.
The question is will they need *5 years in order to be in proper basketball shape, or would *4 years do it?
Would that 5th year just hold back someone else who is more promising but younger?
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If the kid wasn’t promising to some extent there wouldn’t be a redshirt candidate. Also the younger player and the redshirt can co exist. Multiple players play.
Didn’t it benefit Jay Huff?
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But see this is where I think people conflate: if there’s not enough PT in all games, then the kid shouldn’t play. And minimal PT would mean the kid gets to focus elsewhere (skills, weightroom, etc.).
But if zero PT isn’t a precondition for skill development (and I don’t think it is). And if the reason isn’t the 5th year … then … you agree with me? 
No. also I notice you are very quick to assumptions in general.
I may be wrong, but with most programs (including Virginia), isn’t it ultimately the player’s decision? So the coach sits him down before the season and says, “Look, given who’s playing ahead of you, I honestly don’t see you getting anything more than garbage minutes this year. Given that, what do you want to do?” If the kid feels like he wants to save a season of eligibility, I’m cool with that. It’s both about what it does for the program and what it does for the player (who might want to take a graduate year at WKY or something).
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Emphasis added:
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Yes - the same way it’s your decision to attend a work meeting when your boss tells you should attend. We all have free will. But kids we recruit are smart and they know when their authority figures are pushing them in a certain direction.
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I’m thinking of it the opposite way. If I’m a first-year and I know I’m only going to get like 12 total minutes of garbage time all season, I would prefer to hang on to that year of eligibility – not bc the coach is pushing me to, but because who knows what the future might bring. In a case where a kid doesn’t want to redshirt but gets redshirted anyway, well yeah, that would be bad.
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