Death, taxes, and people within our own fanbase marginalizing our title run.
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I think win probability is dumb, but just to make a visual point. In each of the Purdue, Auburn, and TTU games, the win probably was in our favor, often significantly so, for the majority of each game and nearly the entirety of the 2nd half. We should have won all 3 games.
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I think the greatest argument against āour natty was luckā BS doesnāt have anything to do with 2019. Just point to the 5 years before that. 2019 was merely a culmination of what had already been occurring. A tangible achievement that verified something everyone in the sport already knew
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And everybody knows it wasnāt unlucky at all that those games were closeā¦ it was simply because Huff didnāt play as much as he had the last third of the regular season for some still inexplicable reasonā¦. 
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Thanks for posting these. Supports what we all saw in those games:
- Edwards going unconscious on good defense just to hang around. I wouldnāt bet my house he could have replicated that in a rematch.
- Tyās fourth foul leading to a quick erasure of a double-digit lead in the Auburn game. Weād been cruising all game long prior to that.
- UVA building multiple double-digit leads against a peaking non-vanilla defense that never led by more than four at any point.
A lot of writers amplified the lucky/close-shave angle after the fact (the shot, the foul and double dribble, and the Moretti turnover) but there was plenty of countervailing evidence in each that we had the better team.
Thats resilience and fortitude where I come from.
Disclaimer: I come from Virginia.
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Iād tell you to never change, but Iām confident you never will.
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Just look at the games Huff played more than 9 minutes and look at the scoresā¦ against good teams tooā¦
In the madness look at the scores of the Gardner Webb and Oklahoma games when Huff enteredā¦
Yes - I wonāt ever change that opinionā¦ but at the same time his benching gave us all a tremendous run of heart palpitations we never would have had otherwise!!!
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And now the Memphis coach got fired because he stopped playing him. 
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FWIW, I see why people donāt think itās an argument worth making because itās re-litigating the optimal result (and even more so that itās not relevant to our current staff).
But had we not won the natty, not playing Huff would have certainly been viewed as a mistake and was likely one reason some of the games were closer than they should have been. Fortunately, thatās not a timeline we had to experience.
It also forecasted a strategic blind spot that would follow in years after.
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CTBs tenure was marked with so many things done at an elite level - and yet there were some glaring things that were clearly mistakes that we stubbornly stuck with (and lent to some great debates/is probably why my website exists).
I wonder what Odomās blind spots will end up being - because everyone has them.
May we be lucky enough (as we were with CTB) to have him be SO good that fans rabidly defend his errors because the rest is fantastic.
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Yeah, itās so boring watch a winning team.
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We won that Natty because of the playersā¦ I give CTB all the credit in the world for what he did at UVA, but he was a disaster post Richie Mckay in rotations. That Iron Man approach killed us every postseasonā¦ poor playable depth, worn out guys, talent drain with the transfers. If McKay had stayed, our historic run would have continued IMO.
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Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I donāt think Curtis Staples is really qualified for the job and Iām perfectly happy with Wally handling the big picture financial side while Griff handles some of the tactical and transactional stuff like it seems like is happening now.
Itās too important of a job to give to a former player just for PR reasons.
Might be biased by my natural inclination that Hootie should be viewed as clueless at all times.
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I think it would be cool to find a place for Staples in the basketball administration but the GM gig seems way too important
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Except we do have a GM, or at least we have staff filling that kind of role, just no one with that official title.
Hootie being Hootie.
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Is Hootie actually a journalist? He really goes on these homebuy hookup jaunts like a real PR flack.
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I get that Tony isnāt perfect. I get that people have disagreements with the way he did certain things. I get that everyone is free to voice their opinions and itās fun to debate. What I donāt get is why weāre so unshakeably (often smugly) sure weāre right and heās wrong. I mean, Tony at least has a long record of success to lend credibility to his judgment. Isnāt there a nontrivial chance that weāre the ones who are wrong?
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I think a good question to ask would be: Why is it that schools like Texas Tech, Houston, Purdue, Auburn, Michigan St, Gonzaga, etc. etc. are consistently successful but post 2019 UVA dropped off a clip and began to get regularly blown out?
Those other programs were able to retain players and add good players and maintain their cultures/schemes. Of course I appreciate the natty/wouldnāt trade it for the world but that isnāt relevant in terms of talking about consistently over years. In fact you would figure after a national title there would be tremendous momentum. And an honest truth is that we have been nowhere close to the program our brethren have been, even with a horrendous ACC holding us up.
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Heās a retired guy with a blog and podcast.
In his day, he was the local beat writer and then a columnist who opined on the Hoos and wrote nostalgia stories.
My first memory of Hootie was his stumping for Mike Cubbage to get the baseball job to replace Dennis Womack and then hating that we hired some no name guy from Notre Dameās staff.
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