Athletic Director Craig Littlepage before Virginia’s home game against Wake Forest Feb. 6: “We’re gonna win the regular season in the ACC.”

Was it an outrageous jingoistic plea for support from the student body? Maybe. Was it a justified remark, considering Virginia then was tied for first place in the ACC with — guess who, Duke — with a 5-2 conference record? Perhaps.

But I don’t need to remind you that since the Curse of Littlepage, the Cavaliers have proceeded to lose seven straight games. I think the best explanation for this slide off the mountain top was provided 91 years ago by W.B. Yeats in “The Second Coming.”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …

Did rising expectations, as evidenced by Littlepage’s pre-game speech, affect the team’s psyche and precipitate anarchy in Charlottesville?

“I would hope not — that’s the disappointing part, we got off to a good start,” coach Tony Bennett said. “We played some teams at home — we were playing better — and then now that it has slipped, that’s the hard thing.”

To his credit, Bennett has tried to keep his team on an even-keel throughout the season.

At Virginia’s preseason Media Day, Bennett was asked if he thought the program was in a ‘transition year.’ Here’s what he had to say:

“Do I wanna win? Absolutely. Our focus first [is] on qualitative versus quantitative — we have to be so geared on doing things the right way and building, have a vision for the long haul — that’s what I want. So if there’s short term success, great … But I’m realistic — there’s some ground to cover, and we got work to do.”

At 5-2, Bennett did not declare himself leader of the Free World or pronounce Virginia as ACC champions. He understood his team’s limitations and vulnerabilities, always sure to mention its microscopic margin of error.

“The kids have responded, still very early, but the fact that they’ve responded and bounced back from a tough loss, both times — and just have battled — it’s good, it’s a good place to be in,” Bennett said after the Feb. 3 59-47 victory against N.C. State that, for many people, was a sign of a potential NCAA tournament berth. “But by no means does that mean we’ve arrived. I just want them to keep improving.”

That last part hasn’t quite panned out. But the point is that you were misguided if you thought Bennett was the Messiah, that Virginia would stay atop the ACC standings forever or that it would inevitably reach the Big Dance. So though few would have predicted a seven-game losing streak following Virginia’s season sweep of the second-worst team in the conference, you also would have been naïve to assume that an eight-game win streak that featured only one road game and included a victory against the New Jersey Institute of Technology — or, as it’s more commonly known, the-team-that-before-this-season-hadn’t-won-a-game-since-2006 — proved the team was bent on glory.

What was the ‘center’ that held Virginia together through its first 20 games? Bennett has always emphasized the need for Virginia’s defense to keep it in the game, but even the son of legendary defensive genius Dick Bennett has acknowledged that the team must knock down open looks to be competitive. It’s a telling statistic that Virginia has not eclipsed the 40 percent shooting mark since that game against the Wolfpack, which, in case you were wondering, came around the same time dinosaurs hit the deck.

It also does not help that Mike Scott has officially become an endangered species. Zero points during his last two games do not scream “post presence.” And when Sylven Landesberg is out because of injury — well, you get the idea.

Even a healthy Landesberg wouldn’t have made a difference in this game. As entertaining — you know, in a sadistic way — as it was to watch Jeff Jones attempt to guard preseason ACC Player of the Year Kyle Singler, who scored 21 points on 6-of-10 shooting, dropping triples and slipping through holes in the defense at will, Landesberg isn’t known exactly for his tenacious defense, either.

Duke also has been effective in limiting its opponent’s best players to poor shooting games: It held Clemson’s Trevor Booker to 4-of-11, Wake Forest’s Ish Smith to 3-of-12, Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney to 5-of-19, Connecticut’s Jerome Dyson to 6-of-19 and North Carolina’s … Oh, I forgot, the Tar Heels are lacking in the “good player” department.

But the best evidence that Landesberg’s presence would have had little effect on the outcome? He played in each of Virginia’s six previous losing efforts, three of which the Cavaliers lost by an average margin of 20.3 points.

But it won’t do any good to go on ad infinitum about Virginia’s woes. Yesterday night’s game against the Blue Devils crystallized Virginia’s current problems but also provided a model for what Bennett envisions for the future. Watching film of this game, Bennett will see a Duke squad that spaces the floor with deadly three-point range, goes four-deep in the post including the brothers Plumlee — who Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has called “a gift from the Polish gods” (they hail from Warsaw, Indiana) — and seemingly plays with general foreknowledge of where each individual player is going on the court, not unlike those weird spheres that emerge from characters’ chests in “Donnie Darko.”

“I didn’t think we were in Duke’s caliber,” Bennett said. “That’s a program you aspire to be like eventually — to have that kind of program, that’s the measuring stick.”

But Bennett has hope with the young Jontel Evans, who continues to impress even though he was stripped of his starting job. His three steals, in addition to Jerome Meyinsse’s career night, were the highlight of the game for the Cavaliers. Bennett has a highly touted incoming recruiting class, headed by 6-foot-9, 212-pound power forward James Johnson. And I’ll bet my life savings that Landesberg will come back for at least one more year. Though the sophomore was named to the Naismith Award Midseason list, he has unfinished business at Virginia, and his stock will likely rise next year as the team progresses.

Indeed, though things may have fallen apart for the Cavaliers, a new day is on the horizon. Yeats envisions the closing of a 2,000-year cycle but also a new beginning. Who Virginia’s half-lion, half-man will be remains to be seen, but Bennett has begun to forge a new future for Virginia basketball.

Before the season began, he shared a bit of wisdom he inherited from his father.

“My dad said, ‘I’ve gotta recruit a group of guys I can lose with before I can win,’” Bennett said. “The point was, you’re going to go through some adversity through this building process, and you’d better have the kind of players that, whether it’s going really good or not really good, they’re just going to stay together. Because eventually, when they get mature, some good things are gonna happen.”

For now, it’s Duke, 67, Virginia, 49. In the words of Thom Yorke, everything’s in its right place.