In Elton Brown's mind, there was still hope.
Even after Virginia fell to No. 5 Duke in the quarterfinals in the ACC tournament to drop its overall mark to 17-12 and its record against ACC teams to 7-11, the junior forward felt that the squad still had the necessary credentials to receive serious consideration from the NCAA tournament selection committee.
"This team showed a lot of character at the end of the year," Brown said. "We could've easily folded after starting the [ACC] season 2-8, but we wound up winning five of our last eight games."
In the end, the committee passed over the Cavaliers, who will have to settle for an NIT bid for the third straight season. Virginia will open play at U-Hall against George Washington (18-11) tonightat 7 p.m.
Although the Cavaliers are playing in the 40-team tournament for the third straight year, this season marks the first one of the three in which Virginia was a legitimate bubble team for the NCAA Tournament.
Many analysts believed that with the strength of the ACC this season, any school able to go 7-9 in the conference regular season schedule would likely get a bid to the Big Dance. The Cavaliers fell just short of getting magic number seven, letting an 11-point second half lead at Maryland in the regular season finale slip away en route to a 70-61 loss in College Park.
Terrapin coach Gary Williams believed that the Cavaliers still should have been awarded a bid, despite their 6-10 ACC regular season mark.
"I think Virginia deserves to go to the NCAA Tournament," Williams said. "They never quit this year. That was a team that could have said, 'We're not going to go anywhere at the end of this year,' but they figured something out the way they played at the end of the year."
The Cavaliers had to settle for an NIT bid instead -- a tournament that has been unkind to Virginia the last two seasons. The Cavaliers fell to South Carolina at home in the first round in 2002 and lost in the second to eventual champion St. John's last season.
Virginia is no stranger to postseason struggles. The Cavaliers' first-round NIT win against Brown last year marked the first postseason victory for Virginia since 1995. The Cavaliers fell in their first ACC tournament game each season in addition to the opening round of the NCAA tournament in 1996 and 2001 and the NIT in 2000 and 2002.
The Cavaliers will be the favorite in tonight's matchup, however. George Washington has one more win than Virginia, but their weaker slate of games (GW is ranked No. 80 in strength of schedule, compared with Virginia's No. 33) left them with an RPI rating of No. 74, less impressive than the Cavaliers, who occupy the No. 52 slot.
Guard T.J. Thompson leads the Colonials in scoring, averaging 13.6 points per game. 6'9" 218-pound forward Nana "Pops" Mensah-Bonsu is a strong inside presence for George Washington, scoring 11.6 points and grabbing 5.3 rebounds per game.
Tonight's game will mark the first postseason appearance by the Colonials since 1999, when they fell to Indiana in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Should the Cavaliers advance, they will face the winner of the Drexel-Villanova game in the second round.
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