After the Virginia-North Carolina basketball game last weekend, I felt naive. Naive for sincerely believing we had a chance to pull off the upset, believing it up until Jontel Evans’ last-second heave, which had more of a chance of shattering the backboard than going through the net.
You know that feeling you get when you just know something bad is about to happen, yet you stubbornly choose to ignore your concerns, only to watch them unfold exactly as you had foreseen?
It’s a feeling of stupidity, of incredulity. You know you should have seen it coming. That you did see it coming. But for some reason you allowed yourself to believe. To believe that maybe this time something different, something better, something unpredictable, could happen. And then, when all is said and done, you’re left wondering how you could ever have been so naive in the first place.
We blew that game, plain and simple. You can try to justify it anyway you want – rumors the refs were all wearing powder blue underwear have so far been unsubstantiated – but in the end we still wasted a golden opportunity to cement our NCAA Tournament status. It was a winnable home game against a superior team who was having a slight off-day – the most rare, most ephemeral of circumstances right there for us to seize, and we didn’t.
And I really didn’t see it coming? Me? The most pessimistic, cynical, melancholic sports fan and person you’ve probably never met? Well, I did and I didn’t.
You see, I’ve been a Virginia sports fan my whole life. It’s the old man’s alma mater. I was raised with bitter stories of Ralph Sampson cowering in the clutch, of losing to N.C. State and Chaminade, of buzzer-beaters and heartbreaks. While we watched games together my dad often told me he’d seen this situation before. He’d seen us up 15 with two minutes left and it was too early to celebrate. It was always too early celebrate.
“Hope for the best, sure, but you best be expecting the worst, son.”
That’s the mindset I’ve had with U.Va. basketball my whole life. It’s what I was thinking at tip-off Saturday. I wished for a win, but most certainly did not expect one.
All that changed when I watched the matchup unfold in the same way it always seems to when this particular Virginia team plays one of those games. You know, one of the games where the players execute Coach Bennett’s system flawlessly on both sides of the court, and we all simultaneously realize he deserves to be the ACC Coach of the Year.
Basketball is the ultimate “on paper” sport. The team which looks better on a sheet of paper, and has more individual talent, typically prevails. There’s less chance, less luck, involved in basketball than in other sports. It’s just you, your man and the ball.
While there are many things our basketball team is flush with – great hair styles instantly comes to mind – I think it’s fair to say individual talent is not one of them. In any game against a top ACC opponent we are going to be out-manned. Mike Scott is very good, and he’d be even better if he at least intermittently visited the post, but it’s always going to be an uphill battle.
For an upset to occur in basketball, you have to actually out-team the other team. You need to be the united, selfless Dallas Mavericks to the opposition’s – insert incredibly mean, preferably unwarranted LeBron James joke here – Miami Heat. And when this Virginia squad executes Coach Bennett’s system, that’s precisely what happens.
You can actually feel when a team is playing team basketball. It’s a palpable togetherness, a tangible understanding everyone is committed to the same concept. It’s the little things which make basketball beautiful, and at times we do them so well.
Watching a team tirelessly rotate on defense for the entirety of a 35-second possession never once out of position, or players continually making the altruistic extra pass on offense to find an even more open teammate, can really change a man. Pure, beautiful, team basketball can quickly efface a lifetime of pessimism and premonitions of worst-case scenarios. It can make anything seem possible. It can make a top-10 upset seem feasible.
I really thought we had the Heels beat, thought we were going to be able to sneak one out. I knew better, I was raised better, but I was feeling confident. I couldn’t help myself.
So when Sammy Zeglinski clanked the wide open three in the corner which would have forced overtime, and then Evans far overshot his last desperate three, I felt stupid, incredulous. How could I have been so naive?
I did the only thing I could think of doing, the only thing which felt natural at such a moment: I texted my father. And recycling the words which he’s uttered to me so many times, I simply said, “We blew it.”
He had watched the whole game, had been hoping for the best like usual. Like me, he loves how this team plays, appreciates watching pure, unadulterated team basketball and truthfully thinks – read: hopes – our style of play makes us a dangerous match-up for anyone in the Tournament.
But he saw this coming. He always does.
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