PARTING SHOT: The brightest spot of a bright five years
I’ve thought about how my parting shot was going to go for about four years now.
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I’ve thought about how my parting shot was going to go for about four years now.
With less than 24 hours to go before Virginia’s Sweet 16 matchup against Big 12 heavyweight Iowa State, I’m in full stressed out mode. While the Cavaliers have already avoided the worst case scenario losses with a successful opening NCAA Tournament weekend, there’s still work to be done to justify their seed.
March Madness can be the best time of the year while simultaneously providing one of the greatest moments of grief in a year. I love college basketball, so watching dozens of meaningful games a weekend that feature all the best teams is a dream come true. But I also love the Hoos, and watching their season end is as painful as anything save a death of a loved one.
Virginia Athletics Director Craig Littlepage announced yesterday that women’s basketball coach Joanne Boyle would be returning for a sixth season. Boyle, who has only posted one winning record in ACC play during her tenure, has not led a team to an NCAA tournament bid since 2009, when she was still at California.
With the hardest portion of the Virginia men’s basketball season ahead of them, the team will have to put together a string of near-perfect performances to finish the year as a great team rather than just a good one. The Cavaliers have all the pieces to make legitimate runs for the ACC and NCAA titles, but there are a few kinks they’ll have to work out in the next two weeks.
In an absolutely shocking turn of events on a Tuesday night two weeks ago, Virginia men’s basketball Coach Tony Bennett did the unthinkable. Struggling on the road against ACC bottom-dweller Wake Forest — a team that currently has one conference win this season — the Cavaliers were at risk of dropping their fourth road game against an unranked ACC opponent in as many tries. So to give his team a little spark in the second half, Bennett sent his team out in a zone defense.
Perhaps the biggest question headed into the 2015-16 Virginia basketball season was the role the sophomore class would play. Malcolm Brogdon, Anthony Gill and London Perrantes — all foundational pieces of the Cavaliers’ recent success — were returning and sure to be great. But were the sophomores ready to step up and help retool following the departures of Justin Anderson and Darion Atkins?
When redshirt sophomore guard Darius Thompson debuted for Virginia basketball as starting shooting guard in the season opener against Morgan State, I was thrilled. I’d heard great things about the transfer out of Tennessee, and my excitement seemed verified by Coach Tony Bennett’s faith in Thompson over the familiar and capable Evan Nolte and Marial Shayok.
Following back-to-back conference losses against Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett decided to shuffle things up and insert redshirt freshman center Jack Salt into the Cavalier starting line up. The 19-year-old out of New Zealand has since started consecutive games against Miami, Florida State and Clemson.
After years of pleading, the “Fire Mike London” campaign finally fulfilled its mission last Sunday. The movement started quietly after a 4-8 2012 season and steadily garnered a larger and larger following — myself included — after the three losing seasons that followed. It culminated last weekend in London’s sixth loss to archrival Virginia Tech in as many attempts.
The following is a narrative formed exclusively from more than a dozen fan posts to TheSabre.com made in the aftermath of the Virginia basketball team’s loss to George Washington on Monday night. The posts came from this message board: http://chat.virginia.sportswar.com/message_board/basketball/
Lost in the frustration about five second-half turnovers in a 26-13 loss to North Carolina Saturday, the Virginia football team quietly put together it’s most convincing performance of the year.
Earlier this week, I wrote how I strongly disagree with Mike London’s frequent decision to kneel the football as the second quarter winds down, despite having the clock and timeouts necessary to run a few more plays.
A day after the triple overtime victory against Syracuse, I overheard a woman express her discontent with fans “booing the players going into halftime.” The comment caught me a little off guard. I myself had been booing at Scott Stadium as the clock wound down at the end of the second quarter, but it wasn’t directed at the players. I assumed most of the other boos from the crowd weren’t either.
In honor of Fall Break and a Virginia football bye week, I’m taking my own break this week. No argument will be presented in this column, but rather some informational tidbits.
We’re all used to Virginia football being bad by this point, but this Virginia football team is bad in a somewhat interesting way. Traditionally under coach Mike London, it’s been the Cavalier defense that has had to bail out the offense. This year, the roles have reversed.
Anyone who owns a TV and watches sports has surely heard of the daily fantasy sports website DraftKings by this point. The company was the single largest television advertiser last week, and during the first week of the NFL season, DraftKings and competitor FanDuel spent over $26 million on ad spots.
Upon the graduation of former Cavalier running back Kevin Parks and the dawn of the 2015 Virginia football season, junior running back Taquan Mizzell was named the starter for the Cavaliers. Through two games, coach Mike London has stayed true to the decision, putting the lion’s share of carries in the respected but unproven back’s hands.
One of the most frustrating things as a Virginia football fan in recent years has been quarterback inconsistency. The turnover at the position, even within games, has been mind-boggling.
Let me tell you a little story of a college football program. Behind the leadership of a respected former NFL assistant coach, this team fluttered annually between decent and pretty good in the mid-2000s. It received invites to five bowl games and even won two of them, but never found itself finishing in the top 15 of the AP Poll. After several years of good, but not great, performance, the program decided to go in a different coaching direction. The new coach came in and generated a lot of excitement, even taking the team to bowl game in just his second year with the team. But despite the successful season paired with two straight years of top 15 recruiting classes, things never seemed to click, and the program came to be plagued by consecutive losing seasons. If things weren’t bad enough, the new coach couldn’t tally a single win against the school’s arch-rival.