All the while that Ty Jerome is going New York City (in a classy, teasing way) on a couple of pundits who have been trashing Virginia, there are some fun articles out there to read for the Bennett supporters who are tired of listening to the daily, tired old arguments about TB's style, who he plays, etc. Here are a couple: the first I think takes an indirect shot at ESPN, while the second is from the Augusta Free Press and one of TB's critics at least has the class to come out and say he was wrong.
1.
With a National Championship, Virginia puts tired narratives to rest
The Hoos quiet the critics with high octane postseason.
By Caroline Darney@cwdarney Apr 10, 2019, 2:56pm EDT
Share
Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
If you listened really carefully when the final horn sounded in Minneapolis as confetti and streamers fell to the court as the Virginia Cavaliers celebrated its first ever National Championship in men’s basketball, you could hear the last gasps of air escaping the media’s favorite hot take. With the dramatic 85-77 win over Texas Tech in the title game, Virginia’s style could no longer be the punching bag for writers and personalities too lazy to make any effort in understanding the Cavaliers.
Takes about Virginia’s “inability to blow teams out”, “lack of stars”, and other cliches have run rampant since the 2014 squad bust onto the scene, won the ACC tournament, and nabbed a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Underwhelming performances in the big dance in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 fed the narrative that Bennett’s defense first style and grind-it-out wins were fine for the regular season but would never work in the postseason.
But the issue was actually that it never didn’t work before. Virginia didn’t lose to Michigan State in 2014 because of pace or possessions, they lost because they faced an incredible Spartan team that delivered one more body blow than the Hoos did. Virginia didn’t lose to Michigan State in 2015 because of playing slowly, they lost because they decided to forget how to play basketball all together.
In 2016? The most ironic part about Virginia’s collapse against Syracuse was that if Virginia had actually played their game instead of trying to push the ball after breaking the press, they easily win that game and the choking narrative never gains momentum in the first place. I’ve always maintained that the Sweet 16 game with Iowa State gave the Hoos false confidence in the fast break after Virginia easily dominated the Cyclones’ press and got out to an insurmountable lead. Two days later, that uncharacteristic play was their downfall.
The 2017 squad never had the same ceiling as the others as illness and injury built up. That team wasn’t going to win a National Championship, especially without a healthy Isaiah Wilkins. Virginia’s historic and soul crushing loss to UMBC was due more to the fact that the Hoos couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn coupled with the Retrievers’ inability to miss than any sort of “style”. If you don’t hit shots and the other team does, you’re going to lose no matter what pace you play.
Now, it’s Bennett and the Cavaliers who have the last laugh. “We told ourselves we were going to come back and do it, and do it with Tony Bennett’s system,” Mamadi Diakite said after Virginia’s 85-77 overtime victory against Texas Tech. “Now, if you don’t believe it, I don’t know. I guess you’re on another planet.”
During the season, members of the team and coaching staff wouldn’t let on much that they paid any attention to what the pundits said, but as they sat in the Virginia locker room with grins on their faces and bits of net tied to their “2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champions” hats, you could pick up on some subtle — and some not so subtle — digs at the tired takes.
Before the title game, Yahoo!’s Pete Thamel said the teams in the championship matchup had, “... the aesthetic appeal of John Daly in a Speedo” and that it was the “least-sexy national title game of the past generation.” Virginia has been on the receiving end of some spicy Yahoo! articles for awhile, seeing as Pat Forde was ready to unleash the fire of a 1000 suns on Bennett and the Cavaliers after last year’s UMBC loss as he called Virginia basketball a “towering fraud.” After the Hoos emerged victorious, Forde changed his tune ever-so-slightly once Ty Jerome told him he was “...going to have to write a different article now” on the streamer strewn court.
Even though Mike Francesca has been a hot take artist for awhile now, this one is still fun to watch, too:
2/5/19 - Mike Francesa explains to a caller why Tony Bennett will NEVER win a championship with this Virginia team. Two months later, Tony Bennett wins a championship with this Virginia team. #NationalChampionship pic.twitter.com/1H3p5iafIw
— Ƒunhouse (@BackAftaThis) April 9, 2019
And then there’s ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who has been vocal on First Take and his radio show about how much he disliked the Cavaliers’ style. Jerome, for one, felt for Smith. “I just feel so bad for Stephen A. Smith,” Jerome said with a smile after the game. “You know what I mean? He said he hated watching us, and he had to watch us every round of the tournament. I feel so bad for him. It must have been hard for him.”
After the friendly jab, Jerome got to the heart of the matter. “For us to come out and score 85 against a team like that, and for them to put 77 on us...they hit some tough shots, we hit some tough shots. People made some plays, it was a high-level game.”
It isn’t just that the narrative is now dead, it’s how the Cavaliers killed it. Throughout the tournament, Virginia had to rely on their offense more times than not. Against Purdue, there was no defensive answer for what Carsen Edwards was doing to the Cavaliers. Instead, big players made big plays. Virginia didn’t escape with a win, they had to respond with huge shots against a star who couldn’t miss. A ridiculous corner three and three clutch free throws from Kyle Guy secured Virginia an improbable win over Auburn in the Final Four.
In the title game, two brands that were deemed “duds” by some of the talking heads came out and delivered one of the most exciting championship games in recent memory. Texas Tech and Virginia combined for the highest-scoring championship game since 2000, and the regulation score of 68-68 all was better than Duke’s wins in 2015 and 2010, among others.
In fact, the Virginia Cavaliers scored the most points in the Elite Eight (80, in overtime), Final Four (63), and obviously the title game (85). For a team that struggles to score, that ain’t bad. Of course, Virginia hadn’t struggled to score this season, finishing with the second most efficient offense in the country on KenPom behind just Gonzaga (which lost to Texas Tech).
So farewell to the “Virginia can’t get it done in the postseason” and “Bennett’s style will never win a title” narratives. I can’t say I’ll miss you. I will, however, enjoy the hell out of this National Championship.
2.
Five things I was wrong about with UVA Basketball
Published Wednesday, Apr. 10, 2019, 2:43 pm
The national idiots – and, they’re idiots – have long said UVA Basketball would never win a national championship under Tony Bennett … because.
Because the tempo made it so that Virginia never blows out opponents, which makes UVA more susceptible to upsets, because, the ‘Hoos won 22 games by 10 or more points in 2018-2019, 14 of those by 20 or more, with eight of the double-digit wins coming against teams in the KenPom.com Top 50, and six against NCAA Tournament teams.
Virginia was second offensively in adjusted efficiency, and fifth on defense.
The Cavaliers’ adjusted efficiency margin, +34.22, is the third-best of the KenPom.com era, which dates back 19 seasons.
So, BS, that crap about tempo being the issue.
Another because: Virginia basketball is boring.
Um, OK. This year’s national-championship game was the highest-scoring national-championship game since 2000.
Whatevs.
And, would boring have even mattered anyway?
You’re just supposed to win, right?
OK, so, that’s BS.
But I’ve been telling you this stuff for years.
As much a Tony Bennett Will Win Multiple Championships Guy that I’ve been, I did get five things wrong.
OK, so, I have to just say it here. I put “five things” in the headline because that’s what you’re supposed to do to get people to click.
I’ve been trying to come up with five things since the train ride home from U.S. Bank Stadium in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and I can’t come up with more than two.
But, I readily admit, I was very wrong on those two.
Here we go.
#1: Tony wears his guys out in the regular season
A regular feature of my Inside the Numbers columns is looking at minutes for his starters. Grasping for straws like the rest of the media folks, I had come upon, his starters play too damn much in the regular season, and because Virginia goes at it hard, every possession, on offense, on defense, from November on, they just wear out in March.
I’ve never bought into the style of play doesn’t work in March nonsense, because if it works from November to the end of the regular season, against ACC teams, against top non-conference teams, it doesn’t make sense that it would suddenly stop working in March Madness.
Unless: Tony was riding his starters too much.
I won’t rehash my annual year-in-review analyses to that effect, but safe to say, I did beaucoups of numbers-crunching pieces buttressing my point.
And now, it’s all balderdash.
The bench minutes for the 2018-2019 team, according to KenPom.com, which I am going to miss for the next seven months, incidentally, now that this is all over, were at 22.9 percent.
The 2017-2018 team (first-round NCAA Tournament loss): 29.0 percent.
The 2016-2017 team (second-round NCAA Tournament loss): 37.9 percent.
The 2015-2016 Elite Eight team: 31.8 percent.
The 2014-2015 team that lost to Michigan State in the second round: 33.6 percent.
The 2013-2014 team that loss to Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen: 29.1 percent.
Tony rode this team harder, a lot harder, than any of those, and then, they had to win two overtime games, and the last four went to the final seconds.
It wasn’t about legs. I will stop writing about minutes.
#2: Other teams match UVA’s intensity in March
This one, I kind of picked up from other writers, aka the idiots, but it started to make some sense to me the past couple of years, so, I bought into it.
The idea is: UVA outwills opponents from November to the end of the regular season because, as Tony likes to say, we go hard, and, maybe other teams don’t go quite as hard, at least not every possession, like you see Tony’s teams do.
But then, when you get to March Madness, everybody is going to go hard, every possession, because Every Game is Game 7 in the NCAA Tournament.
That, coupled with how UVA has gone hard, on every possession, from November to the end of the regular season, kind of works together to take away any advantage UVA has season-long.
Odd, now, in retrospect, that I would have viewed this as an issue.
The flip side to, we go hard, all season long, is, we go hard, all season long.
Teams that only go hard when it matters might not know what it means to go really hard.
I mean, they can figure it out, sure, but, it’s one thing to figure it out in a Game 7 situation, and another thing to know what you’re capable of.
Virginia knows what it’s capable of. That has to be an advantage.
OK, so, what was it then, before this year?
Pure, dumb, bad luck.
Not tempo being an issue. Not being boring, whatever that means.
Not too many minutes for the starters.
Not going too hard all season long.
Anthony Gill sprained his ankle in the Sweet Sixteen. Justin Anderson wasn’t 100 percent in 2015.
Syracuse got lucky in that Elite Eight.
De’Andre being out in 2018.
This year, everybody was healthy, the matchups were nice, a couple of things bounced in our favor, and right now, typing this, I’m wearing, for the second straight day, the championship game hat and T-shirt that my wife bought for me in U.S. Bank Stadium as confetti was falling from the skywalk, as I’m about to board a plane back home for Virginia.
Wahoowa!
Column by Chris Graham
1.
With a National Championship, Virginia puts tired narratives to rest
The Hoos quiet the critics with high octane postseason.
By Caroline Darney@cwdarney Apr 10, 2019, 2:56pm EDT
Share
If you listened really carefully when the final horn sounded in Minneapolis as confetti and streamers fell to the court as the Virginia Cavaliers celebrated its first ever National Championship in men’s basketball, you could hear the last gasps of air escaping the media’s favorite hot take. With the dramatic 85-77 win over Texas Tech in the title game, Virginia’s style could no longer be the punching bag for writers and personalities too lazy to make any effort in understanding the Cavaliers.
Takes about Virginia’s “inability to blow teams out”, “lack of stars”, and other cliches have run rampant since the 2014 squad bust onto the scene, won the ACC tournament, and nabbed a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Underwhelming performances in the big dance in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 fed the narrative that Bennett’s defense first style and grind-it-out wins were fine for the regular season but would never work in the postseason.
But the issue was actually that it never didn’t work before. Virginia didn’t lose to Michigan State in 2014 because of pace or possessions, they lost because they faced an incredible Spartan team that delivered one more body blow than the Hoos did. Virginia didn’t lose to Michigan State in 2015 because of playing slowly, they lost because they decided to forget how to play basketball all together.
In 2016? The most ironic part about Virginia’s collapse against Syracuse was that if Virginia had actually played their game instead of trying to push the ball after breaking the press, they easily win that game and the choking narrative never gains momentum in the first place. I’ve always maintained that the Sweet 16 game with Iowa State gave the Hoos false confidence in the fast break after Virginia easily dominated the Cyclones’ press and got out to an insurmountable lead. Two days later, that uncharacteristic play was their downfall.
The 2017 squad never had the same ceiling as the others as illness and injury built up. That team wasn’t going to win a National Championship, especially without a healthy Isaiah Wilkins. Virginia’s historic and soul crushing loss to UMBC was due more to the fact that the Hoos couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn coupled with the Retrievers’ inability to miss than any sort of “style”. If you don’t hit shots and the other team does, you’re going to lose no matter what pace you play.
Now, it’s Bennett and the Cavaliers who have the last laugh. “We told ourselves we were going to come back and do it, and do it with Tony Bennett’s system,” Mamadi Diakite said after Virginia’s 85-77 overtime victory against Texas Tech. “Now, if you don’t believe it, I don’t know. I guess you’re on another planet.”
During the season, members of the team and coaching staff wouldn’t let on much that they paid any attention to what the pundits said, but as they sat in the Virginia locker room with grins on their faces and bits of net tied to their “2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champions” hats, you could pick up on some subtle — and some not so subtle — digs at the tired takes.
Before the title game, Yahoo!’s Pete Thamel said the teams in the championship matchup had, “... the aesthetic appeal of John Daly in a Speedo” and that it was the “least-sexy national title game of the past generation.” Virginia has been on the receiving end of some spicy Yahoo! articles for awhile, seeing as Pat Forde was ready to unleash the fire of a 1000 suns on Bennett and the Cavaliers after last year’s UMBC loss as he called Virginia basketball a “towering fraud.” After the Hoos emerged victorious, Forde changed his tune ever-so-slightly once Ty Jerome told him he was “...going to have to write a different article now” on the streamer strewn court.
Even though Mike Francesca has been a hot take artist for awhile now, this one is still fun to watch, too:
2/5/19 - Mike Francesa explains to a caller why Tony Bennett will NEVER win a championship with this Virginia team. Two months later, Tony Bennett wins a championship with this Virginia team. #NationalChampionship pic.twitter.com/1H3p5iafIw
— Ƒunhouse (@BackAftaThis) April 9, 2019
And then there’s ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who has been vocal on First Take and his radio show about how much he disliked the Cavaliers’ style. Jerome, for one, felt for Smith. “I just feel so bad for Stephen A. Smith,” Jerome said with a smile after the game. “You know what I mean? He said he hated watching us, and he had to watch us every round of the tournament. I feel so bad for him. It must have been hard for him.”
After the friendly jab, Jerome got to the heart of the matter. “For us to come out and score 85 against a team like that, and for them to put 77 on us...they hit some tough shots, we hit some tough shots. People made some plays, it was a high-level game.”
It isn’t just that the narrative is now dead, it’s how the Cavaliers killed it. Throughout the tournament, Virginia had to rely on their offense more times than not. Against Purdue, there was no defensive answer for what Carsen Edwards was doing to the Cavaliers. Instead, big players made big plays. Virginia didn’t escape with a win, they had to respond with huge shots against a star who couldn’t miss. A ridiculous corner three and three clutch free throws from Kyle Guy secured Virginia an improbable win over Auburn in the Final Four.
In the title game, two brands that were deemed “duds” by some of the talking heads came out and delivered one of the most exciting championship games in recent memory. Texas Tech and Virginia combined for the highest-scoring championship game since 2000, and the regulation score of 68-68 all was better than Duke’s wins in 2015 and 2010, among others.
In fact, the Virginia Cavaliers scored the most points in the Elite Eight (80, in overtime), Final Four (63), and obviously the title game (85). For a team that struggles to score, that ain’t bad. Of course, Virginia hadn’t struggled to score this season, finishing with the second most efficient offense in the country on KenPom behind just Gonzaga (which lost to Texas Tech).
So farewell to the “Virginia can’t get it done in the postseason” and “Bennett’s style will never win a title” narratives. I can’t say I’ll miss you. I will, however, enjoy the hell out of this National Championship.
2.
Five things I was wrong about with UVA Basketball
Published Wednesday, Apr. 10, 2019, 2:43 pm
The national idiots – and, they’re idiots – have long said UVA Basketball would never win a national championship under Tony Bennett … because.
Because the tempo made it so that Virginia never blows out opponents, which makes UVA more susceptible to upsets, because, the ‘Hoos won 22 games by 10 or more points in 2018-2019, 14 of those by 20 or more, with eight of the double-digit wins coming against teams in the KenPom.com Top 50, and six against NCAA Tournament teams.
Virginia was second offensively in adjusted efficiency, and fifth on defense.
The Cavaliers’ adjusted efficiency margin, +34.22, is the third-best of the KenPom.com era, which dates back 19 seasons.
So, BS, that crap about tempo being the issue.
Another because: Virginia basketball is boring.
Um, OK. This year’s national-championship game was the highest-scoring national-championship game since 2000.
Whatevs.
And, would boring have even mattered anyway?
You’re just supposed to win, right?
OK, so, that’s BS.
But I’ve been telling you this stuff for years.
As much a Tony Bennett Will Win Multiple Championships Guy that I’ve been, I did get five things wrong.
OK, so, I have to just say it here. I put “five things” in the headline because that’s what you’re supposed to do to get people to click.
I’ve been trying to come up with five things since the train ride home from U.S. Bank Stadium in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and I can’t come up with more than two.
But, I readily admit, I was very wrong on those two.
Here we go.
#1: Tony wears his guys out in the regular season
A regular feature of my Inside the Numbers columns is looking at minutes for his starters. Grasping for straws like the rest of the media folks, I had come upon, his starters play too damn much in the regular season, and because Virginia goes at it hard, every possession, on offense, on defense, from November on, they just wear out in March.
I’ve never bought into the style of play doesn’t work in March nonsense, because if it works from November to the end of the regular season, against ACC teams, against top non-conference teams, it doesn’t make sense that it would suddenly stop working in March Madness.
Unless: Tony was riding his starters too much.
I won’t rehash my annual year-in-review analyses to that effect, but safe to say, I did beaucoups of numbers-crunching pieces buttressing my point.
And now, it’s all balderdash.
The bench minutes for the 2018-2019 team, according to KenPom.com, which I am going to miss for the next seven months, incidentally, now that this is all over, were at 22.9 percent.
The 2017-2018 team (first-round NCAA Tournament loss): 29.0 percent.
The 2016-2017 team (second-round NCAA Tournament loss): 37.9 percent.
The 2015-2016 Elite Eight team: 31.8 percent.
The 2014-2015 team that lost to Michigan State in the second round: 33.6 percent.
The 2013-2014 team that loss to Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen: 29.1 percent.
Tony rode this team harder, a lot harder, than any of those, and then, they had to win two overtime games, and the last four went to the final seconds.
It wasn’t about legs. I will stop writing about minutes.
#2: Other teams match UVA’s intensity in March
This one, I kind of picked up from other writers, aka the idiots, but it started to make some sense to me the past couple of years, so, I bought into it.
The idea is: UVA outwills opponents from November to the end of the regular season because, as Tony likes to say, we go hard, and, maybe other teams don’t go quite as hard, at least not every possession, like you see Tony’s teams do.
But then, when you get to March Madness, everybody is going to go hard, every possession, because Every Game is Game 7 in the NCAA Tournament.
That, coupled with how UVA has gone hard, on every possession, from November to the end of the regular season, kind of works together to take away any advantage UVA has season-long.
Odd, now, in retrospect, that I would have viewed this as an issue.
The flip side to, we go hard, all season long, is, we go hard, all season long.
Teams that only go hard when it matters might not know what it means to go really hard.
I mean, they can figure it out, sure, but, it’s one thing to figure it out in a Game 7 situation, and another thing to know what you’re capable of.
Virginia knows what it’s capable of. That has to be an advantage.
OK, so, what was it then, before this year?
Pure, dumb, bad luck.
Not tempo being an issue. Not being boring, whatever that means.
Not too many minutes for the starters.
Not going too hard all season long.
Anthony Gill sprained his ankle in the Sweet Sixteen. Justin Anderson wasn’t 100 percent in 2015.
Syracuse got lucky in that Elite Eight.
De’Andre being out in 2018.
This year, everybody was healthy, the matchups were nice, a couple of things bounced in our favor, and right now, typing this, I’m wearing, for the second straight day, the championship game hat and T-shirt that my wife bought for me in U.S. Bank Stadium as confetti was falling from the skywalk, as I’m about to board a plane back home for Virginia.
Wahoowa!
Column by Chris Graham
