Tony Bennett and his Virginia Cavaliers are going to the Final Four. And it wasn’t easy
The Virginia Cavaliers were a mess when Tony Bennett took over as coach.
The four seasons before the coach arrived — let’s call it the Dave Leitao era — included one trip to the NCAA Tournament, one to the National Invitational Tournament and one to the College Basketball Invitational.
The seven before those — the Pete Gillen era — also included only one Tournament trip, but at least Virginia made it to the NIT four times.
After four years to get the Bennett era started, the Cavaliers made it to the Sweet 16 in 2014, ending a 19-year exile from the Tourney’s second weekend.
Two years later, Bennett got the Elite Eight for the first time since 1995. None of what he’s doing — particularly how easy he’s made it look — should be possible in Charlottesville, where mediocrity has been the standard pretty much since Ralph Sampson graduated in 1983.
Now Bennett will finally get universal credit as a success.
A year after Virginia cemented itself as a national laughingstock by losing to the No. 16-seed UMBC Retrievers in the first-round of the NCAA Tourney, the Cavaliers shut everyone up by beating the No. 3-seed Purdue Boilermakers 80-75 in overtime in the Elite Eight.
No. 1-seed Virginia is going to its first Final Four since 1984 and if the No. 1-seed Duke Blue Devils lose to the No. 2-seed Michigan State Spartans on Sunday, then the Cavaliers will likely head to Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the favorite to win their first national championship.
Virginia needed a little bit of luck, just like everyone does.
It needed to survive a player going out of his mind, just like everyone does. Almost no one gets to the Final Four right away and Bennett didn’t, but along the way he made the Cavaliers into a power they never have been before.
This was already Bennett’s third trip to the second weekend, matching the total from the previous 20 years. Virginia won the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season four times — it had only happened six times prior to Bennett — and the ACC tournament twice, which had only happened once before.
Some of those early teams were flawed, using a slow pace to make up for their relative lack of talent compared to conference powerhouses like Duke and the North Carolina Tar Heels.
It isn’t the case anymore.
Virginia has a likely NBA draft lottery pick in All-American forward De’Andre Hunter. Star guard Ty Jerome could be a first-round pick. All-American guard Kyle Guy certainly has a place in the NBA, too.
The pace is only part of what the Cavaliers do. The other part is win more than anybody else in the most storied league in the country.
This story was originally published March 30, 2019 at 11:31 PM with the headline "Tony Bennett and his Virginia Cavaliers are going to the Final Four. And it wasn’t easy."