Basketball

There’s less than a week until college hoops is back, and to prepare for its return we end the roster breakdown with a look at the freshmen and sophomores.

The college basketball season winds ever closer, and with its approach comes the second of four installments breaking down Virginia’s roster. This time we’re looking at the Juniors, a class composed of a transfer, an Argentinian international, and an aspiring coach. In other words, it’s an interesting group.

Less than a month remains until Virginia basketball returns to the court.  But the players will not be the only ones setting foot in John Paul Jones Arena come November.  Fans will also be making their reappearance in JPJ, and they will be present in large quantities when the ball is tipped to signal the start of the season. This year promises to be another fun one full of low-scoring games, clutch shooting, and perhaps another run at an ACC title.  Here’s the first of four class breakdowns, in preparation for Virginia’s season opener against Navy on November 9.

Only a couple weeks after a tough first-round upset, Virginia basketball has been dealt a further blow. Three Wahoos have made the decision to enter the NCAA’s transfer portal, adding their names to a growing list of over 1,000 men’s basketball players. While technically still possible for them to return, odds are that we have seen the last of Casey Morsell, Jabri Abdur-Rahim, and Justin McKoy in Virginia uniforms. All three received less playing time this season than they likely expected, and that factor was presumably the biggest in the eventual decision to leave Charlottesville. With these transfers come worries about next year’s team. Let’s discuss some of the immediate effects of these outgoing transfers.

Eternally optimistic Wahoo fans aside, nobody was picking this year’s Virginia team to win the national championship. The Hoos entered the tournament after a week of quarantine, had lost three of their last six, and were plagued all season by bouts of inconsistency that made a title run appear a fanciful possibility. The fact that Virginia was never going to win it all, however, doesn’t do much to dull the pain of the early exit. It was still a major blow, made even worse by the wild accusations and unfounded criticisms floating around social media after the game. It’s a little belated, but let’s attempt to unpack some of these disputes with three takeaways from the loss to Ohio.

Virginia will kick off their title defense with a matchup against 13th-seeded Ohio, the game set to tip at 7:15 PM EST Saturday on truTV. It will take place inside Indiana University’s Assembly Hall, a venue that a Virginia team has never played at. The Hoos will be without one player after a positive COVID-19 test knocked them out of the ACC Tournament. Speculation is rife that Morsell is the unlucky one, and further comments by Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim have given some credence to that idea. Whatever the case, the positive test significantly altered Virginia’s schedule for the tournament. The Hoos will have a team practice Friday morning, and then travel to the Hoosier state, where they will have to test again before driving to Bloomington for a practice Saturday before the 7:15 tip. These disturbances could serve to put Virginia at a slight competitive disadvantage. Tony Bennett will have to pull his team together in what limited time he has, because the Hoos have drawn a dangerous Ohio squad in the first round.

The NCAA Tournament is back, and Virginia will enter it as the 4-seed in the West Region. The region is headlined by number-one overall seed Gonzaga, but the Hoos will have to traverse a dangerous field of opponents before they can even think about the Zags. The past week has been marked with increasing concern over Virginia’s COVID-19 problems. Saturday night they passed the first checkpoint, however, as they were declared eligible for the NCAA Tournament. The Hoos are by no means out of the woods though. At least one player will not be traveling to Indianapolis, and the trip itself has been delayed until Friday by COVID protocols. We’ll hold off on making picks until later in the week, but for now here’s a quick rundown of every team in Virginia’s quadrant of the bracket.

On Friday morning, the college basketball world was hit with a bombshell: a player within the Virginia program had tested positive for COVID-19, ending the Cavaliers’ ACC Tournament run and placing their NCAA Tournament status in serious jeopardy. This news came just a day after a similar occurrence within the Duke program, a staff member testing positive and effectively ending their season. But there is one big difference between the two situations. For Duke, the ACC Tournament was a last gasp, a desperate ploy to steal an automatic bid and make the big dance. For Virginia, the ACC Tournament was an important part of the season, but the Hoos had already locked up an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Now that is in serious danger. So let’s take a look at what’s going on, and the protocols that could decide whether the Hoos get to go Indy.

Reece Beekman’s last made three came on February 10th during an away game at Georgia Tech. He came into Virginia’s quarterfinal matchup with Syracuse having gone six games in a row without hitting a shot from beyond the arc. And it looked very much like another game would be added to that tally. That is, until he caught the ball on the wing with two seconds left and the game knotted at 69. The ball left his hands with under a second left to play, the buzzer sounding just as it hit the top of its parabola. The bench stood up, the players looked on, and Beekman held his pose as the ball approached the net. And then it dropped. And the bench erupted. And Tony Bennett gave a small but powerful air-punch. And Beekman led his teammates on a sprint around the court as UVA fans rejoiced and celebrated their unlikely hero….