The minutiae unveil everything.
Watch Jayden Gardner’s midrange jumper. Track its fluctuations. Sometimes it is fluid, flowing, the confident trademark shot of a stalwart. Sometimes it is jerky, rushed, the timid flick of a man praying for the right result.
It changes, game to game. When Gardner’s confidence peaks, his stroke is smooth, the ball tracking toward the hoop as if magnetically attracted. He backpedals before leather meets nylon. When Gardner’s confidence nosedives, as it has at times, his motion looks incomplete. His knees barely bend. His arms limply hold their follow-through. He bounces on his toes as the shot arcs through the air, perhaps hoping that cosmic intervention will rescue his nervous push.
These are the little shifts Virginia’s season rests on.
Confident Gardner means made jumpers and strong finishes. Unconfident Gardner means repeated misses and shakes of the head.
Gardner’s not the only one.
He’s had some confident games during Virginia’s slump. But Beekman also sometimes loses his mojo and confidence, deferring to Kihei.
Virginia’s vacillating confidence pervades nearly everything. The momentum swings, it feels like, dictate wins and losses. A bit of momentum propels Virginia in innumerable ways, ways obvious and intangible.
That was obvious on Saturday. Virginia immediately bludgeoned Louisville in the 75–60 home win that clinched a share of the ACC regular season title, shooting well and carving up the Cardinal defense with the ease and assurance of a chef slicing cheese. Virginia led by 16 at halftime and, in total, shot 58% from the field, its best mark of the season.
It was also Virginia’s first time clearing 45% since the uproarious home win against Duke nearly a month ago. Ah, but what a coincidence! That game was the axis on which Virginia’s confidence turned—for the umpteenth time this season.
The Hoos, this year, are streaky. Much like every other team in college basketball. Anarchy rules this college hoops season.
So look at Virginia’s momentum swings this season.
There was the initial kick, the first seven games of the season, a period that included wins over Baylor, Illinois and Michigan and also featured blowouts against inferior opponents. That was Virginia’s peak, its best stretch of the season, the run that generated national title aspirations.
Then the slide began.
The Hoos escaped, barely, from James Madison at home. A loss to Houston, the Cougars thoroughly outplaying the Hoos, followed. Then a loss to Miami in which Virginia shot 37%.
That three-game stretch was the first trough. The listless feeling built, the confidence drowning in a pool of doubt, until dominant victories over Albany and Georgia Tech realigned Virginia.
Then the Hoos entered another bullish period.
A narrow loss at Pittsburgh, precipitated by a second-half collapse, predated a seven-game win streak. These, though, were an odd seven games. Virginia won by double digits once, every other game decided by close margins. None of the wins came against good teams: Syracuse, North Carolina, Florida State, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Boston College, Syracuse again.
None of those teams presently reside within the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Virginia’s confidence, during that streak, maintained a decent level. The Hoos never scintillated, but they always won. The string of close victories ended, though, with an unsurprising loss at Virginia Tech.
The Hokies are tough at Cassell Coliseum. Virginia played good ball against NC State the next game, and the momentum sailed along mostly unimpeded.
Whoops.
The momentum suddenly fell off a cliff.
It started with the uproarious win against Duke. The Blue Devils are transforming, finally, into a great team, one that now looks far more likely than Virginia to reach the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend. But that’s now. Back then, they still were mired in a tussle on the bubble.
Controversy erupted, at the end of the game, with the force of a hungry volcano. Angles of the final play of regulation floated around Twitter, fans spouted their interpretations of the ruling, writers parsed the rulebook. And the ACC issued a statement saying, in effect, that Virginia should have lost the game.
The postgame whirlwind—the floating and the spouting and the parsing and the issuing—may well have screwed with Wahoo minds. The next four games, the deepest trough of the season, certainly indicates that.
The near catastrophe against Louisville. The near catastrophe against Notre Dame. The catastrophe against Boston College. The weak showing against North Carolina.
Momentum barrelled in the negative direction. Confidence disappeared.
You saw it against Clemson. Brutal.
Virginia started 0-9 from the field. Armaan Franklin missed a simple layup on the first possession. Gardner nearly airballed a jumper, his form glaringly breaking down. Ben Vander Plas missed an open three badly.
The Hoos recovered, riding stingy defense to a 64–57 win. They woke up the next morning with those stores of confidence apparently replenished. Wait, they must have thought. Clemson is a decent team. We just beat Clemson, seizing the lead early and holding it for the game’s final 33 minutes. That was good. Maybe we’re good.
Then came the Louisville game, the controlling showing, Virginia finally banishing a weak opponent in a manner befitting a top-15 team.
So here we are. The tide, if only for a moment, has turned.
Virginia likely will face North Carolina in Thursday night’s quarterfinal. The Tar Heels are good. More importantly, they’re desperate. Virginia will need to ride its momentum into Greensboro.
A loss against the Heels could tank Virginia’s season, crippling hopes of surviving the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend. To lose the momentum so soon after it resumed its steady trickle would crush Virginia.
But a win could spark a return to stronger play. With it, perhaps, would come legitimate designs on an ACC Tournament title and a respectable NCAA Tournament run.
Image – Virginia Athletics