Coach K: "There's no question that Virginia is an NCAA Tournament team"

Coach K advocated for UVA's inclusion in March Madness after beating Tony Bennett's Cavaliers in another hard-fought battle

Author:
Matt Newton
Publish date:
Feb 24, 2022 1:22 AM EST

On the heels of yet another Virginia-Duke thriller, with the Blue Devils prevailing 65-61 to even the season series at 1-1, Duke men's basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski was very complimentary of Tony Bennett's Cavaliers and advocated for their inclusion in the NCAA Tournament in the postgame press conference.

“There's no question that Virginia is an NCAA tournament team," Coach K said. "[With] so many of these numbers, you have to be careful, you need to give the eye test too. They are playing as well as anyone in our conference right now, and have been for about a month. They had back-to-back Miami games and back-to-back Duke games. The two of us are two of the top four teams, record-wise and... they're 3-1. It'd be a sin if they're not in the NCAA Tournament. They have to be in. I mean, they're that good, they're that good. They really are that good, and Tony [Bennett] is that good too.”

While Coach K is right that the Cavaliers are certainly playing like an NCAA Tournament team right now with wins in five of their last seven games, including two wins against Miami and one at Duke, the selection committee takes into account the entire season, not just the last month. UVA has suffered bad losses to Navy, JMU, NC State, and Clemson and has simply lost too many games in an Atlantic Coast Conference that is widely considered one of the weaker conferences in college basketball this season.

Virginia's poor performances in the first half of the season offset the resume-building wins and the significant improvements the team has made in the last few weeks. Even though the Hoos are playing March Madness-caliber basketball right now, the hole that they dug for themselves early in the season created a margin of error so small that even a sweep against Miami and a 1-1 split with Duke will likely not be enough to earn them an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.

At this point, Virginia could win its last two regular season games (vs. Florida State and at Louisville) and then win two or three games in the ACC Tournament and advance to the title game and still not have done enough in the eyes of the selection committee to move onto the right side of the bubble. It is possible that UVA's only hope of going dancing is to secure an automatic March Madness bid by winning the ACC Tournament, effectively taking the selection committee out of the equation.

It's still nice to hear Coach K, who knows a thing or two about the NCAA Tournament, say that it would be a "sin" if the Wahoos do not hear their name called on Selection Sunday.

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