The Virginia basketball team missed the NCAA Tournament field for the first time since 2013, which clearly stings after winning the National Championship in 2019. UVA coach Tony Bennett still thinks the Hoos can be grateful for what they did accomplish this season as they earned a spot in the National Invitation Tournament.
The Cavaliers face Mississippi State on Wednesday night at the John Paul Jones Arena. The game tips off at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.
“The fact that this team has gotten rewarded to play in an NIT. Of course, the ultimate goal is to play an NCAA Tournament and then advance, but when I watched the pairing show on ESPNU and our name came up, I still was very grateful,” Bennett said. “… There are only 32 more teams. If you’re one of those teams selected, that’s good. I was very grateful and even excited about the opportunity with this team to go on.”
For Virginia fans, this is unfamiliar territory in recent years. That’s a testament to the program that Bennett has built. It also makes it easy to forget that many players on this year’s roster have not experienced this level of postseason play in college. The pandemic canceled the 2019-2020 postseason and only Kihei Clark, Reece Beekman, and Francisco Caffaro played in last season’s NCAA Tournament game for UVA.
The Hoos’ two prominent transfers, Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner, did not play on teams that qualified for the postseason in the non-pandemic year. Franklin’s sophomore season at Indiana ended with a 12-15 record. Gardner, meanwhile, reminded reports after the Cavaliers lost to North Carolina in the ACC Tournament that he had never played on a team with a winning record in college until this season. ECU went 10-21, 11-20, and 8-11 in his three seasons there.
“I think that was important, even after a real hard loss against Carolina for him to say that. That is perspective,” Bennett said. “I think for someone like Jayden and this team, besides Kihei that played on the National Championship team then Reece last year, who played significant minutes, none of these other guys have either played really much at all or played on a team that is fighting for postseason play in that regard or had a [big] role. So I think that was important and the reality that he acknowledged that.”
While it’s unclear who among the senior trio of Clark, Gardner, and Kody Stattmann will return for Virginia with the bonus year from the COVID-impacted season, the current team does feature a lot of underclassmen. That makes the NIT a valuable opportunity to experience postseason pressure. Sophomores Beekman and Kadin Shedrick plus Franklin, in particular, have started many games this season and have been central figures in the rotation.
All presumably will be back in orange and blue next season, which would places them as the experienced upperclassmen to join with current freshmen and the incoming recruiting class. That could be critical in the chase to return to the NCAA Tournament a year from now.
In some ways, that brings to mind another NIT team at UVA under Bennett. The 2013 team made it to the quarterfinals with wins against Norfolk State and St. John’s. Justin Anderson, Mike Tobey, and Evan Nolte along with Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell picked up a lot of minutes during that tourney run. The following season, they teamed up with Malcolm Brogdon, Anthony Gill, and London Perrantes among others to win the 2014 ACC Tournament and an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearance. That started the recent string of consecutive appearances in the big dance.
“For guys in our program that again haven’t played in a tournament and guys that are going to be back, I think it’s valuable,” Bennett said. “For sure, I think it’s important. Those guys with that group went to the NIT and after that we went to ever how many NCAA Tournaments after and kept building.”
The matchup with Mississippi State will be challenging. The program made it to the NIT title game last season.
The Bulldogs earned a No. 3 seed in the NIT with Virginia only hosting the game due to conflicts with the MSU arena. They finished 18-15 while competing in the SEC, which landed six teams in the NCAA Tournament. That includes No. 2 seeds Auburn and Kentucky as well as No. 3 seed Tennessee. State beat a No. 4 seed Arkansas and a No. 6 seed Alabama. It lost in overtime to Auburn and in close games to LSU and Kentucky. There was also an early season win against tourney team Richmond.
Iverson Molinar averaged 17.6 points per game and earned a spot on the All-SEC First Team this season. He made the NIT all-tourney team last season. Garrison Brooks, a UNC transfer, and Shakeel Moore, an NC State transfer, have faced the Hoos before and play key roles for MSU.
Virginia has some big wins and close losses on its schedule too. The Cavaliers took down No. 2 seed Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium and lost a close game to the Blue Devils in Charlottesville. They defeated No. 4 seed Providence, No. 11 seed Virginia Tech, and No. 10 Miami twice. They lost close games to No. 5 seed Iowa and No. 11 seed Notre Dame as well.
The NIT, of course, features a lot of teams with those sort of ups and downs.
“You just want tournament experience and playing experience and to play as well as you can,” Bennett said. “The reality of our team this year is this: we’re that team when we’ve played tough and well have been able to win some really exciting, good games against tough opponents on the road, at home, and they’ve usually been close and then at times we’re that team that has really struggled and we’ve gotten separated like you’ve seen against North Carolina and just some of those games. I told our guys, the reality is you’re both of those teams. You’ve just got to fight and choose to try to be the one that has shown that. Here you get an opportunity in a one and done situation to play against a team that is good and you get to grow in these experiences and then try to win and advance.”
