The Virginia basketball team stands at 21-5 and 13-4 with the finish line for the regular season now in sight. That record is good (for some perspective, Clemson set a program record for ACC wins this week by reaching 12 while UVA has won 13+ eight times in the Tony Bennett era) and the Hoos remain in the race for the ACC Regular Season Championship. Still, the last three outings have raised a lot of questions.

The Cavaliers survived 61-58 at Louisville and 57-55 at home against Notre Dame, but then faltered in a 63-48 loss at Boston College. The Cardinals are 4-24 overall with 2 wins in league play, while Notre Dame is 10-18 overall with 2 conference wins too. BC is a little better at 14-15 overall with an 8-10 mark in the conference. Still, these aren’t the frontrunners in the ACC.

Virginia fans see these struggles and forecast trouble for the the upcoming postseason tests. Is that reasonable? History gives some context for those worries.

In 2011-2012, that team struggled with four losses in February (58-55 to FSU, 70-52 to UNC, 60-48 to Clemson, and 54-41 to UNC again) with three of those losses to ranked teams and then exited with a whimper against Florida in the NCAA Tournament. In 2016-2017, February brought 5 losses (66-62 to Syracuse, 80-78 in 2OT to Virginia Tech, 65-55 to Duke, 65-41 to UNC, and 54-48 to Miami in OT) before that team also lost by a big margin to Florida in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. In 2017-2018, the team had close games with 1 loss (59-55 win against FSU, 61-60 OT loss to VT, and a 59-50 win against Miami). That, of course, was the infamous UMBC year in the tourney. The 2020-2021 team lost 3 straight games in February (81-60 to FSU, 66-65 to Duke, and 68-61 to NC State) with a 57-49 Georgia Tech win in the mix earlier in the month. That team fell to Ohio in the first round.

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