Virginia Learned From Losing and Now They’re National Champs

Virginia completed their epic NCAA Tournament run with an 85-77 win over Texas Tech in the 2019 NCAA Tournament Championship game.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — When a team is undefeated during the regular season and hoping to eventually win a championship, I always tell their fans to hope for a loss, or even a few losses, before the playoffs begin. Normally, they think I’m crazy — they are fans, after all — but I believe in the good that can come from losing. Teams on a roll need to know what it’s like to have their roll halted, then, hopefully, if they come across something similar in the postseason, they’ll be somewhat familiar.

Virginia, who lost to a No. 16 seed last season and multiple times this year, obviously learned from their defeats and became the first Virginia team to ever win a national title. Right from the start, they overcame an early deficit against No. 16 Gardner-Webb in the first round, then their backs were against the wall for the bulk of the next five rounds. They faced elimination regularly, yet each time the chips were down, the group pulled it off and emerged victoriously.

The rags-to-riches narrative is common right now, in terms of Virginia’s epic title run, but it’s not that simple. They were never rags, really, they simply weren’t familiar with the spot UMBC put them in last year and panicked. This year, they panicked at times, sure, but never long enough to be beaten. Simply put, the UMBC loss helped them in the long run, though it was tough to swallow at the time. Knowing that feeling makes you never want to feel it again.

Of course, the loss last year isn’t the only thing that propelled them to their title. This team was an actual team, with different guys stepping up at different times during their run and a coach in Tony Bennett that played his cards properly.

Some will say they got lucky; one Texas Tech fan was repeating “double-dribble” over and over again after the blue-and-orange confetti fell, referring to the missed call on Ty Jerome in Virginia’s Final Four game vs. Auburn. And while it was a missed call, nobody can complain about Virginia being champs. The Hoos are a top-tier program and it was their time, it just so happens that it took a year of being a national punchline to have it arrive.