Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Can Virginia repeat?

The chances of any team repeating at NCAA champs are long ones. After all, it has not happened since Florida in 2007 and before that Duke in 1992. And then when you consider what Virginia lost after last season, the odds get even longer. Gone are super-shooter Kyle Guy, along with De'Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Jack Salt. That would cripple most any team. And Virginia does not live on one-and-doners, so reloading for them is a process, not an act.

However, Mamadi Diakite, Braxton Key, Jay Huff and Kihei Clark should return, and all of them were obviously poised to step into larger roles. Tony Bennett is an honest-to-goodness coach who teaches his players to play the right way. He is a coach who makes the sum of the parts to be greater than the whole. In other words, he makes his teams better, and he makes his players to be a team. I don't expect Virginia to win the championship this season, or even to be in the Final Four conversation. But I do expect that they will be better than anyone expects them to be, because they have a better coach than most any other team has.

No comments: