I started seeing this on Twitter the other day. I was hoping it would die down.
It has not died down.
Since Virginia lost Tuesday night to Boston College, the question on everyone’s lips has been whether Virginia’s headed to the NIT.
It’s a fair question to ask. Tony Bennett’s team is making a strong case. It would be a historic turnaround. I get it. The question-asking is not the problem.
The problem is the question-answering. The problem is saying Virginia is definitively NIT-bound, or that the ACC’s (strategic, let me add) mediocrity is going to yank Jay Huff’s Team™ (is Virginia Jay Huff’s team?) into America’s greatest tournament.
Making the NIT takes a lot of work. It’s not easy to do. Nobody, at this point, is even a likely NIT bet, let alone a safe one. Yes, Virginia has a chance. They didn’t play a very difficult non-conference schedule, and they lost two games in it. They won 46-26 at one point. They did, indeed, drop one to Boston College. Hopefully, for the sake of watching a 31-29 second-round game between them and Stanford, they do make the field. But for now, that’s all we have with this: hope. And frankly, they might shoot themselves in the foot over these next seven games by going 6-1 or something similar. So let’s be reasonable about this.
