For a couple of years after he’d been fired as the Virginia men’s basketball coach, every Monday night, I’d meet Pete Gillen for drinks at St. Maartens.

I’m not sure the old coach would have ever described his night the same way; as meeting Adam for drinks; but I knew he’d be there, and I absolutely loved the guy, so I’d grab a bar stool, and order a Coors Lite or three while he drank Sambuca. He’d greet me with a smile, and we’d chat about baseball, politics, or whatever else people talk about on bar stools at St. Maartens.

Maybe he was just being nice to me, because that’s what nice people do; or, I’d like to think, there was a bit of actual affection owing to the times I devoted my platform as a part of the Virginia Sports Network to passionately defending the coach, even when it wasn’t popular. Once, on a road trip, Ginny Gillen had tapped me on the shoulder, and wrapped me in a bear hug, near tears, thanking me for something I’d said. I never brought this up to the coach, but I hoped, and maybe assumed, he knew.

Sometimes, rarely, the conversations would drift to what had gone wrong in his last years at Virginia; the last years of a tenure that had started with such promise.

“It’s a really hard place to win,” he’d say, without bitterness. “You can’t bring in the same kind of kids to Virginia that you can win with anywhere else.”

Virginia, everybody knew, didn’t have an “athlete’s major”. Guys had to go to class, and actually do their own work. To play for Virginia, you had to be a student at Virginia.

Minor legal transgressions, like drinking underage, things that were always swept aside at major colleges, at Virginia they were enough to end a career. Remember Ahmad Bradshaw? The NFL running back who had some good years with the New York Giants? He was a Wahoo, briefly, before he got popped at Biltmore, had to leave Virginia, and became a star for Marshall.

You couldn’t cheat to win at Virginia. Coach Gillen told me a story, one time after a number of drinks, about a player, someone who’s name you probably know, who came to Charlottesville on a recruiting visit with the staff expecting his signature on a Letter of Intent.

“(Basketball school) offered $40,000 cash,” the player bluntly informed the Virginia coaches. “I don’t need more, just match that and I’ll be here.”

This player, of course, did not attend UVa.

Pete Gillen was not implying, of course, that he would have preferred to cheat. Not by any means. But the implication was that Virginia, as an ACC school, was held to the same expectations as everybody else; fans and media wanted postseason success, All Americans, Final Fours. But the game was rigged, and even fielding a competitive team at Virginia was harder than winning conference titles might be at other programs.

“It’s possible to win here,” Coach said, to the best of my recollection, “but you can’t make any mistakes with the kids you bring in. You really need to find the kind of players who can thrive here, and play basketball at an elite level, and some years there might only be a couple of them across the entire country. And then you have to convince them to come.”

Coach recounted a few stories of this kind of player who almost committed, but chose another school or declared for the NBA draft instead. “Thing is, even if you miss on one of these kids, you might still need a point guard, so you have to take a chance on someone who doesn’t fit perfectly and hope they’ll study hard, or their game will develop, and if those things don’t happen, you’re back to square one.”

Twenty-seven hours ago, the University of Virginia men’s basketball team won the national championship.

They did it, against greater odds than nearly anyone outside the program realizes; with a roster of student-athletes who fit into the fabric of UVa, who succeed in class, who have ambitions beyond basketball, who don’t carry themselves with the above-the-law swagger of a typical college-age celebrity, and who, presumably, did not ask for a briefcase of cash on arrival.

They did it with fourteen student-athletes from six countries; players who bought in to this unique program. People who understood exactly what the University of Virginia is and isn’t, and came anyway.

Star guard Ty Jerome of Washington Heights, New York City; a son of a coach and grandson of prominent civil rights activists. Elite Eight hero Mamadi Diakite, the son of a medical doctor and of Guinea’s national director of pharmacies and laboratories. Final Four MOP Kyle Guy, the son of a Marine who served in Iraq. Future NBA lottery pick Deandre Hunter, the son of a single mother in Philadelphia who prioritized education, and spent her evenings rebounding for her son as he practiced basketball.

Everyone who played in the Final Four for Virginia, everyone except for five-foot-nine freshman Kihei Clark, is in at least their third year of college. No one-and-done’s, no semi-pros, no agents lurking around the dormitories. College students, and now, champions.

Coaching at Virginia involves threading a needle that is all but impossible. You have to find Ivy League kids with NBA playing ability.

It is absolutely bonkers this group is the best basketball team in the entire country.

Like everyone else emotionally invested in this team, I went through a barely-manageable range of emotions during the championship game.

I smoked a pack of cigarettes before noon (in China, the game started at 9:20 in the morning).

I alternated between prowling the room like a caged tiger, and sitting so still- to not change my position and jinx the team- that my muscles began to cramp.

For the first half of the game, I was impossible to be around. I watched from my apartment, in Shenzhen, with just my girlfriend, Daria, and my dog for company. Every time Daria even reminded me she was in the room, I’d nearly explode.

“Shit,” she said under her breath, after one Texas Tech three, and I bit my lip and glared. Leave me alone to process this catastrophe in silence.

At the last dead ball timeout of the first half, she’d had enough of my attitude, and left to take the dog on a walk.

Halftime came, and she still hadn’t returned. I knew she was giving me space. I also knew I was being a total jerk.

On television, the anchors were talking about Coach Bennett.

I asked myself, what would Tony Bennett say if he saw me acting this way? Would Coach Bennett be satisfied that I was being the best version of myself? Am I, a thirty-four year old professional who manages a large business and has plenty of life experience, living up to the standards of a college basketball team?

When Daria came back, I apologized, and I told her that I had a problem with admitting weakness. I told her, this game means so much to me that if Virginia doesn’t win, I’ll be heartbroken, and I don’t want to be heartbroken in front of her. So I’ve been pushing her away, but I’ll stop, and please watch the second half with me, together.

She did, and as the seconds ticked down in overtime, we jumped and celebrated, in each other’s arms.

How is this even possible?

Virginia won the national championship.

I cracked a beer as the seconds ticked off in overtime. I felt lucky to experience this in my lifetime, to cheer for a team so inspiring they make me change my own behavior, and to see that team cutting down the nets at the end of One Shining Moment.

I finished the beer and opened another one, and, when Daria wasn’t watching, looked skyward and raised the bottle, ticking off a few names that should have been there to celebrate, too. I have no idea why these names came to mind first, but then, I hadn’t had a chance to prepare for anything about the moments after the win. This was new territory.

Monk Bingler was the usher stationed in the corner, near the players tunnel, at University Hall, and then at John Paul Jones Arena, when I was a young broadcaster working for the Virginia network. Every day, he’d grab my arm as I walked past, and, with a serious expression, tell me a terrible joke, all unsuitable for writing here. I think he only knew three jokes. I heard them all so many times I could even tell by his body language which one was coming that day. I’d give him a laugh, shake his hand, and head to the arena floor. Monk died in August, 2018, at ninety four. Other than his time in Europe during World War II, when he’d earned a Purple Heart on the beach at Normandy, Monk Bingler had ushered at every single Virginia men’s basketball game for seventy nine years.

John Risher was a part of the program for even longer. The Lynchburg native and family physician actually played in the first football game ever at Scott Stadium, in 1931. Until his death in 2017, at 107 years old, he continued to drive himself back and forth to Charlottesville to keep statistics at Virginia football games, and witness every major landmark in modern Cavalier history. I don’t think he owned a polo shirt that wasn’t orange and blue. Doctor Risher would have given anything to see his University of Virginia become the center of the sports world.

Chris Williams, Big Smooth, was one of the first basketball players of my generation to return Virginia to competitiveness, after a few declining years in the late 1990’s. The 1998–99 ACC Rookie of the Year, he arrived in Charlottesville a year before the class that broke through; the Watson/Mason/Mapp group. He was a three time all-ACC player, and a quiet, steady force in the early 2000’s. He was thirty-six when he died in 2017 of an aortic blood clot.

I raised my bottle to Monk, Dr. John, and Big Smooth, and thought briefly of my own father, who died in 2002; he hated UVa- a New Yorker, through and through- but tried his best to follow the team once it became a part of my life, and, I have no doubt, would have insisted on attending the celebration in person, if only to share that moment with his son. The last conversation I ever had with him, before he took a sudden turn for the worse, was about basketball.

I drank a sip, and felt a bit like Jim Valvano in that famous 1983 moment after winning his National Championship; running around the court, happy and confused, looking for someone, anyone, to hug.

The first message I sent was to John Forrest, my closest friend since forever, my companion in the stands at more losses in more sports than anyone else.

“Oh my god,” I wrote. “Wow.”

John had driven to Charlottesville for the game, not to watch at bars or at the arena, but to be at home, with his own parents, the ones who had instilled in him the importance of always rooting for the Wahoos.

He sent me a photo of the three of them, glasses in hand. They all looked like Jim Valvano, too; happy, and more than a bit dazed.

“We’re drinking champagne,” he wrote. “I think that’s what you’re supposed to do. I have literally no idea. What do people do when they win?”

It’s been more than a day, by now, since the unthinkable happened. And, a bit surprisingly, life goes on, as more-or-less normal. I still have meetings and trainings to attend this afternoon. I had the same plate of takeout sushi for lunch today, as a champion, that I ate three days ago, as a regular guy.

Maybe what it means, above all, is that there will never again be a kid in Charlottesville, growing up like me, that thinks that titles are for other people; that doing things the right way means you can’t win against the big boys. There will be a banner, forever, at John Paul Jones Arena and at whatever late-century venue comes next, declaring the University of Virginia, our University of Virginia, as the 2018–2019 National Champions.

It happened, and the banner will fly forever, proof that it can be done, and that, even without compromising, the good guys can win.