Micah Kiser had just wrapped up an offseason workout when, dripping with sweat and out of breath, he bumped into his new coach.

“These conditioning drills are pretty tough,” Kiser said.

Bronco Mendenhall, in his first year as Virginia’s coach, offered little sympathy.

“Well,” Mendenhall said, “winning is tough.”

A last-second loss to Notre Dame was one of several narrow defeats for Virginia last season. Patrick Smith/Getty Images

There are no shortcuts at Virginia this year, and there are no excuses. The job is to win, and close enough doesn’t count.

It’s an important message for the Cavaliers, who made a habit of coming up just short a year ago. Virginia was one of five Power 5 programs to lose at least five games by a touchdown or less, which an optimist might suggest is a sign of how close it is to a winning season.

Mendenhall is not a glass-half-full guy when it comes to losses, however.

“The misconception can be, we’re so close, we’re almost there,” Mendenhall said. “Really, there’s a trap in that. So much work is required to get from being close to breaking through.”

But here’s the thing: A lot of teams do break through, and so there’s ample reason for optimism at Virginia.

From 2005 through 2014, 32 Power 5 teams lost at least five games by a touchdown or less. On average, those teams gained 2.2 wins the next season, with just eight failing to see any increase in victories. Comparatively, 14 of those teams (44 percent) added at least three wins to their total the next season. (It’s worth noting that one of those eight was Virginia’s 2014 team that went from five wins to four.)

For Virginia, that average increase would result in a bowl game — an elusive accomplishment under the previous regime, which turned in just one winning season in Mike London’s six-year tenure. But Mendenhall is making sure his players understand that erasing a small margin on the scoreboard requires a massive jump in focus and effort.

“The amount of air to be squeezed out from close to winning is a transformation that requires work,” Mendenhall said. “Framing it in relation to that is really one of the first things we had to get clear. If it’s a repeated or a continuing scenario, it’s not an accident.”

So the approach this offseason wasn’t about taking a small step forward. It was about laying the groundwork for a serious transformation.

The same might be said for several other ACC programs, too. Over the past five years, eight Power 5 programs have at least 15 losses by a touchdown or less. Five reside in the ACC: Georgia Tech (17), Wake Forest (16), Boston College (16), Virginia (16) and Virginia Tech (15). Georgia Tech dropped six games by a TD or less last year (and won one on a last-second blocked field goal) and Boston College lost five.

As Mendenhall suggests, it’s hard to consider that a fluke for programs that have a history of it. But the history also suggests at least one or two of those teams will see a significant improvement in 2016.

Whether Virginia is one of them remains to be seen, but Mendenhall can at least attest to the work being done to make the jump.

“What I’ve really worked hard to do is frame it as, it’s really a complete new culture and preparation,” he said, “and then there’s possibly a breakthrough.”