... a Post-Mortem in the aftermath of last Friday's historic upset at the hands of the UMBC Retrievers ...

As the clocked ticked down last Friday on a 20 point blowout loss to a 16 seed, I logged out of all of my UVA- and basketball-related apps and websites and went to bed. I didn't want to read about it, hear about it, blog about it, tweet about it. I told a few key friends I was taking a sabbatical to come to terms with that loss, what it meant for the program, for Hoos Place, for me. But frankly, the severity of the loss in some ways enabled me to bounce back more quickly (10 days, apparently), because 20 points to a 16 seed is just so patently absurd, such an obscenely UVA (revenue) sports thing to happen, that of COURSE we were the first 1 seed to lose. So last week I started compiling this essay: What does this loss mean for the fans and for the program, and what can be done about it?

First, the good news.

The sun came up last Saturday morning. The world, in fact, had not stopped turning. My dog was still begging at her bowl, blissfully indifferent to the shock I'd suffered the night before. And it wound up being a really nice Texas spring weekend. The bluebonnets were blooming. I took my wife out for dinner, drinks, and music on Saturday night. On Sunday I took my daughter to the playground and that evening I grilled out some chicken. It was a really nice weekend.

"This is not the end of the world, okay?" - Tony Bennett, post-game presser.

I wanted to start this by giving my readers some perspective. It's important to frame Friday's [insert your choice language to describe that game] in context of the rest of our lives. Our lives go on, as do the lives of those around us. My alarm went off Monday morning and I went to work; my employer and my clients are still there for me to support. The home improvement and spring yard projects still need doing. So cope however you need to, in such a way that you don't carry last Friday with you as you move forward. Take a sports media break, for a week, a month, whichever. Stay off the message boards if it's just too much. Ignore text messages from buddies who root for rival programs; smile and politely deflect snide comments from coworkers. Remind yourself that at the end of the day, for 99% of us, college basketball is just a game, coached by a bunch of millionaires who don't care what we think, and played by a bunch of kids we don't and will never know. Trust me, I give myself some version of this speech every Thanksgiving weekend after the football team once again shits the bed all over my holiday. Just a game played by strangers.

But with that said, we don't turn JPJ into one of college basketball's loudest venues because it's just some game. We love this basketball team, and we support it vociferously with our time and money because their performance matters to us. Because deep down their success brings us joy. And that kind of emotional attachment means that, when things go to shit, it hurts. It unfortunately also means we're forced to reckon with Friday; we can only stay in denial for so long. So when you're ready to start processing what it means to be on the wrong side of history, read on...

So just how bad was this?

Bad.

Really Bad.

"It just shows you that really anybody can beat anybody and if you don't come to play you're going to get beat. It's basketball.” - Ty Jerome, post-game presser.

Look, this wasn't your ordinary premature March flameout. 1-seed Xavier losing to Florida State? That's March. 4-seed Arizona losing to Buffalo? That's basketall.

And had UVA lost to a lower seed in Atlanta? Shoot, I'll admit that, given the Hunter news, I picked UVA to lose to Kentucky in the Sweet 16. It would've sucked, and there'd be the usual "can't crack the Final Four" narrative that's dogged Sean Miller and plenty of other good coaches through the decades. But we would've persisted... having trouble getting out of the 2nd weekend is a problem 90-some percent of power programs would love to have. We'd still be a program on the doorstep, and it would've felt like 2014 did, where we still had a young returning core that was going to give us another shot or two anyways. Shoot, even losing to Kansas State on Sunday wouldn't have been so utterly terrible, given how there's the Hunter injury excuse, and K-State does have a Final Four coach on its sideline (Bruce Weber took Illinois to the F4 in 2005)... it could (albeit painfully) be explained away. That's March. That's basketball.

What happened on Friday? That wasn't March. Don't even pretend this is just "one of those March things." This was a historic choke job. I mean, I'm talking the Mount Rushmore of choke jobs. This is the Buffalo Bills. This is Bill Buckner. This is the Soviet Hockey Team in Lake Placid. This is Ivan Drago.

And everyone knows it was. So don't think that blowing it off as just some upset is going to quell the national narrative around the basketball team. You think it was bad when the go-to talking points were "they're boring," or "they can't make the Final Four?" In the words of Bachman-Turner Overdrive: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet. This will be brought up in every single in-game commentary, every media article both local and national, and in any casual discussion between basketball fans involving UVA basketball for years to come.

Shit, at least Chaminade was a regular season game that wasn't even televised. It was a punchline, but a pretty harmless one. "Hey guys, remember that time #1 Virginia was jet lagged and got caught sleeping by a D-II team?" It made a good anecdote for any coach urging his team not to overlook an opponent. But again, it wasn't anything that had any tangible lasting effects on the program.

But everyone in America saw what happened Friday. With 10 minutes to go in the game, every college basketball fan had seen the tweets, received the texts, or noticed the score box at the top of the CBS, TBS, and TruTV broadcasts that we were on the ropes, and every last one of them switched their TVs over to TNT to see if it was for real. And dear Lord we didn't just lose.... this wasn't some One Shining Moment buzzer beater. No, we got blown out of the water. We got embarassed. This game wasn't even in doubt in the closing minutes. America turned on TNT and saw the #1 team in America get outcoached, outplayed, and then ultimately lay down and quit when the chips were down.

By a 16 seed. For the first time ever. 30+ years of 16-seeds playing 1-seeds, 4 times a year, and the 16 seed never winning. Not once. Coming close once or twice, but never pulling it out. And certainly never winning comfortably. UMBC broke through for 16 seeds everywhere so thoroughly it was a greater margin than any 15 seed had ever beaten a 2-seed by, or any 14 seed had beaten a 3-seed by. UMBC was ranked #190 in KenPom coming into this game, which is on par with Monmouth and Austin Peay teams we demolished earlier this year. All due respect to the Retrievers, and not to underplay the impact Hunter has on this team, but Virginia had zero business losing that game Friday. None.

So no, "it's basketball" doesn't apply here.

In some small ways, however irrational this may seem, this is worse than Pitt going 0-18 and watching almost every player on scholarship walk. That's "tree falling in an empty forest" bad. No one paid any attention to them; no one cared. People were paying attention to Virginia basketball. Every major media outlet in recent weeks had run pieces to the effect of "this is finally Virginia's year" or "this March, it's different for UVA." So to be the victim of one of the greatest sports upsets in modern history, to not just lose but to get waxed, when the program already had a reputation for March choke jobs?

This was really. fucking. bad.

(FWIW, I don't really think it's worse than Pitt. Obviously going winless in front of 75% empty gyms and losing your whole team and having to pay your loser coach $10M to go away is a trainwreck far more egregious than our historically embarassing 1-and-done tournament showing.)

Let's talk repercussions.

It would be nice if the worst of this was the awkward post-game press conference Friday night and a brief flurry of media hot takes over the course of the weekend, to all be largely forgotten a week later as the focus shifted to teams punching their tickets to San Antonio.

But that's not reality. The reality is that this is going to haunt the program for a while.

First, the silver lining. There are a lot of guys on the Virginia bench, key pieces of next year's planned rotation, who never touched the floor and can reasonably tell themselves "hey, not my fault." Those players, namely De'Andre Hunter, Marco Anthony, Jay Huff, and Francesco Badocchi, can suit up next year and, while possibly annoyed by outside noise about the loss, ball with no personal crisis of confidence.

But for the returning players who were directly outplayed by an undersized America East team, for Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, Mamadi Diakite, and Jack Salt, they are going to have to find a way to overcome this.

"[Coach Bennett] has instilled a lot of humility and unity throughout our team. So it will be easy for us to bounce back." - Kyle Guy, post-game presser.

Easy? Color me skeptical.

Now, I'll caveat that sports psychology is a unique field. I'm not about to pretend to be able to psychoanalyze the mindsets of high profile athletes, to predict how they'll be affected by a high profile upset loss, to guess how effectively they'll bounce back amid the cacophony of media talking heads. I personally can't fathom that it'll simply be "easy" because they've adopted a mindset of humility. The psyches of the best athletes can be funny things. They can be fragile, never recovering after a high profile collapse. Look at Tiger Woods in the aftermath of that infamous November marital spat, never again able to put together 4 tight rounds in a Major, after a decade of being the most consistent golfer in generations. Yet others are resilient, like the year after year Jim Kelly picked himself up off the Super Bowl turf and promptly led his Bills through the AFC all over again; even after the 52-17 shellacking in XXVII, Kelly K-Gun'ed his way right back into XXVIII.

How this team responds is anyone's guess, and I refuse to doubt them. But "easy?" We'll see. Though I do think they'll generally be okay. What's the alternative? Mid-November next year, they'll tip off again in JPJ to start a new season, they'll get a win or two under their belt, play with a chip on their shoulder, and simply get back to business. If any of this is going to manifest itself in the players' confidence, it probably won't be until next year's NCAA Tournament, when forced to relive last Friday's nightmare, but that's 51 weeks away so we'll worry about that when we get there.

The confidence of the coaching staff is of more concern to me. The collapse against Syracuse was bad but, to crib from the last section, was ultimately just one of those March things. Disappointing to be sure, but given the fluky nature of facing a conference foe in the Tournament, the natural reevaluation of scheme when four players graduate, and the staff continuity, the staff wasn't really tempted to overreact. But playing so utterly flat against a 16 seed just begs for some degree of response, especially with a staff vacancy to fill. But will Tony Bennett view this as an impetus to course correct? Or will his reaction be to circle the wagons, doubling down on his current modus operandi? Some of these questions will be answered in the short term when he hires Ron Sanchez's replacement. Others will reveal themselves later this year, be they in Bennett's recruiting strategy over the spring and summer or the X's-and-O's he puts on the floor in the fall.

Speaking of recruiting, the sad fact is this will be felt on the grassroots circuits as well. Virginia already had a steep hill to climb to get good talent to Charlottesville, which we laid out in the second installment of our recruiting thesis over the winter.

First there are the school and program's non-negotiables. We're difficult academically, setting a higher admission standard to start, then having students in more rigorous academic programs than rivals who offer gut majors. Recruits won't get handouts from the program, its boosters, or the shoe companies on its behalf, nor will the AAU coaches, families, or other advisors surrounding the player. And Tony is going to be absolutely frank about the need to earn playing time through hard work and mastery of the defense, when these kids and their families are eating up all of the "we'll make you a Day 1 star" empty promises from other high majors.

Then there are the self-imposed hurdles. Let's start with our offense, which is probably the furthest thing from an NBA offense you can find, players catching the ball off curls often moving away from the basket, with very little downhill action, the lane often clogged by two paint-bound big men and their defenders, that couldn't find a way to get quality paint touches or drives to the rim against UM-fucking-BC. Then there's the pace, dead fucking last yet again, and no matter how effective it is, it's unappealing to a great cross section of recruits. Even away from the X's-and-O's, Tony is kind of square (not saying it's good or bad, he just is) and the buttoned-down staff can struggle to connect with some recruits, their families, or their HS coaching staffs. Tony also has a reputation for being a little hot-cold with his recruiting pursuits.

Our margin for error on the recruiting trail was already razor thin. Tony now having a reputation as the biggest March choker in the game was the absolute last thing we needed. Every AAU gym Tony or his staff walks into this offseason, the upset is going to be the first thing on everyone's mind. Now I like to think most of the players, families, and coaches are going to be too polite to bring it up, but it doesn't matter if they're thinking it. In fact, it could be worse if they keep those thoughts to themselves, because it could mean the staff ends up wasting time chasing a player who's ultimately going to be dissuaded by all the doubts. Rival coaches will bring this up as well. "It's bad enough he's going to have you walking the ball up court and into that painful Sides offense... and now you have to risk being a perennial March upset casualty? You sure you want to go to Charlottesville for that?" Its veracity doesn't matter, because the perception alone is enough to introduce reasonable doubt into the recruit's mind, and that's enough to push him to one of his other half-dozen finalists.

People complained about our lackluster recruiting in the 2017 and 2018 cycles... it's realistic that 2019 could be similarly challenging, even moreso than it already was.

To make matters worse, this loss just validated every anti-UVA talking head in the national media. Virginia faithful excoriated Joe Lunardi when he said a few weeks ago "they’ll have a game where they need to score 75 points, and they won’t be able to do it." Well, UMBC scored 74 points last Friday, so Joe Lundardi was proven 100%, on the nose, to the exact score correct. The UVA fan base (and even writers on this site) became notorious this season for being incredibly sensitive to program criticism, ganging up on any media talking head that doubted Bennett, the program's ceiling without superstars, the pace or the offensive system, or suggested his past inability to win in March would portend future early exits. We collectively pointed to our gaudy record, our #1 ranking, our ACC titles, and said "No! You're wrong! This year is different!" Well, they were right, we were wrong, at least it sure looks that way right now, and those "bad for basketball" pundits are just going to double down on that narrative going forward.

What can, or should, the coaching staff do?

"I don't think Virginia has to change at all." - ESPN analyst and former coach Seth Greenberg, post-game reaction.

I get where Seth is coming from. I really do. In the aftermath of a freak occurrence, anyone involved is susceptible to a whiplash reaction. At a bare minimum it invites real soul searching (isn't that what this is?), but how a person ultimately responds can range from a panicked reaction to change everything, to pridefully doubling down on the current approach, to indecision that mixes the worst of both. Seth is advocating the doubling down, and given the gaudy records we've accumulated in recent years, can you blame him?

But at the same time, the close of any campaign must include an honest review of what worked, what didn't, and a subsequent update to your long range plan. That's just sound management theory, whether you won it all, lost them all, or fell anywhere on the spectrum in between. The key is to reflect honestly, free of emotion, and the emotions that can come into play here include both panic (overreacting to one game) and pride (sticking to what you've done because it's yours, not because it's the best approach going forward).

So what we discuss here isn't just about last Friday. It's based on longer trends with the program and with the game at large. But we can't entirely discount UMBC as a data point; it's a significant one that must be given due weight alongside the rest of the results.

At that point, the question becomes, how do properly weight UMBC? And that leads us to...

Evaluate the program goals

I don't know what Tony has set as the program goals. As a member of Corporate America, I'd fully expect the AD front office asks its coaches to set goals and targets for each season, which can then be reviewed and adjusted with each subsequent year. I'm sure there are a number of goals that all must be weighted appropriately. Some have nothing to do with wins and losses, and instead focus on things such as academic performance for the players. But wins and losses must ultimately be a factor too, and then the question becomes how much does winning in the NCAA Tournament matter? If "make a Final Four" is a real program goal, is it a more important goal than winning a lot of regular season games? If it's not, then all of this is moot. But if it is...

Be introspective about what's holding the program back

I did a little number crunching on our postseason performance in the modern Peak Tony era (the last 5 years, since the 2013-14 breakthrough). For all 12 NCAA Tournament games in that span, I took, from KenPom, our Adjusted Offense and Defense efficiencies, those of the opponents, and compared them to get an "expected" points-per-possession (PPP) efficiency. For example, in 2014, Virginia was typically expected to score 1.148 PPP in a game, whereas Memphis's defense was expected to allow 0.971, so averaging those two, the expected UVA output for that game would be 1.060 PPP. I did that both for when UVA had the ball (our AdjO vs their AdjD) and when the opponent had the ball (their AdjO vs our AdjD). Then I calculated the actual PPP for us and them in that game, then compared the actual vs the expected.

Deviation from Expectations

On average over those 12 games, the results weren't that interesting. On offense, UVA typically overperforms the expected scoring efficiency by a scant 0.005 PPP (the equation expected us to score 1.082 PPP, our output was 1.087). On defense, we underformed the expectation by allowing 0.026 PPP more than the algorithm says we should've (expecting 1.003 PPP but allowing 1.029). Those aren't big numbers, really. The defense is generally giving a little more than the offense is, but frankly neither of the statistics move the needle much for me. Those numbers basically say that on average we perform about as we should. The key words there, however, are on average.

I then decided to look at the difference between performance in Wins (7) vs Losses (5).

All 7 NCAAT Wins

In our seven NCAAT wins, the offense explodes. It outscores its predicted performance by a rousing 0.116 PPP (expecting 1.101 PPP, actually scoring 1.217). The defense only overperforms by 0.014 PPP (an actual of 0.987 PPP allowed vs the expected of 1.001). Yay offense, right? In our wins, that is.

All 5 NCAAT Losses

In our five losses, the exact opposite is true. The offense grossly underperforms its expectations by 0.161 PPP (the model expecting we score 1.055 PPP, only scoring 0.893 PPP), while the defense is a lesser offender by underperforming by 0.087 PPP (the model expecting we'll hold teams to 1.007 PPP, yet allowing 1.093).

Summary of Offense and Defense

There are two takeaways here.

First, the defense is maxxed out coming into March. Even when we win, we don't see a plus performance from the defense, we see an on par peformance. But sometimes an opponent just gets hot, and when you're maxxed out, that means there's nowhere to go but down. The danger to counting on a maxxed out defense to carry you through March is that you can't afford an opponent who just catches fire. In fact, the defense only outperformed the expected result in 3 out of the 12 games, so 75% of the time, opponents just "brought it" to the Tourney, and the defense's efficiency reflected as such. Even in our wins, over half the time (4 of 7) the defense was a step behind. Conclusion: it's reasonable to expect the opposing offenses to excel in March, so we can't expect our D to carry the day as safely as it usually does.

Second, and most importantly then, the offense is the difference between winning and losing. Whereas the defense has a relatively minor 0.101 PPP swing from wins to losses, the offense has an astounding 0.277 PPP swing, over two and a half times the variance of the defense. The D is relatively consistent, but the offense is the X-Factor. Offense does well (7 out of 7), we win. Offense does poorly (5 out of 5), we lose. It's really no more complicated than that. If we score more than 21 points against an undersized mid-major in the first half last Friday, it's likely that game goes very differently.

So if we want to be a more dangerous team in the Big Dance, we need some solutions for the offense. But before we start talking recommendations, we need to...

Differentiate the non-negotiable from the negotiable

This is a program built on some very non-negotiable tenets. Some of them reflect the character and values of those who work and play for the program; specifically the Five Pillars we're so familiar with: Passion, Humility, Unity, Servanthood, and Thankfulness. These are great. These shouldn't change. Continue to build the program around people who embody these values.

Other tenets apply more to X's and O's, and here we'll talk. On defense, the non-negotiable is playing 30 continuous seconds of pack-line defense. But we've seen Tony be willing to tweak aspects of it, whether it be to exploit strengths of the current roster or to tactically counter something the opponent is showing. Examples are the pack pushing further out this year to be more disruptive to passing lanes, knowing we had good post defenders to be mistake-erasers, or switching on screens when we felt we have the defensive versatility.

For the offense, I truly believe the non-negotiables are playing for a good-to-great shot as much as possible, and prioritizing getting back in transition D over sending guards to offensive rebound. Anything else should be up for discussion, to include the Sides offense itself. My dad used to work for Newport News Shipbuilding, and they had a quote from their founder that said "We shall build good ships here; at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships." For Virginia's offense, I would modify that to read "We will get good shots here; out of Sides if we can, late in the shot clock if we must, but always good shots." So with that said, it's time to...

Make some hard decisions about the offense

4 of 22. 1 of 15. 8 of 21. 2 of 17. 6 of 18. Those were our 3-point shooting statistics in each of the five losses in the NCAA Tournament the last five years. Sometimes the shooters just go flat cold. This places an incredible importance on manufacturing points at the rim. This can be (a) post players scoring on the blocks, (b) guards scoring on the dribble-drive, and (c) drawing shooting fouls on attempts in the paint.

How do you do that? Two key tenets. Spacing & Aggression. Spread the floor & Attack.

Think of it this way. If you want to be able to score at the rim, it's advantageous to have fewer defenders in the paint. And if you want fewer defenders in the paint, you need them to be forced to cover UVA players elsewhere on the floor. Conversely, the more paint-bound big men we have on the floor, the more their defenders are also camped in the paint. Even if we send Jack Salt up to the top of the key to set a ball screen, because Jack is no offensive threat from anywhere beyond 7' from the rim, his defender is staying home protecting the rim from a driving ball handler, or able to double the other post. But the more your offensive players are threats away from the basket, the more their defenders are forced to honor that, and the fewer defenders left "home" to make life hell on dribble penetration.

Welcome to Spacing 101.

Spacing with two traditional bigs is, pardon my French, shit. You put Jack Salt and Isaiah Wilkins on the floor together, neither of whom scare defenders as shooters or ball handlers, and there is nowhere in the lane for our guards to go. The paint becomes a jungle.

How do we improve spacing? Another way to ask this is, what skillsets do we need to employ at traditional big man positions? There are three kinds of players to employ at the 4-spot that can help. 1) A stretch 4, your Evan Nolte / Jay Huff pick-and-pop big man. 2) A combo forward, often a kid who grew up a wing but had a late growth spurt, and has the size of a 4 but the perimeter game of a 3, think Justin Anderson or DeAndre Hunter. 3) A guard, employing the truest of small ball lineups, which we see someone like Devon Hall, Marial Shayok, or Malcolm Brogdon guard guys much bigger than them in exchange for gaining an edge on the offensive end.

For my money, I like the 4-guard lineup the least. I think you lose too much defensively if you're forced to defend a bigger lineup, and the rebounding suffers as well. That leaves us with a stretch 4 and a combo forward as options. Forced to choose, I like the combo forward better because it also gives us more defensive versatility as our opponents similarly go small or wide open with greater frequency. But frankly, given where we are today, I'm not going to nitpick which way we go with this, so long as we at least commit to one of them.

Simply opening up the floor, however, is not enough. You then must have a system that seeks to exploit the open floor. This goes double in what pundits call the FOM II era, which is shorthand for the second incarnation (far more enforced this time around) of Freedom of Movement, a concept that pushes referees to discourage defenses from impeding both on- and off-ball movement.

This means that a key part of your system must be aggressively looking to score at the rim, unafraid of contact. That doesn't mean driving in to the lane and then trying to score while falling away awkwardly so that a defender can't touch you. That doesn't mean 250 lb Jack Salt taking a 7' hook shot over a shorter, lighter defender. That's not aggressive. Aggressive is making a move that forces a defender to either foul you or get out of the way. Yes you may get a shot blocked or a charge called some small percentage of the time, but I'm very willing to bet that you get the bucket and/or the foul far more often. We need the true post players we do put on the floor to be able to score 1-on-1 against a rival post, especially when they have a size advantage. And we need guards and wings who, when given an opening into the lane, know how to go hard for the bucket and/or the whistle.

By the way, how do I know we don't attack the rim aggressively? Because we were 345th in the nation in Free Throw Rate. Only 6 teams in America (out of 351) drew FTAs at a lower frequency than we did. And this isn't some one-year aberration, we were 346th last year. Even with Gill and Brogdon in 2016, we were 289th, Avoiding contact is an ingrained part of our offensive philosophy. In an era when referees are more inclined than ever to blow whistles in favor of the offense, Virginia is actively moving in the other direction.

And it's a self-defeating cycle, because the less we seek contact, the less inclined referees are to blow the whistle in our favor, meaning the rare times we actually do go hard to the rim, Virginia is going to suffer further.

Spacing and Aggression. I don't care if it happens in Sides or if it's achieved by adopting a Nova-ish or Bielein-ish spready system. In fact, I don't even care much if we continue to play it agonizingly slow (bottom 10 nationally in offensive pace each of the last 4 years). All I want is Spacing and Aggression. We're bad at both, and it's a testament to the discipline and experience of our players that we put up good offensive numbers in the regular season. It's also a testament to the natural abilities of Anthony Gill and Malcolm Brogdon to be great players in the paint and carry the offense through that deep 2016 run. But without a renewed emphasis on opening up the floor and then exploiting that spacing to attack downhill, we can expect a ceiling on our performance in the the NCAA Tournament. Which means that the staff needs to...

Recruit and develop with this evolution in mind

So congratulations, you've embraced spacing and aggression. How do you achieve it?

First, reevaluate how the roster is constructed. Over the last few years we've brought in a lot of big men with limited effective range, and failed to develop them beyond that. Akil Mitchell, Darion Atkins, Anthony Gill, Mike Tobey, Isaiah Wilkins, Jack Salt, Jarred Reuter, Austin Nichols, and Mamadi Diakite. None of these guys arrived with much offensive polish away from the basket (some of them arrived with little offensive polish at all). Only Evan Nolte and Jay Huff came to Charlottesville with bonafides as a stretch threat. So year after year, we'd have a bench stocked with paint-oriented 4's and 5's, and that's how we end up with Jack and Isaiah sharing the floor, clogging up the paint.

As such, the staff needs to limit the number of paint-oriented posts it brings into the program. On an ideal 11-man roster, the big uglies need to take up a max of 3 spots, and the other spots need to go to either legit stretch threats (and I mean legit, not "capable of throwing up a 3 a few times a year tops" like Mamadi, Wilkins, or Tobey), or preferably to more big wings. We've never really had more than 2 big wings on the roster at once, sometimes only 1, so the recruiting strategy should be to, over time, up the depth at this position to really have the bodies to play a wing-4 for most (if not all) of the game. And those true bigs we do bring in? They need to be able to score too. I love Jack and Isaiah and everything they bring to the game as defenders and rebounders. But you simply can't put guys on the floor who can't score reliably, because then you're asking your offense to effectively play 4-on-5. (Tony also needs to take a very hard look at how we're developing our post players. Neither Jack nor Isaiah, through four long years in Charlottesville, ever developed into competent post scoring threats, and blame needs to go somewhere.)

We also need to bring in guards who excel at scoring in the paint. They still have to be capable jump shooters, but they can't be only shooters, there needs to be a dog in them that is perfectly happy going strong into the lane completely unfazed by the potential of taking a hard foul in the process.

Once they're on Grounds, those skillsets need to be nurtured, encouraged, and deployed with enough frequency that the players use them with confidence. If Anthony Gill has a 3-point shot when he arrives (he was 11 of 28, 39%, as a freshman at South Carolina!), then for crying out loud, have him rep pick-and-pops in practice and get him a couple good looks each game so that he can find his confidence and rhythm... don't let it atrophy to the tune of only 3 more 3PA the rest of his career at UVA. (FWIW, he's shooting the 3-ball great overseas now.)

And if all of these evolutions are outside of Tony Bennett's comfort zone (no shame in that, no one is a master of everything, he knows what he's been coaching up until this point), then Tony needs to...

Bring on staff that challenges the status quo

When Nick Saban knew he needed to bring his offense at Alabama into the modern era, he went out and hired Lane Kiffin. Saban handed over the keys and said, effectively, "this isn't my area of expertise, it's yours. Here are some ground rules, now go make me a championship offense." And Kiffin did.

Tony's got his areas of expertise. They're defense and culture. No one in America is better than him at (a) scheming and implementing a man defense and (b) building a constructive locker room culture of Pillar players. I hope it isn't heresy to suggest that there are other areas that maybe he's not "the best" in, or even "among the best." Those areas, to me anyways, are offense and recruiting. That's not to say we're poor at either, just that they're areas where the staff can continue to work to improve. Being humble enough to see the room for improvement in those areas, and having the passion for perfection to go find players and staff members to help you get there, and it's no stretch to see the staff being open to evolve.

I mentioned ground rules and non-negotiables previously. Any staff member that comes on has to embrace those and strategize accordingly. Want to improve recruiting? Start with "we're going to still be honest with players about earning playing time, and we're not doing anything untoward for a player or his family," then find someone who can start from there and excel. Want to implement a more open, downhill offense? Start with "we focus on securing a defense rebound, so we can't leak out a lot of guards to run, and we have to get back in transition defense, so we can't make offensive rebounding a major thrust of the offense," then find someone who can take that basis and implement some brilliant offensive sets and formations.

Find a bright, young, up-and-coming basketball mind to bring a constructive-yet-disruptive energy to the staff, and embrace it.

Conversely, avoid all temptations to fall back on Bennett family retreads. No more Soderbergs (sorry, Sodey), none, period, end, dot. Having a mentor-like McKay on the bench was great when Tony was still in his first 5 years or so as a head man, still growing into himself in the ACC. But now, Bennett is who he is, he's fully developed, and the need to save a spot on the bench for a veteran-HC-sounding board has passed. God forbid taking a Yes-Man who arrives deferential to the Dick Bennett coaching tree. Now is the time to surround Bennett with fresh perspectives.

Coach Sanchez is out and, by some accounts, current Director or Recruiting and Personnel Development Orlando Vandross will be promoted to replace him. This means that Recruiting/Development position becomes vacant, and it's imperative that Tony be bold in finding the right guy for the job. Tony should also be looking long and hard at his other assistant positions and make a plan of what he wants out of them as well, thinking about who the next guy to fill those shoes will be. And once that staff is assembled and the roster is set and the offensive evolution is schemed, the final step is to...

Coach for March, not January

“Dejounte’s a young talent, and we need to find exactly what we have there. It’s time.” - Coach Gregg Popovich, five time NBA title-winning coach of the San Antonio Spurs, on the elevation of unproven PG Dejounte Murray to starter over the veteran Tony Parker.

Coaches often consider coaching for the future at the same time that they're coaching for today. And the hard reality is that developing young talent often means enduring their growing pains, watching them fall a few times along the way. As the starter, and more importantly the closer in tight games in the 4th quarter, Murray just had a brutal February for the Spurs, blowing numerous leads in that span as the 21-year-old was given a sink-or-swim vote of confidence by one of the greatest coaches in NBA history (and one to whom Tony Bennett is oft compared).

There's no substitute for meaningful game minutes, however rough they may be at times.

And this isn't football, where sending out an unprepared rookie means he's going to lose his head to a veteran linebacker and get his confidence shot, a la Anthony Martinez at South Carolina. Plenty of great basketball players at both the college and pro level get coached up through wildly inconsistent rookie seasons to bloom into veteran stars.

Now, this isn't about a young player taking the reins for an aging one... obviously in college hoops, seniors get the ball, not the bench. But there's still value to letting some young players take lumps in meaningful games, I'm talking more than the Monmouths and Austin Peays of the schedule. Primarily this is to get them ready for March; imagine if Marco Anthony or Jay Huff could've been more ready to be the proverbial Next Man Up last week, instead of requiring the Top 7 to play the whole game. It also allows the primary rotation to play slightly fewer minutes, reducing wear and tear and tired legs as the marathon season wears on, to say nothing of letting the training staff actually sit a player who's banged up for a game or two. Hunter twists an ankle, or Wilkins takes a hard fall and his back tightens up, or Hall has pneumonia... being more willing to play your less developed depth means you can tell those guys to take a road trip off, stay home and heal up.

But the hard part of this "coaching for March" philosophy is accepting the "not for January" tradeoff. Giving more minutes to Nigel Johnson or Jay Huff or Marco Anthony in January makes us far more vulnerable in those games; the proven veterans are safer bets. And Tony hates to lose, meaning he hates to lose regular season games, and getting him to take risks in December January to provide a March boost may be asking a lot.

And just as much as this applies to giving run to youngsters, it goes for playing through the learning curve of new offensive philosophies. Trying to get a stretch 4 into a confident groove, or implementing a new spread offense, means there are going to be some lumps for a few months as guys play their way into a comfort level with it. That learning curve can be really hard to stomach, for players, coaches, and fans alike.

But I'll come back to one of the things Tony said way back when he first got to Virginia. "We've got to lose together before we can win together." That to some degree can apply here too. Manage expectations, of course, for all involved, Rome wasn't built in a day. But if the staff does ultimately choose to prioritize improving its odds for March success to a significant degree, then it needs to be realistic about risks that poses to regular season results, and then be willing to accept those risks for the long term benefits.

Do I really think Tony is going to do any of this?

Eeeehhhh... maybe?

Tony is the sort of guy who'll lose a game 48-46 and when asked what went wrong, will say the defense needed to be tightened up. In other words, he is who he is in so many ways. Tony will never overreact by trying to drastically revector the program in response to any external event. To the contrary, his default reaction is probably to circle the wagons, to double down on his tenets first and look to tweak the negotiable aspects second.

So color me skeptical.

But I really do hope he's willing to be very introspective in the coming months. When I wrote my recruiting thesis a few months ago, I titled it "The Crossroads" (link) because I really did believe we were at a potential inflection point in the program's trajectory. We've got some very talented players on Grounds right now, but the talent pipeline is currently questionable at best. If Tony wants to maintain this level of success beyond the tenures of the 2016 recruiting class, he's got to be forward thinking and bold. True to himself, mind you, but willing to continue to mature his tactics and roster construction to best exploit where the game is today.

In the Air Force, we had an adage, "flexibility is the key to airpower." The battlefield is a dynamic place, and the ability to adapt strategy and tactics as the situation dictates is often the key to victory. Tony Bennett often quotes Mike Tyson's "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." The best fighters are the ones who can, once punched out of their initial plan, modify their plan on the fly, to keep what's working, ditch what isn't, and innovate to overcome. Virginia basketball has been punched in the mouth, the plan (Sides) isn't going to get the job (get to the Final Four) done. It's time to be flexible.

Closing thoughts for the fans

I have no idea if Coach Bennett or anyone around the program will ever read this, and even if they do, it'll likely just be blown off as the ramblings of a know-nothing anonymous fan. Fair enough. My readers aren't the coaches, they're the fans, so I want to close by talking to the fans directly.

It's time to think about adjusting expectations, both for next year and for the long term. I know, I know, just earlier this month I wrote a long missive not only celebrating all the accomplishments over the last 7 seasons, but underlining Tony's youth and the bright future still ahead. Does being the victim of a historic 1-16 blowout upset change any of that?

That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself. I hope that, as a minimum, it doesn't diminish your appreciation for the accomplishments of the last seven years. Don't take this kind of sustained success for granted... I spent the long years between the 1995 KU win and the 2014 return to prominence enduring a lot of bad UVA basketball, and I have zero desire to go back to it. Even if we go off a cliff tomorrow, we'll still be able to see this run akin to the Ralph era (which to me includes the post-Ralph 1984 Final Four), a run we'll wax nostalgic over and explain to our kids and grandkids. And should things bounce right back, then this will just ultimately fade to a footnote.

But I would still caution fans to readjust their hopes and expectations going forward. Until we see changes from the staff in how they coach a more open offense or manage the depth chart with March in mind, there's no reason to expect our NCAA Tournament appearances to go any differently. We're still going to have games where the offense just fails to materialize, where the jumpers aren't falling and we aren't built to manufacture points at the rim. That's not to say it can't ever happen, but the deck is going to be stacked against us in a do-or-die environment where opponents are all stepping up their games to levels we're not accustomed to seeing in the regular season. This goes double if Tony doesn't take the opportunity to stack his staff with fresh perspectives or skillsets to bolster the current weaknesses in offensive strategy, recruiting, and big man development.

This goes for our postseason chances next year and potentially the year after, the years where we're still led by the talented 2016 recruiting class. Those should both be good years, and with the right tweaks can be very dangerous, both in the regular season and beyond. But Kyle Guy, Mamadi Diakite, and Ty Jerome will graduate in 2020, and DeAndre Hunter and Jay Huff will be eyeing the NBA, and the future of the program entirely rests on the staff's ability to replace them with similarly talented, high-ceiling players. As of today, that recruiting (whether out of high school or on the transfer market) is highy questionable, and fans should expect a gradual return to the pack over the next few years if the talent level subsides.

This is still a program worthy of your affection. This is still a "right way" program with good kids who play hard, and a coach who represents the University's values and has brought us a lot more success than we're accustomed to. This may or may not be Bennett's Waterloo; time will tell if our program's ceiling was lowered by being so publicly embarassed, or if Ty Jerome's belief of the players' and hopefully the coaches' resiliency proves true. I certainly hope it's the latter, and the program uses this as a motivator to make needed changes and play next year with a chip on its shoulder and erase the stink next March.

But should Tony Bennett fail to use the loss as a wake-up call? Should he hire replacement staff from within the Bennett-sphere, finding another Sodey, or should he go into next season committed to a Sides offense without floor-stretching big man or small ball forward play? Then you have my permission to let your doubt take over and your expectations for the long term be lowered.

Time will tell...