Perspective: What made Tony Bennett’s Virginia team vulnerable is also what makes it resilient
By Jerry Brewer Jerry Brewer Sports columnist Email Bio Follow Columnist March 21 at 6:13 PM COLUMBIA, S.C. — A year later, a hundred miles away, Virginia grinned through the horrible memories. The first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament morphed into the first No. 1 seed to return as a No. 1 the year after losing to a No. 16. It takes a strange, hardwearing creature to do such a symmetrical thing.
Members of the team have to use it, and if they do so properly, success can minimize it. But there is no forgetting. There is no this-is-a-new-season tripe, even though this is a new season. Throughout their impressive 29-3 campaign, the Cavaliers recovered by keeping the same approach: Own it to control it.
Bennett was careful with the messaging to his team. He wanted to tap into their post-UMBC emotions, but he didn’t want the entire season to be about making up for that loss. He told his players, “If you learn to use it right, it can buy you a ticket to a place you wouldn’t have gone any other way.” Careful with anger? For many programs, it is a foreign concept. During a recent visit to Nevada, I learned that Wolf Pack Coach Eric Musselman used a loss in a preseason scrimmage to Washington as a season-long motivator. After the supposedly meaningless defeat, Musselman changed the key code to his team’s locker room and made it the final score of that scrimmage.
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