Cavalier Attitude

Suddenly the tournament marathon, and the intra-league season, are all but over. A single game remains until ACC teams take their shows on the road, or back to the dorm or gym as the case may be. All that's left is the ACC Tournament final, 61st in a series dating to the early years of Dwight Eisenhower's administration.

If you shop Amazon, please start here and help DBR
Available now!

Back in that first season Virginia, then an independent, joined seven breakaway members of the Southern Conference in a new league called the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Cavaliers, like league members Clemson and South Carolina, didn't invest heavily in basketball, a choice that showed in results on the court.

After that 1954 season, the Cavs went 17 years before posting a winning overall record. Not until 1972, behind ACC Player of the Year Barry Parkhill and Coach of the Year Bill Gibson, did UVa win at least 20 games overall or more league contests than it lost.

Finally, in 1976, the first year the ACC Tournament was played outside North Carolina - talk about a coincidence! - Virginia won its first league championship, defeating ranked teams N.C. State, Maryland, and North Carolina in succession at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md.

That highwater mark has rarely been approached since by teams from the Charlottesville school.

Now Tony Bennett's fifth Cavalier squad gets its shot at a title. Bennett also becomes the third Virginia coach to take his team to the final, after Terry Holland five times and Jeff Jones once. Holland and Jones were a combined 1-5 in championship competition.

Meanwhile Duke, UVa's opponent, seeks its 20th title in 31 visits to the finals. Thirteen of those championships came in Mike Krzyzewski's first 33 years as coach of the Blue Devils.

Boding well for K's squad, of six previous UVa opponents in the tournament final, four advanced to the Final Four and two won the NCAA championship.