Counting ACC tournament action, Virginia has now won 24 of its past 26 games against conference opponents. That nets out to a .923 win percentage, so even as my colleague Jeff Goodman continues to doggedly pick against the Cavaliers in advance of every game (just kidding, Jeff!) these numbers do compel me to ask a question:
Is this the greatest Virginia team in the program's history?
Thanks to the superb archive of box scores maintained by the good people in UVA's media relations office, we can address this question with some degree of confidence. Before we dive into the analytics from yesteryear, however, a rather more sweeping reminder is in order about the storied Virginia teams of the early 1980s.
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Playing against Ralph Sampson was like being a kid and playing against your dad in the driveway. You had no chance.
"-- Jay Bilas
Between 1980 and 1983, the Cavaliers earned three consecutive NCAA tournament No. 1 seeds and posted a 37-5 record in regular-season ACC play. This run coincided with Ralph Sampson's sophomore, junior and senior seasons.
Sampson played the college game as a 7-foot-4 athlete, and I can't help feeling this distinction is too easily elided when we talk about the former Virginia star. He wasn't just a "7-footer;" he was 7-foot-4. The difference in height between Sampson and Jahlil Okafor is the same as that between Okafor and Jerian Grant.
What was it like to play against someone with Sampson's size and ability? Fortunately, one of my co-workers can answer that question. Jay Bilas arrived at Duke as a freshman in 1982-83, and in the first ACC game of Jay's career, his Blue Devils faced Virginia.
I called Jay to see if by chance he remembered that game all these years later, and before I could even finish saying hello he told me this:
"Playing against Ralph Sampson was like being a kid and playing against your dad in the driveway. You had no chance."
The box score from that game backs up Jay's memory. Sampson recorded a 36-14 double-double against Mike Krzyzewski's team, and keep in mind the game was at Duke.
Armed with our proper understanding of Sampson's impact, let's consider the great Virginia teams coached by Terry Holland in the early 1980s. It turns out each of these three teams left a distinct legacy, in part because the sport itself was experiencing enormous changes from year to year.
1980-81: Breakthrough
Entering the 1980-81 season, Holland's career record in Charlottesville was a respectable but hardly earth-shattering 105-70. Nevertheless, things were clearly looking up at UVA. The Cavaliers were coming off an NIT title, star wing Jeff Lamp was entering his senior season, and as a sophomore, Sampson was poised to make the leap from great to unreal.
The result was a 23-0 start (a mark today's group of Cavaliers is chasing), a 13-1 record in ACC play, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and a trip to the 1981 Final Four in Philadelphia. The Hoos fell to North Carolina in the national semifinals, but this was plainly a dominant Virginia team. Judging by the box scores, it would appear UVA outscored its ACC opponents by 0.20 points per possession, a margin similar to what we're seeing from the Cavaliers in 2014-15.
(A quick note on the numbers. I use weasel terms such as "it would appear" because box scores dating from the period usually didn't track offensive rebounds, and without that information, we're forced to make projections on things such as the number of possessions in a game or season. I trust my projections are sound enough, but inevitably, they're one step removed from the numbers we throw around with such casual familiarity today.)
With two years still remaining in Sampson's career, it was apparent the once mediocre Cavaliers were going to be a power in the ACC for the foreseeable future. Rival coaches drew the same conclusion, and in an era (just barely) before any shot clock, many of them decided to employ one strategy in particular against Virginia: Go slow. Go really slow.
1981-82: Ice age
On paper, Sampson's junior season was a continuation of the success Virginia had enjoyed the previous year. The Cavaliers went 30-4 (12-2 in the ACC) and earned another No. 1 seed. Even though Holland's team lost to UAB in the Sweet 16, that game carries with it with one of the larger asterisks in NCAA tournament history.
In what today would be an inconceivable pairing, top-seeded UVA played the No. 4-seed Blazers on UAB's home court in Birmingham. (Seriously, imagine that happening in 2015. Twitter would explode, lawsuits would be filed, and the selection committee would have to enter the witness protection program.) Sampson posted a 19-21 double-double against the Blazers, but the Hoos lost 68-66. There's little or no shame attached to that result, surely.
Nevertheless, it's difficult to assess how good that 1981-82 team really was because the sport itself was experiencing something of a crisis. By my estimation, the mean tempo for Virginia in conference play that season was 52 possessions per 40 minutes, which means the average UVA contest was slower than any ACC game we've seen so far in 2014-15.
The Cavaliers' per-possession scoring margin dipped significantly in conference play that season, and that should come as no surprise. Opponents were sitting on the ball with the avowed intention of creating close games. For example, Maryland beat Virginia in College Park 47-46, and that was with an overtime session. In a game that likely had just 48 possessions, my colleague Adrian Branch scored a rather incredible 29 points on 12-of-17 shooting for the Terrapins.
Suffice it to say by 1982, the code had been cracked on how to stay in the game with Sampson or any other feared opponent. It quickly became clear that fans, TV networks and advertisers really hated that code.
The 1982 ACC tournament became the flash point. Maryland and NC State played a first-round game that went to halftime at 13-11. Then, in the nationally televised title game between top-ranked North Carolina and No. 3 Virginia, the Tar Heels held the ball from the 7:34 mark of the second half until 28 seconds remained in the game.
"A coach thinks to win a game under the rules," Carolina coach Dean Smith said afterward. UNC won the ACC title that day 47-45, but the college game's long-held resistance to the shot clock was transformed almost overnight from conventional wisdom into minority opinion. That May, the ACC agreed to experiment with both a shot clock and a 3-point line.
1982-83: The upset of the century
It turns out my friend Jay started his college career at a time of tremendous ferment in the sport. There were at least three different 3-point distances in use nationally in 1982-83, and the shot clock arrangements deployed by various conferences that year exhibited similar diversity.
In the ACC, for example, a 3-point line laid down at 19 feet, 9 inches was in use for conference games only. In ACC contests that season, the shot clock ran to 30 seconds but was turned off for the game's final four minutes.
Few teams benefited from the rule changes more than Virginia. The tempo of the Cavaliers' conference games shot up by a now unimaginable 27 percent in just one year. (Today, it's news if a team's pace registers a 10 percent uptick.) Freed up to attack opposing teams in games that often ran to 70 possessions or more, UVA averaged no fewer than 89 points per contest in conference play.
On a tempo-free basis, this was the best offense of the Sampson era, one that scored an estimated 1.17 points per possession against ACC opponents. The new-look go-go Cavaliers went 29-5 and reached the Elite Eight as a No. 1 seed, where Holland's men lost 63-62 to Jim Valvano and eventual national champion NC State.
But that 1982-83 UVA team is remembered above all else for being on the wrong end of the score in what has justly been termed the upset of the century: Chaminade's 77-72 victory over the top-ranked Cavaliers on Dec. 23, 1982, in Hawaii.
The Hoos arrived in Hawaii by way of Japan, where just four days earlier they had wrapped up a two-game swing against Houston and Utah. Moreover, during his time abroad, Sampson had contracted a virus and was limited to just 22 total minutes in the two games in Japan.
Blame the Cavaliers' loss to Chaminade on jet lag if you wish, but -- unlike the pairing in the 1982 NCAA tournament -- Virginia's schedule was at least self-inflicted. You also have to give credit to the Silverswords: Chaminade ran from the opening tip, and it worked.
Sampson, Othell Wilson and Ricky Stokes committed six turnovers apiece, and as a team, the Hoos gave the ball away 25 times in an 80-possession game. (That means UVA's turnover percentage was a whopping 30.1. No weasel words here, by the way -- someone in the gym that night counted offensive boards. Anonymous scorekeeper, I salute you.) Arguably, the heroes for the Silverswords were leading scorer Tony Randolph (19 points on 9-of-12 shooting) and starting guard Tim Dunham, who recorded five steals.
Virginia shot poorly at the line (58 percent), but then again so did the Silverswords (63). Perhaps the real surprise was Holland's men sent an NAIA team to the line 33 times. Fatigue did seem to catch up with the Cavaliers in the second half, as the home team went 11-of-19 from the floor to seal the win.
The best Virginia team ... so far
The season after Sampson graduated, Virginia returned to the Final Four as a No. 7 seed by -- somewhat ironically -- slowing the pace to a crawl during its NCAA tournament run. That 1983-84 team effectively brought down the curtain on the most successful four-year run Virginia basketball has ever had -- two Final Fours, three Elite Eights, four Sweet 16s and a .768 win percentage in ACC play. Out of that golden age of Cavalier hoops, I know which team I'd take.
I say the 1980-81 group was the greatest Virginia team in program history. The Cavaliers had not only Sampson but also Lamp (the No. 15 pick in the 1981 NBA draft), plus UVA posted a per-possession scoring margin close to what we've rapidly grown accustomed to seeing from Tony Bennett's men. Unlike the kids nowadays, the Hoos from 34 years ago had to get that job done against opponents such as James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Al Wood, Thurl Bailey, Sidney Lowe, Albert King, Buck Williams, Frank Johnson and Larry Nance.
So in a time-travel-enabled game between Virginia teams labeled Now and Then, I'll take Then. I respect Darion Atkins and Mike Tobey very much, but I have to believe 1981-variety Ralph Sampson would be a pretty tough matchup for them.
Then again, the 2014-15 Cavaliers aren't finished just yet, and a national title would certainly constitute a strong counter-argument. I'm open to persuasion.