UVA Hoops - Bad Luck Haunts Cavs

I’ve come to the conclusion that a couple of bounces one way or the other and two close losses turn the University of Virginia's 1-3 start in the Atlantic Coast Conference into 3-1. On average, these strokes of luck even out, so they’ll turn it around. Right? Presently, it just feels like we cashed in our karmic piggy bank with last year’s ACC regular season co-championship.

That would be a nice story, if it were true …

Kenpom.com includes a statistical component of “luck.” It’s complicated, but essentially it measures the difference between the team’s winning percentage and what you predict the team’s winning percentage to be (using another complicated formula). Regardless, I fully expected Virginia’s luck to be a lot worse this year than last.

Wrong.

Actually Virginia’s luck last year measured out at -0.003 which means they were unlucky. This measurement was good for 161st in the nation. This year, their luck is -0.006, good for 179th in the country. Not much change there.

The present team just appears to be in search of an identity, nightly switching from “Sean Singletary can carry us to win” (against Virginia Tech) to “everyone needs to help out for us to win” (against Florida State) to “what’s that orange thing with the white cloth hanging down?” (Jeff Jones) In some sense, this is the reason they have significant offensive droughts. Who’s running the show here?

I’ve written before that Virginia is best off when Singletary shares the load, then I recanted, now I’m back to wondering about him again.

Maybe I have an identity crisis.

So, what can we conclude? Is Virginia that much worse-off this season than last?

After four ACC games last year, Virginia was 2-2. The Cavaliers started off 1-2, but gutted out two tough home wins versus Maryland and Wake Forest, which started them on a tear. I absolutely hate it when people label games “must-win”, but let’s just call Sunday’s game against Georgia Tech a “life-will-be-much-easier-for-everyone-if-you-win” game.