Last Friday marked the 10th anniversary of UVa’s home win over Syracuse that clinched the ACC regular season title, Tony Bennett’s first at Virginia. That victory was the culmination of a great season that saw the Wahoos go from ACC competitors and scrappy upstarts to the league’s best both for that season and arguably the league’s top program for the decade that followed.

Virginia fans have seen basically everything during the last decade: a national title, a loss to a 16-seed, multiple ACC Tournament wins after simply winning one game there felt impossible, multiple wins at Duke after winning a game there felt impossible, All-ACC players, the emergence of a dominant home environment at John Paul Jones Arena, and everything from adulation to humiliation from the college basketball world.

So after UVa’s blowout loss at Duke on Saturday and the end of the regular season on the horizon, we take a look back at all that’s happened over the past decade and try to chart a course for the future of the program.

The Hoos were great in the early 80’s, but Bennett’s program has been probably the best in the ACC since 2013-14. In additional to a Final Four and a title, they were also consistently among the nation’s top teams and played in a lot of meaningful games, both in the regular season and the post. Virginia also has more ACC Tournament titles in the last decade (two) than it had in the entire history of the program previously (one in 1976).

Since the beginning of that 2013-14 season, UVa has a record of 286-81, or a 77.9% win percentage. The Cavaliers have won 76.1% of their ACC games, with five regular-season conference titles and the aforementioned pair of ACC Tournament titles. UVa has also won at least one ACC Tournament game in each season (except for 2020 when the postseason was called off) and has made the tournament’s semifinals seven times after going nearly two decades without making it once, despite starting most of those tournaments one round away from the semis.

The down seasons have been good compared to their peers. For perspective, the Hoos have had 13 straight winning seasons in ACC play and haven’t had an ACC Tournament seed below No. 6 since 2011. They’re the only program in the conference not to go .500 or worse during that span, including UNC who went 6-14 in 2020, and Duke, who went 9-9 the following year; Virginia is the only ACC program not to play on the first day of the ACC Tournament since expansion to 15 schools in 2013-14.

Virginia has also seen quite a few players embark on NBA careers during this run. UVa has had eight players drafted since 2013-14, nine if we count Marial Shayok who finished up at Iowa State, including four first rounders and one lottery pick. And two of UVa’s second-round selections, Joe Harris and Malcolm Brogdon, have had the best careers of the bunch. For comparison, UVa’s eight NBA picks in the last decade is as many as the program had in a stretch from 2013 back to 1987, nearly three decades.

UVa has also had plenty of players decorated at the collegiate level too. Brogdon was named ACC Player of the Year in 2016. Virginia has put a bunch of guys on All-ACC teams and has had five different players win ACC Defensive Player of the Year since 13-14, and that number could grow to six this year if Ryan Dunn wins, and if not, we could see the first repeat winner (Reece Beekman). Kyle Guy was a third-team All-American, and was Most Outstanding Player at the 2019 Final Four. Bennett himself has taken home awards, too. He’s won five different national coach of the year honors (three different awards) in the last decade, and has been named ACC Coach of the Year four times in that span.

The 2019 title run is one for the books, too. Not only did they overcome the loss to UMBC, the Wahoos also won the title in dramatic fashion and created several instant-classic, all-time tournament games in the process. Those moments will live on in the sport’s history forever.

Often it’s not clear that one era has ended and another has begun until some time has past. Look at Miami football, for example, as fans and media alike treated the program as an extension of the early 2000s dynasty until well after the on-field returns had dropped off considerably.

UVa basketball, while still winning games, is not what it was from 2014-2019, with the exception of the coaching staff (which is obviously a huge part of a basketball program). We mentioned all of the successes of the last decade in the section above. Almost all of that success came in the run from the 2013-14 season to the national title in April 2019. The roster turned over big time that offseason, with three underclassmen getting selected in that June’s NBA Draft and things haven’t been the same since.

Let’s start with what has gone well: UVa has continued to win a good number of games. The Hoos are 108-45 since the start of the 2019-20 season which is a 70.6% win percentage. They’ve also won 69.2% of their conference games. Both of those numbers are double-digit drop offs from the 2014-2019 results, but they still aren’t bad overall. UVa has finished top four in the ACC in three of the four seasons since the title and that number is very likely to go up to 4-of-5 years in a week. UVa won a conference regular-season title in 2021 (though everyone played different amounts of games) and split a regular-season title with Miami last year.

That’s basically it, though. Virginia hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since the title and missed the tournament altogether in 2022 (for the first time since 2013). And the Cavaliers might do it again this year, too. They went from being one of the nation’s top 5 (or so) teams to being one of the best 50 (or so) since the title.

For comparison, their average KenPom rank from 2014-2019 was No. 5. Even in the down 2017 season, UVa ranked 12th nationally in efficiency. Since 2019, they have an averaged KenPom rank of No. 47 and their highest rank was 19th in 2021; heading into the final week of the regular season, UVa ranks 70th overall after being in the 70’s in 2022 as well.

Virginia is known for its defense, which was elite in the 2014-2019 run; the average defensive efficiency during that time was No. 3 or No. 4 nationally depending on how you round the numbers. The defensive dominance did carry over to the 2020 season when they were No. 1 nationally, but even with that number baked in, the average defensive rank since the title is No. 26 nationally. From 2021-2024, they’re 32nd.

The offensive drop-off has been worse. Virginia had its rough moments on offense from 2014-2019 to be sure, but still had an average offensive rank of No. 23 nationally and was top 10 several seasons in that stretch. Since then, the offense has an average rank of No. 120 nationally, with two seasons outside the top-100 and one outside the top-200.

The efficiency has fallen off sharply and that has matched the results we’ve all seen with our eyes. From 2014-2019, UVa had eight regulation losses by double digits; two came in the first half of the 2013-14 season, before Harris famously drove to Bennett’s house and four more came in the “down” 2017 season.

The Wahoos went 1,145 days between 20+ point losses, from the Tennessee game on 12/30/13 to the loss at UNC on 2/17/17. Of the teams that beat UVa by 10+ during that run, their average KenPom rank was No. 27, heavily skewed by No. 166 UMBC. Taking that game out, the average rank is No.10; UVa only suffered two 10+ point losses to teams outside the top-14; a 13-point loss to No. 27 Notre Dame in the 2017 ACC Tournament and the aforementioned UMBC debacle.

Since 2019, though, UVa has 22 double-digit losses. The Hoos have had more this season (nine) than they had in a near six-year span from December 2013 to December 2019. The average rank of the opponent that beat them by 10+ since 2019 is No. 48; they have lost to nine opponents outside the top-50 by 10+, and three outside the top-120. They have seven losses to teams outside the top-100 in KenPom since 2019; UMBC was the only one in the 2014-2019 stretch.

Virginia was quite good against the best teams in the sport from 2014-19 too, holding its own in most years and excelling in others. In that run, the Cavaliers were 34-21 against teams in the KenPom top-25, and despite some disappointing early exits went 13-5 in the NCAA Tournament and 11-4 in the ACC Tournament. Since the title, UVa is just 9-18 against KenPom top-25 teams, 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament, while they are 4-2 in the conference tournament.

These numbers show that UVa hasn’t been able to hang with the top teams, and also isn’t playing them as often. Virginia played an average of nine top-25 teams from 2014-19 and won about two-thirds of those games. Since, UVa is playing just 5.4 games against top competition per season and winning just a third of them. That shows how far the ACC has fallen since UVa’s title; Virginia not only dominated that stretch of years but also did it against a better conference that featured three different national champions. The league hasn't had a title since and might only get three teams into the Big Dance this season.

The numbers that demonstrate the dropoff post-title probably aren’t necessary for fans that watch the games. The difference is on full display. In Saturday’s game at Duke, UVa didn’t have much of a chance to guard the Blue Devils one-on-one, something that was never the case against anybody during Bennett’s best stretch.

Fans often blame the system when UVa struggles to score, but the only system critique that seems really relevant is that the Hoos don’t make many changes. Bennett is going to do what he does, whether its working or not, and that has led to some ugly losses. But talent seems to be the bigger concern by far. The question is: Why is that the case?

Many are quick to blame NIL or the new transfer portal rules that don’t require players to sit a year, and while those have impacted UVa, they impact everyone to some degree. The biggest detriment for Virginia might be the amount of new faces each year, and the time it takes to learn UVa’s schemes, but we’ve also seen quality players come in and take to it quickly. While UVa doesn’t have incredible NIL resources to boast to recruits about, and that probably needs to be improved, the program isn’t devoid of resources either. After all, the Wahoos were able to convince Beekman not to go pro last year when he seemed like a near lock to be picked and imagine where this team would be had that not happened.

And they are set up to do well in the portal, all things considered. They may not get players looking for the biggest NIL check but they certainly have a need for offensive firepower and can be attractive to players looking to move up to a high-major program with a relatively recent national title. And I’m not so sure UVa hasn’t seen more benefit from the portal than detriment, to this point (more on that later). So the “why” is a bit more complicated than “NIL and the portal have screwed the program.”

Virginia’s recruiting after the 2016 class that delivered the title left a lot to be desired and that began to show in the results.

Here are the high school players UVa signed after the 2016 class; it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out why the Hoos haven’t been as good:

Francesco Badocchi, Marco Anthony, Kihei Clark, Francisco Caffaro, Kody Stattmann, Justin McKoy, Casey Morsell, Kadin Shedrick, Jabri Abdur-Rahim,

Beekman, Carson McCorkle, Taine Murray, Igor Milicic, Dunn, Isaac Traudt, Leon Bond, Isaac McKneely, Elijah Gertrude, Blake Buchanan, Christian Bliss, and Anthony Robinson.

That list includes a bunch of players that were borderline ACC-level guys at best, even after years of development, and nine players who left before their eligibility was up. But of that group, who has UVa lost that dramatically changed the course of the program in a negative way? Abdur-Rahim has had a decent but not great career at Georgia, Morsell has been a complimentary piece at a lesser ACC program, Shedrick can’t seem to stay on the floor consistently at Texas, though he would’ve helped this Virginia team. This is why, in my opinion at least, UVa has reaped the benefits of the portal, despite results that have trailed off, at least as much as the program has seen the negative impact of it.

I took a look at the teams since COVID to determine whether they’d be better or worse if nobody had transferred in, and nobody had transferred out:

2021: Certainly Worse- We’ll give the no-transfer roster Sam Hauser since he sat out the year prior, but you lose Trey Murphy, and give his minutes to Tomas Woldetensae and Morsell, who was barely playing by year’s end.

2022: Maybe slightly better? Probably a push- You lose Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner, transfer additions that didn’t dominate right away but were key pieces on a disappointing team. You’d be replacing Franklin with Morsell (a wash, at best), and Gardner’s minutes would go to McKoy, who had gone to UNC. Abdur-Rahim would also be on this team to give them a bit of a lift, and he would probably take over Stattmann’s minutes (which went up during this year). I don’t think keeping those guys over what they brought in makes this team a tournament team, but maybe they’re a little more consistent because of system experience.

2023: Probably about the same?- You’d have Clark and Beekman, plus Morsell, Abdur-Rahim, and McKoy, and you’d add in the hyped 2022 freshman class. But it feels like it would be close to a wash to add those guys and take away Franklin, Gardner and Ben Vander Plas, all of whom were factors on offense. There would be some more depth in the backcourt, which could have led to McKneely playing less and I wonder how this team would shoot the 3.

2024: Probably a bit better-We’re going to assume Morsell doesn’t come back for Year 5, so you’d have a Beekman, McKneely, Abdur-Rahim, Dunn, Shedrick lineup. This team would be a little more athletic but you lose ball handling. And maybe by this point Milicic is good enough to be a better version of Jake Groves? And you’d have Traudt on the bench, too.

It really feels like a wash to me. The 2021 team is certainly worse and 2022 and 2023 feel like a wash, maybe a slight uptick or downtick from what they ended up with. Years in Bennett’s system are key and we do see players get better throughout their career but we also see guys who never really develop into key cogs because of a talent deficit. Or those guys leave, which is a good thing for UVa’s roster space.

Maybe this year we’d see the dividends of a bunch of guys playing in the system for multiple years and they’d be more like a 6-7 seed than a bubble team. And the only reason that’s likely the case is because UVa didn’t hit on the transfer additions or at least not yet. Andrew Rohde hasn’t delivered the offense most inside or outside the program expected. Dante Harris was lauded for his on-ball defense but he doesn’t seem like a fit on offense and his defensive prowess hasn’t necessarily led to game-changing results. Jordan Minor barely played the first half of the season and hasn’t been as good as everyone had hoped. Groves has been about what we all expected, but he was always going to be in a specialist role.

The talent drop-off can be seen in the lack of draft picks of late. From 2014-19, every UVa roster had at least two future NBA draft picks on it, and most had at least a couple other guys that ended up in the league or had nice careers overseas. Since the title, UVa has had only one draft pick (Murphy, a transfer) and a few undrafted guys that made the league (Mamadi Diakite, Braxton Key, and Hauser, two of which were transfers). UVa has two potential NBA draftees on their current roster (Dunn and Beekman), though Beekman’s not a sure thing to be selected and Dunn is basically a one-way player, something none of the guys from 2014-19 were.

Here are the NBA Draft Picks on Each Season’s Roster:

2014: Harris, Brodgon, Anderson (Hall RS)

2015: Brogdon, Anderson, Hall

2016: Brogdon, Hall

2017: Hall, Guy, Jerome, Shayok (Hunter RS)

2018: Hall, Guy, Jerome, Hunter

2019: Guy, Jerome, Hunter

2020: None

2021: Trey Murphy

2022: TBD (Beekman)

2023: TBD (Beekman, Dunn)

2024: TBD (Beekman, Dunn)

All of the above underscores why UVa’s issues are happening. The current team is flawed and has one or two paths to victory: A great shooting night or a rock fight in the 40s where they make one more shot than the other team. And when the path is that narrow, you open yourself up to lopsided losses when the opponent doesn’t cooperate.

When watching teams around the ACC, and certainly when watching the nation’s top teams in other conferences, it’s clear that Virginia’s talent isn’t on par with the program the Hoos aspire to be year in and year out.

Two things can be true at once: Bennett is maxing out a roster that just isn’t on the level that we’ve seen in the past and Virginia’s eight-game winning streak did change their season, or at least give them a chance to compete for a spot near the top of the league again and maybe reach the NCAA Tournament. Pretty much any other coach would probably do worse with this current roster.

However, the head coach is responsible for player identification, recruitment, and development, and we’ve seen a drop off there.

It would be naive to ignore the changes in the sport but other programs with similar resources are going out and finding players, or at least don’t have to worry about losing by 25+ to non-NCAA Tournament teams or whether or not they’ll reach 50 points.

And that takes us to the future ahead…