With the basketball season now less than three weeks away, the preseason picks and rankings are starting to roll in. In the last few days, KenPom released its preseason rankings and the first AP Top 25 was released, giving Wahoo fans a glimpse of their preseason expectations from both pundits and the computers.
They’ll get even more prognostications in the days to come, when the ACC preseason poll and order of finish are released, along with all-conference team picks from the media.
KenPom has the Cavaliers pegged No. 33 nationally heading into the season, lower than they’ve been to start most recent campaigns. For reference to their schedule, UVa is third among ACC programs, behind Duke (nine) and North Carolina (17), and ahead of Miami (45). Besides the Blue Devils and Tar Heels, Virginia will face three teams ranked ahead of them this season: Wisconsin (20), Texas A&M (24), and Memphis (32).
In the preseason AP poll, UVa was not ranked but did receive votes from the media. Unsurprisingly, KenPom and the AP Poll have quite a bit of overlap, with Duke (second2) and UNC (19) ranked among ACC teams, as well as Miami (13), a pretty large departure from their Kenpom spot.
With the preseason picks rolling in, how do the predictions for the 2023-24 Hoos compare to recent years?
Over the last decade, UVa has been picked between 1st and 6th in the ACC standings, and was selected to finish in the top four in all but one of those seasons. Despite some pretty lofty expectations, the Hoos have still exceeded them, finishing higher than they were picked to finish in the preseason poll in six of the 10 seasons. They finished exactly as they were picked in two more years, coming in top two in both of those years. And in two seasons, UVa finished below where it was picked in the poll.
Of the six seasons where UVa exceeded expectations, the Hoos finished first in the league in five of them. Funny enough, their worst preseason prediction came in 2017-18 when they were picked sixth but ended up having their best regular season of the Tony Bennett era, winning both the regular season and ACC Tournament titles. In the other regular-season title seasons they were picked to finish top four but were only picked to finish first on one occasion, the 2020-21 season, when they did indeed finish first and had to bow out early in the ACC Tournament after a positive COVID-19 test.
UVa has had preseason expectations nearly as high as any other program in the country, but it is notable that the Cavaliers have only been picked to win the ACC regular season title one time. That also speaks to the general hype that exists around Duke and UNC, which received most of those preseason top spots that UVa didn’t get.
There were just two seasons where Virginia fell short of expectations and unsurprisingly they were the two worst UVa teams of the last decade. The Wahoos were picked to finish third in the league in 2016-17 after finishing first or second in each of the previous three years. But a younger UVa team that had lost a lot of talent and experience in the offseason had some ups and downs on the way to a fifth-place finish, and 6-seed in the ACC Tournament. That drop in form turned out to be a one-year blip before two great seasons to follow. The other season where UVa finished below its preseason pick was 2021-22, when the Cavaliers were picked fourth but finished sixth on their way to an NIT bid, their only NCAA Tournament miss since 2012-13.
Both of those teams had overhauled rosters, the first with a group of freshmen coming in and the second with some key transfers, and never quite got to the elite level we’ve seen Bennett teams reach in the past decade. In both cases, UVa won the regular-season title, or at least a share of it, the following season.
It is pretty clear that while Virginia is respected among preseason poll voters as a league contender, the Hoos aren’t quite as valued as more talented teams (on paper, at least) at UNC and Duke. But while they have clearly exceeded their preseason poll expectations more often than not, their metrics record is a bit more complicated.
For most of the last decade, Virginia’s teams have been valued quite highly in the preseason by the KenPom rankings. In the last 10 seasons, UVa has started the season ranked somewhere between No. 2 and No. 45, tipping off seven seasons ranked in the top 10 and nine of them ranked 19th or better. The No. 45 mark in 2021-22 was a reflection of the roster overhaul and ended up foreshadowing the dip in form and NCAA Tournament miss.
UVa hasn’t quite exceeded the preseason KenPom expectations at the same rate, though it has been pretty close to expectations in many years. The Wahoos have finished higher in KenPom than their preseason spot in four of the last 10 years. One of those seasons was the first of the last decade, 2013-14, when they began their ascendance after being picked 19th in the preseason. For the next six years, UVa would start the season in the top 10 of the KenPom rankings, and finished there in four of them, with another near miss.
In the last few years, though, UVa hasn’t been as efficient as the program was from 2014 to 2019, having finished below preseason expectations in each of the last four years. In 2020-21, the Cavaliers were picked 16th and finished 19th, so we’d categorize that as finishing in line with how they were expected to be in the preseason. But in other years, they finished well below their ranking at the beginning of the campaign. In 2019-20, UVa had a dreadful offense post-title, and finished 42nd after starting the year at No. 5 and having the nation’s top defense. In 2021-22, they had their worst team of the past decade, finishing the year No. 72 after being picked 45th in the preseason. And last year, UVa was No. 5 in the preseason and hung around the top 10 after a great start to the year, but eventually drifted down, finishing at 34th.
UVa’s expectations are not through the roof this season, but the team will be expected to compete in ACC play and be in a position for an NCAA Tournament bid. Their KenPom preseason rank of No. 33 is their second-lowest since 2013-14, and just their second preseason ranking outside the top 20. And last time that happened, UVa went to the NIT, so the Hoos will have to hope they hit on their transfer additions and their younger crop of players are undervalued and will surprise the outside world this year.
That’s very possible, and would follow the 2017-18 blueprint, when the Cavaliers had high KenPom expectations, but weren’t really considered an ACC title contender before winning 28 regular-season games and a conference tournament title.
