Publisher's Note: Every year, CavsCorner does a series of preseason interviews with each of Virginia's three assistant basketball coaches. Below is the first of a two-part conversation with former UVa great and current assistant coach Jason Williford, who talks about the way last season ended, how the staff wanted the players to view this offseason, what work they wanted done, and how he thinks this year's squad will be different from last year's team.

It stuck in my craw probably a lot longer than it stuck in the kid's craw. Kids are always way more resilient and bounce back a lot quicker than coaches or adults do. For me, to be that close and to be in command for so much of that game was a hard pill to swallow. Ultimately, Tony's message at the end of the game was just so poignant when he said that there's a lot worse than this and that the sun will rise in the morning. I thought that was pretty remarkable, to be able to come up with that at that point because I wouldn't have been able to do it myself. I'm an alum, I'm a former player, and I know how hard it is to get to that point. I knew how hard it was when we played. So to be oh-so-close again, it was tough. That was '95 for me. You hope it doesn't take that long to get back again but you just never know. Quite honestly, we had the team. We had the horses to make a Final Four, championship-type run. So it was disappointing. But it was certainly a very good run for all of those guys and you can't lose sight of that. Their careers were great and the amount of winning that they experienced was great. Where they put this program doesn't go unnoticed and it shouldn't. Now, we've got our work cut out. I know the preseason rankings have got us pretty high but we're probably not at that stage yet. We're young, we're inexperienced, and we've got to have people step up.

I don't necessarily think so. Look, at the end of the day there's only one team in the country that's happy anyway. Yes, we wanted that to be us. But because we lost doesn't change us and what we do. The guys work hard in the offseason regardless. I think the thing they took from that was finishing the game, playing for 40 minutes. I don't think we took anything for granted but I just think it was something that snowballed on us and they did everything right, they were kind of desperate, they threw their playbook out of the window, they played desperation ball, and it worked. We just didn't capitalize on them pressing us. From an individual standpoint, the kids all work every summer harder than the one before. They always go in looking to improve their skillset, so I don't think that work this offseason was a result of losing. I think it was just an example of the culture we've established here. That's just what they do. We've got kids who are gym rats. And we like that.

Well, every year at the end of the season, we tell guys what they need to focus on and work on and we charge them with that. Well, when we came back and got together [this summer], it was more or less about getting some good practices in and let's start with our defense and understand that we've got a lot of young guys who needed to learn. We were putting our defensive stuff in before we left for Spain but it was more of a skill time, getting a lot of shots up and working on ball handling and passing and playing defense. We barely put a lot of offense in. And it was more of a camaraderie thing too, just building that chemistry. To a man, we charged them all with working on finishing, shooting, and ball handling. We always ask them to do that every offseason.

I honestly think we have a formula that works for us so I think we'll be fairly the same in a lot of ways, we just have a lot less experience going in. We'll be opportunistic in transition because we've got some guys who can push it and go and make good decisions. But we're not going to be the Running Rebels like with Tark back in the day or anything like that. We're going to be opportunistic when we do push but we're going to play good, motion, half-court ball. I think, unlike last year when Malcolm could bail us out with his 18 or 20 a night or Gill could give us 13 or whatever he was averaging, more guys are going to have to contribute. We might not have an 18-point scorer but we're going to have a bunch of 8- to 10-point scorers.