Taking a way-too-early look at UVA basketball’s NCAA Tournament resume

We’re still nearly two months from Selection Sunday, but with the No. 14 Virginia Cavaliers off this week ahead of Saturday’s showdown with No. 22 North Carolina, it’s a great time to take an extra-early

look at UVA’s resume and where they stand in the NCAA Tournament picture.

Last time out, the ’Hoos capped off an excellent 2-0 week with a nail-biting 72-68 road win at SMU on Saturday, extending their winning streak to five games and earning another road victory over an upper-echelon team in the ACC after besting Louisville by nine points last Tuesday.

The stellar week continued Virginia’s rise in the AP Poll, where the ’Hoos checked in at No. 14 on Monday (their highest ranking since March of 2023), but it also has UVA’s resume beginning to take the form of a highly seeded squad come Selection Sunday.

In the computer metrics, Ryan Odom’s ’Hoos currently sit at 14^th both at KenPom and in the NET rankings, while they’ve climbed all the way up to 8^th in Bart Torvik’s T-Rank (a system that puts more emphasis on recent performances).

According to Torvik, UVA’s recent stretch of dominance — which has included road wins over NC State, Louisville, and SMU, as well as a pair of routs of Cal and Stanford — has them performing as the nation’s second-best team since January 1^st. Dating back even further, behind a defense that has rapidly grown into one of the country’s most lockdown units, the ’Hoos are college basketball’s fourth-highest rated team since their Feast Week loss to Butler in the Greenbrier ballroom.

Breaking things down even further, the ’Hoos are 4-1 against Quad 1 opponents, 4-1 against Quad 2 opponents, and 8-0 against all other competition. In Quad 1A opportunities (the most valuable games for a team’s tournament resume), the ’Hoos have a sparkling 3-0 record and are tied for the fifth-most wins in such games.

It’s important to remember that the quadrants are both fluid and imperfect. A Quad 1 game today could be a Quad 2 game tomorrow (or vice versa), but day-to-day shifts in the NET rankings don’t make a team’s resume any more or less impressive.

With that in mind, the ’Hoos have four important Quad 1 matchups remaining on their schedule as of Tuesday morning’s NET rankings — vs. UNC this Saturday, vs. Ohio State in Nashville on Valentine’s Day, vs. Miami on February 21^st, and at Duke in Durham on February 28^th.

Additionally, Virginia fans should keep an eye on the performances of UNC, Miami, Butler, and Notre Dame down the stretch. Each of the four sits on the fence between being classified as Quad 1 and Quad 2 matchups, and although it’s an imperfect system, the ’Hoos want as many games as possible to be classified as the former.

So, what does all this mean? With conference play not even halfway in the books, not much, as plenty is sure to change in the coming months. But as of January 20th, it does mean that the ’Hoos are currently being projected as a four-seed in the NCAA Tournament according to Bracket Matrix (which averages 81 different ‘bracketology’ sources), and that they are one of the fastest-rising squads in the country.

A four seed would be Virginia’s highest since 2023, when the ’Hoos were upset by Furman in the opening round of the tournament. And many projections even have UVA creeping toward the three-line.

But for now, the ’Hoos need to keep taking things one game at a time. Though it’s fun to look at the projections, nothing is set in stone, especially with seven weeks until the start of postseason play.

Virginia’s next opportunity to add to its resume comes in four days as Hubert Davis’s suddenly struggling North Carolina Tar Heels visit Charlottesville on Saturday afternoon. After the JPJ court is dedicated to Tony Bennett before the game, UVA and UNC will tip off at 2 PM EST with coverage available on ESPN.