A pre-March Madness UVA basketball uniform plea

The Virginia Cavaliers are again in March Madness. Not as an inconsistent at-large group, not as a play-in participant, however as a formidable squad that no coach ought to need to go towards going ahead.

The ‘Hoos final made the tour within the 2023-2024 season, a First Four loss to Colorado State in what ended up being Tony Bennett’s final sport as UVA’s head coach. But now? The ‘Hoos are again as a three-seed within the Midwest area, the place they will meet the winners of the Horizon League in 14th-seed Wright State on Friday.

We’ll have loads of tourney protection coming quickly, however there may be one side of this upcoming sport, and event that must be introduced up instantly.

UVA has worn 5 completely different combos this season, three of which have been unveiled this yr with the hiring of Ryan Odom, longtime uniform czar throughout his time at VCU. The different two have been carryovers from what this system had been completely donning all through the previous 5 seasons.

UVA started sporting the 2 primary blue/white combos beginning within the 2020-2021 season, the yr after the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly put an finish to the faculty basketball season, halting convention tournaments and canceling March Madness. A yr the place, for what it is price, the Cavaliers would have been a troublesome out had they been in a position to take the ground within the NCAA event.

For context, UVA is a Nike Elite program, which means that Nike has major say within the design of UVA’s fundamental uniforms (the boring ones) with UVA primarily having their fingers tied relating to how these come out. Why that is the case? I’m not too positive. Seems like groups ought to be capable to management what they put on. That’s irrelevant, although.

Ryan Odom touched on that firstly of this season when discussing UVA’s new assortment of seems to be, saying “We’re a Nike Elite team, so we’ll always have the two (uniform combo’s) that are created by Nike,” Odom stated. “We don’t really have a choice in the way those are designed. That’s a Nike thing.”

Nike ought to have been ashamed of itself again when these have been put out, for starters. But except for the truth that each the white and blue variations of this uniform are bland, lack the colour orange, and easily do not look as cool because the sort of jerseys a nationwide title-winning program must be carrying, UVA’s NCAA event appearances in them have been nightmares. UVA is 0-3 in tourney video games because the 2019 title and the change from these sharp-looking uniforms, two of which have been to double-digit seeds within the first spherical, and the third in a First Four play-in.

The endings of every season in these uniforms appear like this:

The outcomes are jarring, sufficient to make a grown grownup cry, even. I wrote this text out days earlier than the ACC event, however with the ‘Hoos having not worn both variations of the principle uniforms shortly, I questioned if that was a approach of weeding them out of the rotation forward of the postseason, till they wore the house white-version within the quarterfinal sport towards NC State.

And positive, the ‘Hoos pulled away late and gained that sport, together with loads of others in these identical uniforms all through this season and the thought of ​​a curse or some kind of a foul luck primarily based on uniforms could appear a bit on the market, however we’ve got seen sufficient of a pattern measurement the place video games have gone terribly fallacious to not take this March drawback severely.

No possibilities must be taken forward of Friday’s sport. it is hiding them someplace, burning them, ripping them whether or not, paying a high-quality and telling Nike to go kick rocks…I do not know. But we’d like somebody to play hero-ball and make a play right here. For the sake of this group’s success and the happiness of its followers, these jerseys should keep far, far-off from any March Madness courtroom the ‘Hoos take within the coming days, and hopefully weeks.

The new ones work simply high-quality: