From a dyed-in-the-wool UVA fan's perspective, 2012
SUCKED ASS. Let's take a look back at a thoroughly shitty year in Wahoo sports...
December 31 (2011), football: Auburn 43, Virginia 24 -- Okay, so it wasn't 2012, but New Year's Eve is close enough. The Peach Bowl wasn't a terrible game, but it was terrible special teams and a terrible loss that - when coupled with the season-ending loss to Virginia Tech - cast our breakthrough 2011 season into considerable doubt of validity.
January 2 -- It was announced that KT Harrell and James Jones were leaving the basketball program mid-season. Losing those two effectively stripped the team of any roster depth it might have enjoyed in 2012. Later, these defections were cursed and credited for the eventual collapse of a once-promising hardwood campaign.
January 19 -- 7-foot center and hyperactive defensive anchor Assane Sene was injured against Georgia Tech, and never played for Virginia again. The team's defense just wasn't the same after the loss of shot-blocking big man.
January 22, basketball: Virginia Tech 47, Virginia 45 -- WHY THE FUCK did we lose this game??? (And really, three question marks are not enough.)
February 11, basketball: North Carolina 70, Virginia 58 -- The loss sucked, but what was worse was Joe Harris' broken hand, an injury suffered in this game. Joe playing at less than 100% down the stretch doomed our season.
February 14, basketball: Clemson 60, Virginia 48 -- Terrible loss. Never should have happened.
February 18 -- Promising freshman Malcolm Brogdon injured his foot against Maryland. Another big hit to the depth of the basketball team, and this injury ended up being severe enough to trigger a redshirt season for Brog (probably our starting 2 if he were healthy) for the 2012-13 season. Fairly disastrous.
February 25, basketball: North Carolina 54, Virginia 51 -- This is the kind of loss that really kills you as a UVA fan. We had UNC on the ropes and we had a resumé-making win in our sights (a win that would have improved our tournament seeding, allowing us to avoid facing Florida in the first round). Of course, the Carolina Mafia stole this one away from us, in the form of crooked ACC refs.
March 1, basketball: Florida State 63, Virginia 60 -- Remember when Ian Miller hit that miracle three-pointer with time expiring to complete their comeback? We led by 11 with 4:30 left to play, and then ended up losing the game. I kicked my ottoman when Miller buried that three, and I'm pretty sure I broke a bone in the top of my foot. I've been walking with a limp ever since.
March 9, basketball: NC State 67, Virginia 64 -- We rolled into the ACC Tournament looking to prove our ability and resolve... but NC State had other ideas. Many fans thought we had a chance at a deep run in Atlanta. Noooooooope.
March 16, basketball: Florida 71, Virginia 45 -- UVA's triumphant return to the NCAA Tournament was the opposite of triumphant. Unless by "triumphant" you mean totally embarrassing and depressing.
April 13, lacrosse: Duke 13, Virginia 5 -- Another year, another blowout loss to Duke in LAX. (We really need to a find a way off of this schneid against the Blow Devils.) Anyway, this 2012 loss to Duke threw our whole season on its ear.
May 2 -- Phillip Sims transferred from Alabama to Virginia. Seemed like good news at the time, but looking back over a messy QB carousel and a botched 2012 campaign, this transfer looks somewhat like a curse disguised as a blessing.
May 20, lacrosse: Notre Dame 12, Virginia 10 -- An early end to UVA's lacrosse campaign, with this loss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. We rightfully expect better from our elite-level program.
June 3, baseball: Appalachian State 6, Virginia 5 / Oklahoma 5, Virginia 4 -- Over the course of a dubious doubleheader, UVA's season ended with a pair of one-run losses. This was a failure to live up to our #1 seed status and was us falling well short of matching 2011's run to the College World Series. (Still, the 39-19-1 season was pretty darn good for a rebuilding year, so you won't hear me bitching too much about the baseball team's performance in 2012.)
September 15, football: Georgia Tech 56, Virginia 20 -- This ugly blowout loss to a mediocre GT team really exposed our defense as not being all that great, and [in my opinion] fast-tracked the firing of Jim Reid.
September 29, football: Louisiana Tech 44, Virginia 38 -- In hindsight, we had to have this win in order to be a good team in 2012. Obviously, it didn't happen. The late-game snafu of sending our punt return team out on the field when the Bulldogs sent out their offense serves as a glowing testament to the coaching staff's shortcomings. That was an inexcusable mistake.
October 1 -- Starting
free safety point guard Jontel Evans broke his foot in practice. It's never good when a starter goes down, and especially not at a run-heavy position like
fullback point guard. Naturally, this being Virginia and us being the target of so much terrible cosmic karma, Bub has struggled to return to action.
October 6, football: Duke 42, Virginia 17 -- Losing to Duke is always unacceptable. Being blown out by Duke? Cause for furious anger and terrible consternation. Like, identity crisis type shit. ("
Are WE the new Duke?" It's frightening to consider, but as we watch them play Cincy in the
Tire Belk Bowl while we sit at home with our collective thumbs up our collective asses, it does feel like a bit of a role reversal. Ugh.)
October 8 -- The roof to our new Indoor Practice Facility burst into flames. Hokies everywhere burst into laughter.
October 13, football: Maryland 27, Virginia 20 -- Another loss to a bitter rival, another loss coming as a direct result of dismal special teams play. Cue humiliation. Screw you, Maryland. Eat shit and die, Stefon Diggs.
October 20, football: Wake Forest 16, Virginia 10 -- The punt doinking off of Khalek Shepherd's facemask is the play of the year for Virginia Football; it's the perfect symbol of the season that was.
November 9, basketball: George Mason 63, Virginia 59 -- What a way to open the new season.
November 13, basketball: Delaware 59, Virginia 53 -- This loss to a fairly bad Delaware team is going to be an NCAA Tournament resumé-killer, and it cost us a trip to Madison Square Garden for the NIT semis, where we would have faced some PRI-boosting competition.
November 15, football: North Carolina 37, Virginia 13 -- Another loss to a bitter rival, this time a proper woodshedding on national television. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
November 19 -- Maryland announced its intention to depart the ACC for the BigTen, and immediately placed the ACC back in shaky "house of cards" status. Screw you, Maryland.
November 24, football: Virginia Tech 17, Virginia 14 -- Horrendous decisions by Mike London cost us this game against a truly awful Tech team. Congrats to us as we successfully pissed away our best chance in a decade to beat those scumbags.
December 2 -- Mike London announced the dismissal of Jim Reid, thoroughly confusing and infuriating UVA fans everywhere. Meanwhile Bill Lazor continues coaching at Virginia, unscathed by the offensive retardation we suffered from in 2012.
December 22, basketball: Old Dominion 63, Virginia 61 -- If losing to Delaware was a resumé-killer, then losing to a 1-10 ODU team was a resumé atomic bomb. It was resumé genocide. Now we have to try to survive in a post resumé-apocalyptic landscape, fighting bandits for dirty pisswater and trying to procreate with our sisters in order to keep the human race alive.
What a shitty, shitty year this has been. Suck it, 2012. Good riddance.
