A Texas Tech-Virginia matchup in the College Football Playoff championship game? Given the trajectory and history of both of those programs, such a scenario is borderline laughable for the foreseeable future. The same matchup in the men’s basketball title game? While highly, highly unlikely at the beginning of the 2018-19 hoops season, it became a Twin Cities reality Monday night.
And, in the end, it was UVa. making history in Minneapolis overnight as the Cavaliers got past the Red Raiders in an overtime thriller, going from a No. 1 seed that lost to a No. 16 seed to national champions one year later. The win marked the program’s first-ever championship.
It also marked the second time in three years that the ACC has pulled off the football/men’s hoops title sweeps. In January, Clemson staked its claim to a win in the College Football Playoff championship game to kick off the latest sweep. Two years ago, it was Clemson again emerging as the kings of college football while North Carolina claimed the 2016-17 men’s basketball national championship.
Since 1990, such a sweep has occurred just five times, with the ACC adding a third to these latest two as the coaches crowned Georgia Tech as co-national champs, along with Colorado, following the 1990 season while Duke earned the title of national champs for the 1990-91 season. The SEC is the only other conference in that span that can make the same claim: Alabama/Kentucky for 2011-12 and Florida in both football and men’s hoops in 2006-07.
If you go back to the early eighties, the ACC adds a fourth such sweep as, again, it was Clemson that was the national champs in football and North Carolina in basketball for 1981-82.
