With last night's big win over Miami, the Cavaliers are now at 5-3 overall and 2-2 in the conference. The Hoos are just one win away from becoming bowl eligible for the first time since that bizarre 2007 season when Virginia played in the Gator Bowl on New Year's Day, after winning five games by two points or less. Unfortunately, the Hoos also haven't won a single game in November since that season - that's 13 attempts, coming up short each time.
Virginia's primed to break that trend this year, with four games in November, two of which fall squarely in the "should win" category. The first is next weekend against Maryland, for which we'll have eight full days to prepare, and the second is the following weekend, against Duke. Florida State and Virginia Tech round out the month.
What if the unthinkable happens? What if Virginia, for a fourth straight year, not only loses to Duke, which in and of itself should probably be a ticket to the Big East, but also fails to win in November altogether? What happens if Virginia finishes its 2011 campaign 5-7, 2-6 in the ACC?
More after the jump.
Remember at the beginning of the season, expectations were pretty low for a Virginia squad that had just finished 3- and 4-win seasons. After the Hoos came out big in the season opener against William & Mary, all of a sudden fans realized that it's okay to have expectations out of this team. Looking at the schedule, I think most agreed that a 6-6 season was completely within reason, though no one expected that, at this point of the schedule, two of those wins would have come from a then-undefeated Georgia Tech and at Miami in a Thursday night showdown.
So the question for fans is, at what point do you consider this season "a success," and at what point are you "disappointed" in the outcome? There is, of course, a middle route where the season was neither a success nor a disappointment. Many have previously argued, prior to the season, that it's unreasonable to expect Coach London to turn this into a winning program so quickly. Where are we now?