The success and the praise at the highest level and the historic records, and then the humbling crushing loss at the end, I think if we use it right - just the fact that it happened, it’s part of our story. “Quite honestly, that’s how we and I’m choosing to use last year. “It’s this idea that ‘if you learn to use it right, it can buy you a ticket to a place you wouldn’t have gone any other way,’ ” Bennett said.

One of the ways the team did this was based on the lessons from a TEDx talk by Donald Davis that Coach Bennett watched on his wife Laurel’s recommendation. I think you have to look at it and deal with it.”( ) It was a fluke,’ and sweep it under the rug and not deal with it. I think it’s a mistake if you just say, ‘It happened. We’ve been intentional about realizing this. Before last season started, Tony Bennett said about dealing with their first round loss to UMBC, “I think it forces you to look at some things. The men’s basketball team certainly did this. One of the things we can do to move beyond an adverse event is to take responsibility for how our actions may have contributed. What we can do is shift from focusing on how we wished things had gone differently to asking ourselves what we can learn from this experience and apply to our behavior moving forward. But the past is past and we can’t change it. If we don’t do this, we can easily get stuck in thinking about how we wish we had done things differently in the past. Mindfulness practice can be very helpful in being able to see thoughts as thoughts, getting our attention out of the thought stream itself, and instead observing the thoughts as they arise. However powerful these thoughts may seem, they are just narratives or stories, and we have choices about whether we feed them or believe them or not.

Our default narrative, or story that we tell ourselves about the event, can easily focus on blaming ourselves and thinking we’re not good enough. When things don’t go our way it is easy to become disheartened and discouraged. Their story has become an inspiring lesson in how it is possible to grow through adversity. A big part of what made it possible were the choices the coaches and the players made in how they dealt with this historic loss. This is considered by many to be one of the most remarkable turn-arounds in sports history. Things are very different now as the team has gone from the first number 1 seed to ever lose to a number 16 seed to winning the tournament and yes, becoming national champions. I have been thinking about them again as students return to Grounds. I did end it by saying that this year “might even end with UVa finally winning a national championship”. Last year, I wrote a Monthly Musing about the UVa men’s basketball team and the disappointment they and many others felt as a result of their loss in the first round of the 2018 NCAA tournament. UVA Child Development & Rehabilitation Center.Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia.Institute of Law, Psychiatry & Public Policy.Child Health Research Center (Pediatrics).Thaler Center for AIDS & Human Retrovirus Research Center for Immunity, Inflammation & Regenerative Medicine.Center for Behavioral Health & Technology.Molecular Physiology & Biological Physics.Microbiology, Immunology, & Cancer Biology (MIC).

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