By Jerry Ratcliffe

While losing in a conference title game is always a bummer, Virginia’s players believe they gained a new brand of confidence in taking No. 1 ranked Duke to the wire last Saturday night in the ACC finals.

That confidence should serve the Cavaliers well in this afternoon’s NCAA Tournament opener for No. 3 seeded UVA vs. No. 14 seed Wright State (1:50 p.m., TBS) in the Midwest Regional in Philadelphia.

“I think [the Duke loss] still stings. We don’t want to lose a team twice, but I think we learned from that game, especially from the first game to the second game,” said UVA guard Malik Thomas. “I think that as a team, we grew together as a program. We’re just going to continue to use that as momentum and carry that into the tournament.”

Devin Tillis, who comes off the bench, mostly to spell starting power forward Thijs De Ridder, agreed with Thomas.

“I think we definitely built some confidence from that [Duke] game,” Tillis said Thursday afternoon.

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