Some people are of the mindset that they only want to "pay for" or "reward" results after the fact. Well, you're not going to get much better results than that. VT had to play 4 games in 4 days; they didn't fall ass-backwards into a double bye + a semifinals forfeit like GT did last year. They had to beat all the top seeds in the tournament, didn't get any easier opponents from previous upsets elsewhere in the bracket. They beat UNC and Duke on neutral court when it actually mattered; this wasn't stealing some random late January game from them in Cassell. And, they didn't just win, they dominated with substantial leads most of those games, it makes the Clemson game look like the fluke. Duke actually had to concede the game with like 1:30 left. And they did all this from a 7th seed, with a coaching staff that was able to turn the season around after such a strangely bad start.

The Sweet 16 run a few years ago was great, we all remember how close it was to being an Elite 8 run. But VT was a 4th seed that year because of how good their regular season was, they were "supposed" to make the Sweet 16. But this is a championship in a league with a lot of programs who strongly care about basketball. Personally, I'm sort of on the fence of thinking an Elite 8 run is better than an ACC title; Final 4 definitely is. We all know how much success UVA has had in basketball under Tony Bennett--incredible win percentage, a national title--but even they've only won the ACC tournament twice under him.

The point is, this was a huge and uncommon feat for the basketball program, and there's not many better results you can ask for, if you don't want to write the check until after the results show up.