[Editor’s Note: Today we have a guest entry on a new retro uniform for UVA, by our own Jamie Rathjen, an alum of the university. Enjoy! — PH]
It’s basically the best thing that’s happened to Virginia men’s basketball this season: they’re back in orange.
The men’s team’s 14-year gap between orange uniforms looks set to end with an effort that, like their other recent white alternate, borrows from a vintage-styled merch collection. They’ve used a conventional block number font instead of the school’s normal font and an arched “Virginia” script. It’s the first appearance of a block font for men’s basketball in what is probably approaching 20 years.
Unfortunately, No. 11-clad guard Isaac McKneely was the only player featured in the reveal video, so we have yet to see what any other numbers look like.
This alternate again does not correspond to any specific era but at least partially draws on the mid-70s. The reveal video features Wally Walker, the 1976 men’s ACC tournament MVP in Virginia’s first win of that tournament. Even with that the blue-white-blue piping pattern is a reversal of what was worn on the shorts then, but appears to match other orange jerseys from down the years.
A small “Hoos” logo is also on the shorts, adding this uniform to the few that include that nickname.
I’d like to see these vintage-style logos be used by other team sports, but I’m not sure that will happen because their looks are fairly set in stone and most already have three or more jerseys.
This alternate is expected to debut against Memphis on Wednesday, following the pattern of the previous one which was revealed a few days before its debut.
Nice writeup, Jamie! I agree that it’s long overdue for Virginia to reintroduce orange uniforms for its men’s basketball teams. I like the vintage look of these but wouldn’t mind if they made they block “Virginia” across the chest about 50% bigger. There’s definitely room to enlarge it. Case in point, the Ralph Sampson-era wordmark takes up quite a bit more real estate than these new alternates, and I think it looks quite a bit better: link.
Totally agree here – but it seems the trend these days is to have this smaller print. See: Michigan and Purdue. It’s as if someone types these team names out in Microsoft Word or used Word Art and then printed and pasted them onto the jerseys.
I fear true throwbacks are a thing of the past with college b-ball unis, or maybe this is just prevalent in Nike and other outfitters’ templates. As for UVA, I’d absolutely LOVE to see a 1994-1995 TRUE throwback a la what Harold Deane and Curtis Staples wore.
And, thank you Jamie for not calling these “throwbacks”! Wahoowa!
The shorts are vintage ’80s Virginia, similar to what Ralph Sampson and Bryant Stith wore. The jerseys are similar, though the neck and arm piping is slighlty different. A major improvement over their current set, and it harkens back to what Virginia basketball should look like.
This look is very good but I prefer the V with the sabres on the side of the shorts or no logos at all. Just the word Hoos in small print near the piping is too subtle, place it on the waistband instead.