Terry Holland was hired from Davidson in 1975 , and with star Wally Walker surprised the ACC in just his second year as head coach when his sixth-seeded Virginia defeated AP No. 17 NC State , No. 9 Maryland and No. 4 North Carolina en route to winning the school 's first ACC Championship . Played in Landover , Maryland , it was also and fittingly the first ACC Tournament held outside of North Carolina . Athletic , quick , and seven-foot-four , Ralph Sampson was perhaps the most desired high school recruit in college basketball history when he chose to play with Jeff Lamp at Virginia over Kentucky in 1979 . He lived up to that hype would become one of the most dominant college players the game has ever known , winning three consecutive Naismith College Player of the Year awards to tie him with Bill Walton as the most awarded individual player in NCAA history . Virginia would attain its first AP Top 5 rankings and go to its first Final Four in Sampson 's era , but would be stonewalled by Dean Smith and North Carolina both in that Final Four and in ACC Tournaments . Carolina notoriously held the ball in a four corners offense for most of the last seven minutes of the game , despite having UNC 's most celebrated NBA superstars Michael Jordan and James Worthy on the floor , to defeat Virginia in the 1982 ACC Tournament 47 – 45 . Both the shot clock and three-point line were implemented into college basketball during the same decade in part to combat such shenanigans . In 1984 , after Sampson was drafted first in the 1983 NBA Draft , Virginia made a Cinderella run back to the Final Four . There they lost 49 – 47 , in overtime , to a Houston team led by the first pick of the 1984 NBA Draft , Hakeem Olajuwon , who then joined Sampson to form the original Twin Towers of the NBA on the Houston Rockets
1982 ACC Tournament
1982 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament
Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball