Virginia’s NCAA chances take a tumble after blowing 9-point lead

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Photo: UVA Athletics

Leonard Hamilton said his team practices half-court shots every day to lighten things up, and that the Seminoles even practiced game-winners during their shootaround Saturday morning at Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena. Little did he suspect his team would require a last-second bomb to win later in the day.

Matt Cleveland caught a pass somewhere around 30-feet from the basket and threw up a prayer with one second to go. He swished it and left the Cavaliers and a sold-out arena stunned in defeat — Florida State 64, Virginia 63.

It was only FSU’s second win in its last 10 games, playing with four injured starters missing. For UVA, the heart-wrenching loss likely dashed the chances for the Cavaliers to make the NCAA tournament, slipping to 17-12 overall, 11-8 in the ACC with one regular-season game to go (at Louisville next Saturday).

“I did know it was good,” Cleveland said about the 11th-hour shot leaving his hands. “Got the pass, turned and shot it. I either knew it was good or it was long. Just glad it went in.”

Even Virginia’s Armaan Franklin, the defender on the play, thought the worst when Cleveland let go.

“It looked good when it left his hands, but that was just a tough way to go out,” Franklin said.

In a mere one second, JPJ went from rapture to anguish after Franklin drove the floor and made a pull-up jumper that appeared to be the game-winner as one second showed on the scoreboard. FSU called timeout, drew up a play, passed the ball deep to Cleveland, who let go with a Hail Mary, leaving fans gobsmacked.

“I told Matt in the locker room [after the game] that we’re going to run that play for him about three times a half,” Hamilton said. “I hope he’s able to make it more than once in a while. I feel very fortunate to come away with a victory.”

Tony Bennett said it was a tough way for UVA Senior Night to end, but acknowledged that FSU made tough plays during its comeback down the stretch. Indeed. The Seminoles made their last eight consecutive shots over the last five minutes of the game as the Cavaliers blew a 9-point lead (59-50) with 2:20 to play (see accompanying game story, notes, boxscore on this site).

After Franklin’s 3-pointer opened the 9-point cushion, UVA didn’t score another basket until his pull-up jumper from the free-throw circle with a second to go. In the meantime, both he and Gardner missed one of two foul shots each in the final 94 seconds.

Cleveland, who led the Seminoles with 20 points, scored half of those in the final 2:06 of the game.

The one that stung, giving UVA back-to-back losses for the first time this season, and potentially knocking the Cavaliers out of contention for an NCAA tournament bid, was the last one. ESPN’s BPI predictions rated Virginia with a 35-percent chance of making the NCAAs before the game and 17-percent with the loss.

“What we’ve done in the past before is put a big on the ball to make the [inbounds] pass hard,” Bennett explained UVA’s last-second strategy. “Kadin [Shedrick] jumped up, [FSU] found [Cleveland]. I think he kind of went and broke back and there’s a little space, and then Armaan had [what it] looked like in real time and he [Cleveland] made what was probably about a 30-footer at the buzzer. I don’t know what more we could have done.”

Hamilton said his team had three options on the final play, read the floor and went to the best option, which was Cleveland. The FSU coach said that in the earlier shootaround, his team took two half-court shots each, made 6 of 24. Cleveland’s shot wasn’t from that far out, but he only needed to make one.

Of course, Bennett aptly pointed out the game shouldn’t have come down to that. He was clearly not pleased with his team’s defensive intensity from the opening moment of the game onward.

“I thought we were on the edge all night with our defense and then they started scoring quickly,” Bennett said. “They kept just driving it right by us. I thought we were playing a little unsound. You can’t play with fire like that.”

Bennett said no one on his team had a sound defensive game down the stretch. Even on FSU’s opening basket of the game, an easy, unopposed drive down the lane, Bennett said it should have never happened, that “we didn’t even know who we had.”

Hamilton’s plan was to attack Virginia inside from the get-go, but couldn’t find many cracks in the “Pack Line” the first 20 minutes. The Seminoles found plenty down the stretch as the Cavaliers squandered the big lead, with its two bigs on the bench for most of that time.

Francisco Caffaro only played four minutes of the second half, Kadin Shedrick a mere eight and only 4 minutes and 40 seconds of the final 7:45 of the game, which meant Virginia had little rim protection against the Seminoles’ drives to the basket.

Seminoles come back to stun Hoos, 64-63, as Cleveland makes buzzer-beating triple

By Scott Ratcliffe

Kihei Clark. Photo courtesy UVA Athletics.

Virginia guard Armaan Franklin sank what appeared to be the game-winning jumper with one second left Saturday, but Florida State spoiled the Cavaliers’ Senior Day with a buzzer-beating Matthew Cleveland 3-pointer to win, 64-63.

UVA led for the majority of the contest, but surrendered a 10-point lead with 3:26 to play and dropped to 17-12 on the season and 11-8 in ACC play, weakening its chances for an NCAA Tournament at-large bid in the process with just one game left in the regular season.

The Seminoles (15-13, 8-10), who were playing without four of their usual starters, had lost eight of their last nine and five of their last six at John Paul Jones Arena, but never threw in the towel and emerged with the win.

With Virginia leading by a point, fourth-year forward Kody Stattmann broke up a Seminole fast break with under 20 seconds to play after fellow senior Kihei Clark lost the ball around half court.

Franklin came up with the ball and split a pair of free throws with 14.7 ticks left, but Florida State tied it at 61-all with 6.3 seconds to go on a Cleveland shot high off the glass.

Franklin got the ball in the waning seconds and released from just past the free-throw line with not one, but two defenders’ hands in his face, and JPJ exploded with excitement.

After a Seminole timeout, however, Cleveland caught the long inbound pass from Harrison Prieto, then turned and fired just before the final horn sounded, and Wahoo Nation was stunned and shocked as the visitors began to celebrate after his shot swished through the net.

”I think that we kind of broke down on the defensive end the last three or so minutes of the game, they hit I think their last eight shots,” said Franklin. “Like Kody [Stattmann] said, that’s the time we need to lock in even more and fill in our gaps. At the same time they hit some tough shots.”

With the Wahoos ahead by three early in the second half, Reece Beekman — who laid one in on the previous possession — threw down a powerful one-hand jam from the baseline to bring the fans to their feet.

Franklin nailed one from way downtown (from the V-sabre logo at midcourt, to be exact) to beat the shot clock and put the Cavaliers ahead 44-36 with 15:30 on the clock.

Stattmann got the start on Senior Day and made his presence felt on the defensive end down the stretch, with a blocked shot and a steal that ultimately led to two Beekman free throws.

Clark fed Kadin Shedrick for a two-hand flush the next trip down to cap a 9-1 run, and Virginia’s lead grew to double digits, 48-37, forcing FSU coach Leonard Hamilton to call for a timeout with 10:46 to go. He had seen enough, as the Hoos took their largest lead of the day and meanwhile his Seminoles were 1 for 9 from the floor during that stretch.

Whatever Hamilton said seemed to have an effect, as State scored seven in a row out of the timeout. Conversely, Virginia had missed seven-straight shots until Clark converted a three-point play with 5:38 to play to make it 52-44.

Jayden Gardner’s bucket out of the final media break pushed the Cavalier lead back to 10, 56-46, before the Seminoles mounted one final rally.

FSU, which finished the contest on an 18-7 run from that point on, trimmed it to 60-56 as the game went under two minutes, and then Cleveland’s three-point play cut it to one with 45 seconds left, setting up the thrilling conclusion.

Virginia shot 39 percent from the field (22 for 56) and just 24 percent from downtown (4 for 17), but sank 15 of 19 (79 percent) from the charity stripe.

Gardner finished with a game-high 21 points and 6 rebounds, while Franklin added 13 points and three 3-pointers.

Beekman fouled out late, but posted 8 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks and a steal. Francisco Caffaro scored 7 points to go with his game-high 11 rebounds and 2 blocks.

As for the seniors, Clark struggled with his shot (3 for 16, 0 for 4 from deep), but finished with 7 points and a game-high 6 assists. Stattmann had 3 points, a rebound, 2 assists, 2 blocks and 2 steals.

Cleveland scored 14 of his team-high 20 points in the second half to lead the Seminoles, including eight in the final 45 seconds. Prieto was the only other Florida State player in double figures with 14 points.

FIRST HALF

After a bit of a sloppy start, the Cavaliers cashed in on three-straight shots — capped by a 3-pointer from Stattmann with 15:14 showing — and led 9-4 at the first media timeout, as FSU missed nine of its first 11 attempts from the field.

The Hoos went nearly four minutes without scoring until Beekman sank a jumper to make it 11-6, and then Clark’s first bucket bounced in to push the lead to nine moments later.

The Seminoles answered with a 10-0 run to take a 16-15 advantage with 7:47 left, and it was a tightly contested battle for the remainder of the half.

After a Malachi Poindexter jumper fell, Gardner connected on three-consecutive baskets — the last of which wowed the crowd, a tough reverse layup through the teeth of the defense — to give UVA a 25-22 edge with 3:45 until halftime.

Tied at 27, Franklin nailed a deep 3 at the 2-minute mark on an assist from Clark, who followed with a jumper of his own the next trip down. Gardner sank a pair of free throws in the closing seconds, as the Hoos finished the half on a 7-2 run and took a 34-29 lead at the break.

Gardner led all scorers with 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting at the half, as UVA shot 54 percent (13 for 24) and scored eight points off of five FSU turnovers.

Box Score

Team Notes

Courtesy UVA Media Relations

• Matthew Cleveland won the game with a long 3-pointer at the buzzer
• Armaan Franklin gave Virginia a 63-61 lead on a jumper with 1.0 second left in the game
• The Cavaliers fell to 17-12, 11-8 ACC
• UVA has lost back-to-back games for the first time in 2021-22
• UVA is 10-6 at John Paul Jones Arena (6-4 in ACC play)
• UVA forced two shot clock violations (31 in 2021-22)
• FSU went on a 10-0 run to gain a 16-15 lead
• UVA led 34-29 at the halftime, falling to 13-3 when leading after 20 minutes
• The Cavaliers honored Kihei Clark, Jayden Nixon and Kody Stattmann, and managers Chris McGahren and Shane Nelson in a pre-game Senior Day ceremony

Series Notes

• Virginia is 26-28 all-time vs. Florida State, including a 16-10 mark in Charlottesville, in a series that began in 1991-92
• UVA has limited Florida State to fewer than 70 points in 20 of the last 21 meetings
• Head coach Tony Bennett is 9-11 all-time vs. Florida State
• In the 54-game series with Florida State, 21 of the 54 games have been decided by 5 points or less

Player Notes

• Double Figure Scorers: Jayden Gardner (21), Armaan Franklin (13)
• Gardner reached double figures for the 24th time (97th career)
• Gardner recorded his 40th career 20-point game (7 at UVA)
• Gardner (1,912 points) surpassed 1,900 career points (1,891)
• Gardner has a 12-game double figure scoring streak
• Franklin reached double figures for the 18th time (32nd career)
• Francisco Caffaro and Beekman each matched career highs with two blocks
• Caffaro had a game-high 11 rebounds

UP NEXT

Virginia closes out the regular season in one week at Louisville (Saturday at 12 Noon on ESPN2) before beginning preparations for the ACC Tournament in Brooklyn.

Scattershooting: Wahoos can still make NCAAs, Kihei may be coming back, and Mike from Durham

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Kihei Clark (Photo by Dan Grogan)

Scattershooting around the ACC, while noting that Virginia fans would like to nominate Mike Krzyzewski as chairman of the NCAA tournament’s selection committee …

Krzyzewski won over many Cavalier fans with his thoughts after this week’s thriller-diller win over UVA in Charlottesville. Duke pulled out a close win, but afterward Coach K said that it would be a sin if Virginia is not included in the NCAA Tournament. He pointed out that Tony Bennett’s team owned a 3-1 record against Duke and Miami, generally the top two teams in the ACC all season long.

All the analytical sites — such as the flawed NET rankings — disagree with Krzyzewski. Here are Virginia’s ratings via the various groups that rank teams by various methods, as of Friday evening:

• NET: 80
• KenPom: 74
• BPI: 59
• SOR: 62
• Sagarin: 57
• KPI: 65
• Barttorvik: 74
• Avg: 67.2

“There’s no question that Virginia is an NCAA Tournament team,” Krzyzewski said. “[With] so many of these numbers, you have to be careful. You need to give the eye test too. They are playing as well as anyone in our conference right now and have been for about a month.”

I was pleased to learn from colleague Chris Graham that CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm wrote recently that the NCAA Tournament selection committee still operates the way it did when former UVA athletic director Craig Littlepage was a member, then chairman. Littlepage said then that the committee uses the analytics for reference, but not as a determining factor.

With Littlepage, the “eye test” was always an important factor. Throughout the days of Littlepage, preceded by AD Terry Holland and AD Dick Schultz, the eye test was an ingredient, as well a team’s last 10 games, and strength of schedule (a factor that has hurt Virginia this season because the ACC is down), if a team was willing to go on the road against good competition (UVA played Houston and Providence on the road outside the ACC), and how a team might have advanced as the season progressed.

In other words, was a team without key personnel early on due to injuries, or was a team’s roster filled with new personnel, inexperienced players that needed to gel, such as Virginia’s case? Bennett has done a beautiful job of developing this team, which he has described as “the newest team I have coached,” to where it is playing its best basketball over the last month, just as Krzyzewski suggested.

Should Virginia beat Florida State on Saturday afternoon and Louisville a week from tomorrow, the committee can’t possibly overlook the Cavaliers’ progress. A win in Brooklyn would only help, but two would almost be a lock.

(See related FSU-UVA game notebook and podcast on this site).

Kihei: Should I stay or should I go?

Kihei Clark will walk the JPJ floor today as part of the Senior Day pregame ceremonies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s his last game in the building.

Clark, who drew praise from Krzyzewski on Wednesday, has another year of eligibility due to the Covid issues. While Clark told one outlet this week that he hasn’t made a decision about returning, one of our spies believes the point guard is coming back.

During our latest podcast, co-host Chris Graham said that cohort Scott German talked to Kihei’s parents at a recent game and they told German that Kihei has decided to come back for an extra year, and that all those details have been discussed and determined (listen to our podcast for the details).

Around 20 family members were in the stands for the Duke game a few nights ago and are sticking around for Saturday’s game against FSU. How fitting that Clark’s family got to witness his career-high 25 points and career-high six 3-pointers? Afterward, Krzyzewski told Clark that he was one of the best guards in the ACC.

Clark was honored that all those family members would fly over from Hawaii to watch him play.

“It means a lot … they flew here from Hawaii,” Clark said. “To come see me play means everything, to have their love and support.”

Will FSU be healthy?

Florida State has lost eight of its last nine games and has been hobbled by injuries during that span.

ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg said on our podcast two weeks ago that the Seminoles “are sinking faster than the Titanic.”  Two games ago, FSU was down five starters due to injuries, and even though it gained one back (6-foot-4 senior RayQuan Evans, knee) for its last game, the ‘Noles lost at Boston College (71-55).

In that game, Leonard Hamilton’s team committed a season-high 19 turnovers.

Mike from Durham

It was comical that during Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim’s call-in show this week that one of the callers was “Mike from Durham.”

Boeheim smelled it out immediately that the caller was his longtime friend and rival coach, Mike Krzyzewski. Duke and Syracuse battle this weekend, and “Mike from Durham,” said he would like to meet Boeheim and get an autograph.

Boeheim joked that he would meet Mike from Durham but wouldn’t give him an autograph.

Quick hitters …

• One-time Virginia football assistant and former Miami head football coach Al Golden has been hired as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator. Golden was the linebackers coach for the Cincinnati Bengals this past season. Golden previously served as an assistant for the Detroit Lions from 2016 through 2019.
• Legendary former UVA lacrosse coach Dom Starsia is on the advisory board and a member of the voting committee for the Professional Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
• Matt Groh, son of former UVA head football coach Al Groh, has been promoted to director of player personnel for the New England Patriots. Groh has been with New England for the past 11 seasons and was college scouting director this past season.
• This nugget from our pal Danny Neckel: Virginia’s Jayden Gardner has made 91 mid-range shots, which leads the ACC and is seventh in the nation.
• Joe Lunardi’s latest brackets have UVA having to leapfrog only five other teams to make it into his field.

Podcast: Ann Holland talks Coach K

Ann Holland, the wife of longtime Virginia Basketball coach Terry Holland, joins “The Jerry Ratcliffe Show” to talk about the Hollands’ on-court meeting with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski before Wednesday’s game between the Cavaliers and Blue Devils.

Kihei made Duke sweat, but the Devils had just enough to win

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Kihei Clark (Photo by Dan Grogan)

In a handshake line done the right way on Wednesday night, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski paused when he got to Virginia’s Kihei Clark and told him just how good the Cavaliers’ point guard was.

While Clark has his detractors, oddly more from his own ranks than those of opponents, no one could deny how good the diminutive UVA guard was against the top-10 Blue Devils. During one long stretch of the first half, the tenacious, California-bred Clark scored 18 straight points, having reeled off six 3-pointers.

By halftime, Krzyzewski had to make an adjustment. He isn’t in the Hall of Fame for nothing. Coach K decided to sic Jeremy Roach onto Clark in hopes of at least cooling off the UVA sharpshooter.

While Roach didn’t completely shut Clark down, he did limit Clark to six points and no triples. Roach’s defensive performance was called “the differentiator” of the game by Krzyzewski.

“I thought our defense was excellent and Clark had a heck of a game,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s as good a guard as there is in the league. That shooting performance he put on in the first half made us change our defense. Jeremy came in, and not that he stopped Clark, but he defended him.”

Clark finished with a career-high 25 points and career highs of six 3-pointers and 11 attempted 3-pointers, all in front of about 20 family members who flew in from Hawaii to watch him play his final two home games. Had Roach not checked Clark, who knows what numbers he might have put up.

He became only the fifth player in Virginia history to post 1,000 career points and 500 assists, joining the likes of John Crotty, Sean Singletary, London Perrantes and Donald Hand.

Coach K didn’t know those facts, but had watched Clark for four years and made sure the guard had his admiration after the game.

“He just said I was one of the best guards in the conference,” Clark said afterward. “He’s one of the great coaches in the history of the game and for him to say that to me felt pretty good.”

Limiting Clark in the second half was just one of the successful strategies Krzyzewski deployed. After having surrendered an eye-popping 52 points in the lane to Virginia in the first meeting a couple of weeks ago, he wasn’t going to allow that to happen in the rematch.

“We defended [Virginia’s] bigs,” Coach K said. “They had 24 and 16 last time, but they had two points this time. I think we only gave up single digits in the paint, and still, we were that close to losing.”

Krzyzewski knew Duke’s defense would be better this time because of the way his team prepared in practice in the days leading up to the game. He shared a conversation he had with assistant Chris Carawell, that his squad “was looking like an old Duke team,” from the floor-slapping days.

“The maturity of our team preparation went to a different level … they’re ‘getting it,’” Krzyzewski said.

The Duke coach also went to an open-set, small-ball lineup late when he took 6-foot-10 Mark Williams out, which left Tony Bennett to use either Kadin Shedrick on Paolo Banchero or a more mobile wing, and then replace Shedrick with Kody Stattmann, who had difficulty matching up.

“We were going to attack their bigs had they stayed with them,” Krzyzewski said.

Bennett expected that move at some point.

“It was pick your poison,” Bennett said. “Can we get a matchup? I was hoping they wouldn’t go to it.”

As good a job as UVA’s undersized Jayden Gardner did against Banchero (yes, he had some help in doubling the post at times), this go round the Cavaliers didn’t have quite enough to pull off the sweep.

Banchero had scored in double figures in every game this season except in his two meetings against Virginia. In the two meetings, he averaged 8.5 points per game, while shooting 22.7 percent (5 for 22) with seven turnovers. Gardner did the bulk of that defensive work.

With all that taken into account, it took Duke everything it had to eke out a win over Virginia, just as Krzyzewski aptly pointed out.

“It was just another Duke-Virginia game,” Coach K said. “We could have won at our place and they could have won tonight.”

He was correct, of course. Over the last 14 meetings between the Cavaliers and Blue Devils, the average score has been: Duke 65.9, Virginia 64.4.

Virginia lost, but it gained national respect from some of the naysayers.

“I complimented the team and I told them, ‘You battled,’” Bennett said of his postgame message. “Let’s learn and tighten up.”

Florida State is coming to town Saturday for the last home game and Senior Day. Tighten up, indeed.