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

By Jerry Ratcliffe

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.