In recent seasons, Virginia fans have grown accustomed to the men’s basketball team slowly wearing down opponents before erupting for convincing wins late. If those victories are coined a Cavalanche, then Tuesday night’s improbable win at Wake Forest could be called a blizzard.
The Cavaliers, after all, scored nine points in the final 17 seconds to erase a seven-point deficit and steal a 72-71 victory. Darius Thompson delivered the unexpected triumph when he banked in a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the left wing, sending the Hoos into a frenzy while dealing the team its first ACC road win of the season. UVA (16-4, 5-3 ACC) trailed throughout the final 16:42, including a 64-54 deficit with only 1:23 to play, but furiously rallied with 18 points in the final 1:19 to get the W.
“We were very fortunate,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. ”We’ve lost tough games. I don’t know if I’ve lost one quite like that, although there’s been some. We got outplayed pretty much most of the game. We didn’t play well. We showed enough fight to get back in it and give yourself a chance. That’s why you’re always fouling and extending games, running quick hitters – you never know. That’s an improbable shot. … What a heck of a win.”
Thompson’s shot certainly wasn’t orthodox, but it did find its way into the basket. Needing to go the length of the floor in four seconds without a timeout, UVA already had a plan that it drew up during a clock check review by the officials. The goal was to get the ball to Malcolm Brogdon on the run and to try to free him to make something happen. Wake Forest, however, thwarted those plans with a 3/4-court zone press that denied the entry pass to Brogdon. So London Perrantes fired the ball to Devon Hall near halfcourt and he quickly pushed it up the left sideline where two defenders cut off his path.
Thompson cleared out of the lane and to the left wing while Hall dribbled. He ended up with the ball on a low pass from Hall and had only one option. Let it fly. It was his only shot of the game, but it somehow found the window and banked in for the win.
“It wasn’t even an option at first,” Thompson said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. ”We diagrammed a play thinking they were going to be in a man defense, but … they set up in a 1-2-2 press or something like that. So we were supposed to have Malcolm coming across and were supposed to throw it into Malcolm and get it up the court and make something happen. But the zone threw us off so Devon made a play to the ball and he was dribbling up. I was just trying to clear out of the way just in case Devon wanted to drive it, but he threw it. I only have one second left, I have to throw it up somehow. I caught the ball, jumped, and tried to get a foul call at first. I just threw it, they didn’t call a foul, and it hit off the backboard and went in.”
Thompson didn’t see it go in as it turned out. He fell to the floor after some contact from Devin Thomas, who challenged the shot. His teammates’ reaction clued him in, though.
“I actually didn’t see it go in at all,” Thompson said. “I just happened to look up and everybody was screaming and running at me so I was like I guess I made it.”
Thompson’s 3-pointer was one of three triples in the final 17 seconds. After Wake Forest’s Bryant Crawford notched a steal with 24 seconds to go, it looked like the Hoos’ hopes were done. Perrantes stole the ball right back, though, and then found Marial Shayok in the corner for a 3-pointer that cut the seven-point deficit to 70-66. After Thomas missed two free throws for the Demon Deacons, Shayok crossed halfcourt and hit Brogdon for a deep triple that sliced the margin to one point with five seconds to play. UVA fouled immediately and Crawford made the second of two free throws that left the door open for Thompson’s miracle.
Those three missed free throws were a microcosm of the final two minutes. Wake had made 11 of 13 free throws in the first 38 minutes, a solid 84.6%. In the final two minutes, the hosts made just 8 of 16 free throws, a 50% rate, that dragged the overall game number to 65.5% and opened the door for the Hoos’ heist.
Other than those two minutes, the Deacons put together a solid game that saw them control most of the second half. A quintet of 3-pointers during a span of 5:04 broke open a one-point game midway through the second half. Crawford hit the fourth and fifth of those followed by a dunk to grow the lead to 50-36. Crawford finished with 22 points on an 8-of-10 shooting performance. Thomas added 19 points and 6 rebounds, while Dinos Mitoglou had 11 and 5. That duo made 9 of 18 shots.
For the game, Wake Forest shot 53.5%, the highest number allowed by UVA this season. In fact, the struggles actually prompted Bennett to go to a 1-2-2 zone as a change of pace to try to break the Deacs’ rhythm.
”It’s just something we’ve been working on,” Bennett said on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. ”They were killing us, high-lowing us. We were playing smaller and we couldn’t handle our rotations. We were so lethargic and at least appeared very poor defensively. So what did we have to lose? I think we were down 14. It gave us a couple of stops.”
While the Cavaliers couldn’t string together stops, neither could the Demon Deacons at times during the game and that’s part of the reason they couldn’t deliver a knockout blow. Virginia shot 48.2% from the field (27-56) and 76.5% from the free throw line (13-17). The Hoos made just 5 of 17 3-pointers (29.4%), but they hit all four attempts in the final minute rally.
Two of the late 3-pointers belonged to Brogdon, who matched his career high with 28 points to go along with 7 rebounds. He has 10 games of at least 20 points this season and has moved into 19th overall on the program’s all-time scoring list (passing Othell Wilson). Shayok had a triple in the last minute too to finish with 10 points and 2 assists. Anthony Gill was the third Hoo to reach double figures with 17 points. Gill has scored in double digits in all 20 games of the season.
Thanks to Thompson’s improbable shot, those numbers look a lot better as the Cavaliers prepare for a road game at Louisville on Saturday.
”We’ve got to fix some things. I guess like Coach Soderberg said, we’ll do it with a joyful spirit as opposed to a melancholy one,” Bennett said. He later added: ”We did have the road woes – we were just fortunate to win. So I don’t think we shook the road woes in terms of our play, but we, whatever you want to say, got the monkey off our back.”
