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Sean Singletary sat out the game with a hip injury. |
Fordham coach Dereck Whittenburg said he nearly had a heart attack when he stepped on the court before tonight’s game and saw Sean Singletary in street clothes. “I thought, wow, unfortunate for them but good for us,” he said.
No kidding. Playing without its best player, Virginia fell to the previously 1-6 Rams at University Hall. The Cavaliers squandered a seven-point lead with six minutes left and lost 62-60 on walk-on forward Nicholas Vita’s short bank shot with 3.2 seconds remaining. J.R. Reynolds missed a running 25-footer at the buzzer, sending the Wahoos (3-3) into a 10-day exam break on a low note.
Despite career games from Jason Cain (16 points, 15 rebounds) and Tunji Soroye (12 points), Virginia had no perimeter punch without Singletary, the team’s leading scorer. The sophomore point guard has a hip injury and missed a game for the first time in his career. UVa coach Dave Leitao did not specify when Singletary was injured, saying only, “He’s been hurt.”
Leitao was livid at his team’s lack of defensive intensity in the second half. After holding Fordham to 22 points in the first half, the Cavs gave up 40 in the second. Jermaine Anderson and Bryant Dunston, the Rams’ top guns, scored 34 of their 42 points after the break.
“It was a case of poor defensive effort,” Leitao said in a terse postgame press conference. “Bad offensive execution. Poor defensive effort. Same kind of effort we got the first 20 minutes, we didn’t get in the second.”
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Jason Cain |
Leitao was especially disappointed with his team’s effort after taking a 56-49 lead on Cain’s layup with 6:19 remaining. “We thought the game was over and stopped guarding them,” he said.
The Rams needed less than two minutes to tie the game. Anderson made a 3-pointer, Vita sank a short jumper and Anderson coasted in for a layup after stealing Billy Campbell’s pass.
“We definitely had a lapse in our defensive intensity,” said Campbell, a senior walk-on who made his first career start and played 22 minutes in Singletary’s absence. “We gave up some things we shouldn’t have given up.”
With the game tied at 56, Fordham missed three straight 3-pointers and Cain missed three shots around the basket. “I just played soft,” said Cain, who grabbed nine offensive boards, one shy of the school record. “That’s the only way to describe it.”
J.R. Reynolds gave Virginia a brief lead with a pullup jumper, but he lost the ball on UVa’s next possession and Anderson again converted the turnover into an easy layup.
Reynolds, who finished with eight points on 2-of-8 shooting, was the primary option on every Cavalier possession down the stretch. He drew a foul with 1:17 left and made one of two free throws for a 59-58 lead. Dunston put Fordham in front with two foul shots moments later. Reynolds again got fouled with 53 seconds remaining and again made one of two free throws, tying the game at 60.
The Rams were able to take nearly 50 seconds on their last possession because a foul on Soroye – Virginia’s sixth team foul of the half – reset the shot clock. Anderson drove from the left side and dished to Vita, who cleanly banked home an eight-foot shot from the right wing.
After a UVa timeout, Reynolds caught the inbounds pass 70 feet from the basket, made a nifty behind-the-back dribble at midcourt and had a good look at the rim. But his floating shot caromed off the left side of the rim and the Cavs went into the exam break having flunked an early-season test.
“We’re in search of a team that can consistently play harder for sustained minutes on defense. We’re in search of a team that can play more aggressive and more together on offense,” Leitao said. “Whether we have a game tomorrow or 10 days from now doesn’t matter because we have to find a way to get there.”
(For complete coverage of the Cavaliers, please sign up for Sabre Edge. Edge subscribers can listen to audio of Coach Leitao’s postgame press conference and an interview with Billy Campbell.)
