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Sean Singletary celebrates with Jamil Tucker after making the go-ahead lay-up in the final 30 seconds. |
Virginia’s Sean Singletary has maintained all along that he doesn’t care what the situation is – even if it’s just the College Basketball Invitational – he wants to win. If anyone ever doubted it, Monday’s CBI Quarterfinal provided crystal clear proof that he meant it.
Singletary pulled off an improbable, unbelievable, shocking – yes even for him – 30 seconds against Old Dominion to raise the Cavaliers from the dead and hand-deliver an 80-76 victory in the John Paul Jones Arena.
“I’ve said before, any time you’re playing in the postseason, deep into March, no matter what tournament it is, you’ve got to be a good team to keep winning because you’ve got to get on a winning streak,” Singletary said. “It’s win or go home and we really don’t want it to be over yet.”
UVa coach Dave Leitao said the star guard just keeps adding to his already impressive résumé.
“In the end, everybody can have who they got, and I’ll take Sean Singletary . He just continues to rewrite a story that’s already a bestseller in the annals of Virginia basketball,” Leitao said. “The three-pointer, at any other angle, probably would have missed, but thankfully it was head-on. Then the steal was something that you might be able to tell your children about 10, 20 years from now. He’s truly amazing.”
Exactly what did Singletary do this time that was so amazing, though? As Leitao alludes to above, just about everything.
With 29.6 seconds remaining, the senior hit two free throws to cut the gap to 74-72. After ODU’s Brian Henderson made just 1 of 2 free throws, the Cavs again turned to the play-making ability of Singletary. Moving to his right, Singletary (22 points, 10 assists, 3 steals, 3 rebounds, 1 turnover) used a high on-ball screen from Lars Mikalauskas (10 points, 4 rebounds) and pulled up for a 3-pointer at the top of the key. Trying to get the shot off quickly, Singletary banked in a horse shot 3-pointer to knot the score at 75 with 22.4 seconds remaining.
“I’d give him the same shot again. He missed so bad he made it,” Old Dominion coach Blaine Taylor said. “He’s a really fine player, but the old joke in horse about calling bank … if he had shot that ball from just about any other angle that poorly, it wouldn’t have gone in but it was fortunate enough that it was from straight away. If it had been from the side, it would have been an airball. But he’s a good player that’s made plays over the years. We knew it was going to be difficult down the stretch.”
“People may say that the shot was lucky, but luck is a byproduct of hard work. You put yourself in a position to be lucky, so I don’t think it was a lucky shot,” Leitao said. “When a guy has done what Sean’s done in preparation, shots like that do go in at big moments. We’ve seen it last weekend, the weekend before that, and all over the place.”
Singletary was confident he was going to make the shot.
“Lars set me a nice little screen and I saw they gave me a little room. In my mind, I was confident anything I put up was going to go in. I just needed to get the ball off and I felt as though it was going to go in,” Singletary said. “I was definitely thinking it might bank. I got pretty good arc on it and I knew it was going to be long so I was thinking it was going to bank in. But like I said before, I had the confidence it was going to go in regardless. I just had to get the ball up there.”
As if that isn’t impressive enough, Singletary still had a little magic left.
Old Dominion brought the ball into the frontcourt and set up a play for the red-hot Henderson (he finished with 26 points on 10-of-17 shooting). The ball never made it to him, though. With Brandon Johnson (7 points, 8 assists, 3 steals) ready to initiate the play near mid-court, Singletary timed the dribble and swiped Johnson’s attempted cross-over with less than 10 seconds to play. He raced the other way for the go-ahead lay-up and converted the and-one free throw for a 78-75 lead that essentially sealed the win for the Hoos.
“I was just thinking, get to the basket. I was thinking of going up with my right hand, but he stood right there, he played that well,” Johnson said. “When I tried to cross over [again to the left], he was right there.”
“He liked to use the crossover and was very deliberate with his moves,” Singletary said. “When he went to the retreat dribble, I knew he was going to crossover, so I stuck my hand out and he put the ball right in my hands.”
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Jamil Tucker ‘s 11 second-half points included three 3-pointers to help combat ODU’s zone defense. |
While the final 30 seconds will live on in Virginia lore, the two teams dueled in what Leitao called a “gut-wrenching” back-and-forth affair for the preceding 39 minutes. The entertaining battle featured 7 lead changes and 6 ties; both teams also rallied from deficits of at least six points at least once. Old Dominion started the fireworks with a 10-0 run to start the game, while UVa ripped off a 10-0 run of its own early in the second half to tie things at 41.
Along the way, the crowd’s fervor grew as 6,460 fans witnessed an in-state passion play unfold. Virginia’s Jamil Tucker (11 points, 6 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 block) and Mamadi Diane (14 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block) poured in 23 second-half points, Tucker draining corner 3-balls and Diane throwing down a two-handed jam in traffic as highlights. ODU crashed the glass relentlessly down the stretch, scoring 8 straight points off offensive rebounds in a three-minute stretch, punctuated by Ben Finney’s one-handed rebound jam that gave the Monarchs a 70-67 lead.
Not bad for a lousy CBI game.
“The game went according to script as far as we were concerned. We thought we could give them some problems early and we did. We knew they would come back at us and they did. We took a nice lead to the locker room. We knew they would come out of the locker room and it would be a battle,” Taylor said. “They gave us their best shot, got up six. My kids never went away, they kept battling. We put ourselves in a position to win at the end of the game. A little bit of this, a little bit of that; just one play from us walking out a winner. Hats off to them and best of luck as they go into the rest of tournament.”
“The ending to this one follows right up with the there with the Duke shot. The steal, the three-pointer, and the last few sequences were something a lot of players can’t do,” Tucker said.
Statistics | UVa Media Relations Notes
