When the Virginia basketball team suffered a swoon in mid January that featured four losses in five games, it got the players attention. They knew their were murmurs of an NCAA Tournament bid being in jeopardy. They knew doubts outside the program may be growing. Instead of an identity crisis, however, the Hoos found themselves.
They regrouped, refocused, and rewrote the end of the end of the regular season. After the final loss on Jan. 20 during that rough patch, UVA rattled off 10 wins in its next 11 games. The only blemish came at Louisville in a game that was tied with 2:47 to go. On Saturday at the John Paul Jones Arena, the Cavaliers completed their turnaround show by avenging that one loss with a 57-54 victory on Senior Day.
The Hoos ended the regular season with 11 wins in their last 12 games, including an eight-game winning streak that will extend into the postseason. They posted a 23-7 record overall and a 15-5 mark in the ACC that secured a tie for second place in the league standings.
“It was definitely a big part of what we wanted to do early on in the season when we had a rough patch,” UVA’s Jay Huff said. “I think that kind of gave us a little kick in the pants we needed. I think last year was last year. Obviously, it was a great season. Obviously, that’s the standard we want to set. But at the same time, I think we knew we had to do this because we wanted to not just because people before us have.”
The last game in the winning string resembled most of the ones before it. After all, seven of the last eight victories have come by three points or less and the margin ended up there again in this one. All but two games in the 2020 portion of the schedule have been decided by single digits. That means essentially every game is hanging in the balance in the final two minutes.
That certainly was the case again Saturday. “Did you think it was going to end any other way?” Virginia coach Tony Bennett joked during his press conference.
After building a lead of 14 points with 13:20 remaining, Virginia saw Louisville dig itself back in the game with a methodical 22-8 advantage over the next eight minutes. That run included a Jordan Nwora 3-pointer after a kickout pass from an offensive rebound that really seemed to boost the visitors. At that point, the Cardinals had missed eight straight 3-pointers and they had yet to make one in the second half.
That critical triple led to a string of four straight makes from downtown, the last one by Darius Perry knotting the score at 51-51 with 5:12 to play. It also got Nwora going. His 3-pointer to break the second-half ice jumpstarted his offense as he rattled off 10 straight points for his team. He finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds while playing all 40 minutes.
The Cardinal comeback set the stage for another dramatic ending.
“We started to get some defensive stops,” Louisville coach Chris Mack said of his team’s move to get back into the game. “For a while, at the end of the first half and beginning of second, we went zone and both zone and man weren’t very effective. We were letting our offensive struggles, that Virginia had everything to do with, really contribute to not having our motor running on the defensive end. I give our guys a lot of credit for being able to find themselves again defensively and begin to put some stops together. A few times we scored in transition, but it just made the game feel different once we started getting stops.”
The score remained tied at 51 all entering the final two minutes so the Hoos had to come through yet again in the clutch. Diakite gave his team the lead with a post move that drew a foul. He made 1 of 2 free throws to break the stalemate, but neither team created any points again until the final 30 seconds.
Enter Kihei Clark.
The sophomore guard took a ball screen from Jay Huff and read the situation. Louisville’s David Johnson elected to go underneath that pick and never really moved back close enough to Clark, keeping both of his feet inside the old college 3-point line. Clark used a rhythm dribble to set his feet and let the 3-pointer fly. It splashed through the nets with 29.9 seconds to go and the Cards didn’t score again until a meaningless triple in the final second.
Clark, of course, hit a game-winning 3-pointer at Virginia Tech earlier this month and set up Tomas Woldetensae for another one at North Carolina as well. Clark finished with 18 points, 5 assists, 5 rebounds, and 2 steals. That moved him into seventh on UVA’s single-season list for assists with 177 this season. Two of Saturday’s helpers went to Jay Huff on alley-oops. Huff finished with 11 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots, his 16th multi-block game of the season.
“I mean I am always confident,” Clark said when asked about his late game poise and confidence. “My teammates allow me to be confident. I know they trust me to make the play no matter if it’s a pass or a shot. So, I just go out there and try to do my job and try to make a play.”
“They went small and started switching. We had a decision to make, we didn’t have the matchups defensively, but I wanted to get Jay [Huff] on the floor for rebounds, post-ups. It was hard matchups but they actually did okay,” Bennett said. “Kihei, he’s done it and he continues to do it. He made the big shot and we needed every ounce of it. So, I just can’t say enough about what he’s got going on inside here [heart], and it’s a great way to finish off the regular season for him and of course the others. It was a clutch shot.”
The late dagger from Clark helped secure the Senior Day win for Diakite, Braxton Key, and manager Grant Kersey, who dressed for the game. The Cavaliers have won eight straight games on the day for the final home game of the year.
Diakite and Key played significant roles in their Senior Day send-off. Diakite poured in 17 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocked shots, and 1 steal. That included scoring 7 of the team’s final 12 points, Clark’s 3-pointer and a pair of free throws being the only other points in the last 10:30 of action. Diakite scored twice on moves on the block during that stretch and added 3 of 5 free throws in the final two minutes.
Key, meanwhile, added 6 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists to the cause. That’s the fifth time in the last six games that Key registered multiple assists. All of those boards came on the defensive end as he helped limit Louisville to 5 second chance points, a category that had been a big factor in the earlier loss when the Cardinals had 15.
Diakite and Key also took turns on defense against Nwora. While he did get to 18 points, most of those were of the hard-earned variety. They also effectively executed some post traps against Steven Enoch, who was the only other player to reach double figures with 11 points. Combined with Huff, that was enough with Malik Williams also limited in a return from an ankle injury, for the Cardinals to shift gears and go with a smaller lineup later in the game.
Virginia stuck to its experienced guns led by Diakite and Key anyway and pulled out another close win.
“That is the best send-off we can give [the seniors], especially with a team like Louisville,” Huff said. “We really wanted to win to honor them and what they have done for the program.”
“I kind of thanked them for what they’ve meant to this program yesterday before practice and after practice,” Bennett said. “I said ‘as much as I’d love it if [Boston College] could get it and you can get a share of the ACC title, that doesn’t take away from what just transpired in terms of the effort you put out there ,how you play and what you’ve done this year, and for your careers here.’ To start with Braxton, terrific. For him to make that decision to come here, he was patient last year and in big moments did some big things for us. Then Mamadi, for five years has been here and just thinking of that and watching him mature and seeing how joyful he is, emotional, and you could just see he did not want to be denied. Very thankful that they got to end that way but so much more left.”
Great article