The old saying goes that the third time’s the charm, but Tuesday night was the exact opposite of that for the Virginia basketball team.
For the third straight game in the NIT, the Cavaliers went to the free throw line in the final minute with the lead in hand. For the third straight game, they missed the potential win-sealing free throws. Mississippi State and North Texas could not make them pay, but St. Bonaventure did with a 3-pointer and 2 free throws in the final 21 seconds to overtake UVA 52-51.
The third time’s a curse in this case and it ended Virginia’s season in the NIT Quarterfinals.
“First, credit to St. Bonaventure they have five seniors and they played like experienced seniors, they made all their big free throws, and they made some tough threes that I think were pretty well defended,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said. “Again, you can only go in real time so they made the big shots when we were up four or five and they hit them. … Just like how we had a chance against North Texas to salt the game away and we shot a lot of free throws in the day in between and came in today and shot a lot and missing the front end of a bonus, make one out of two, you’re not going to make them all, but those when you get into these kinds of games and you’re trying to advance every little thing matters and so that certainly hurts.”
The Hoos trailed 45-42 after Jalen Adaway made a triple, but they surged to a 50-45 lead with an 8-0 run in 1:21. Reece Beekman started the burst with a layup and a pair of Armaan Franklin 3-pointers provided the rest. That set the stage for the final two minutes.
The Hoos still held a 50-47 lead with 30 seconds to go. That’s when the Bonnies intentionally fouled. The strategy sent Franklin to the line first where he cleanly made the first free throw to stretch the lead to a two-possession game at 51-47. Unfortunately, however, he missed the second and Bona capitalized with a Dominick Welsh 3 that sliced the lead to a single point.
That meant even making the next two free throws would not grow the lead back to two possessions. Jayden Gardner got the chance this time, but he hit the back of the rim on the front end of the one-and-one attempt and St. Bonaventure now had the ball with the chance to take the lead. Kyle Lofton, who missed two free throws trailing 57-56 to St. Louis in the Atlantic 10 Tournament in the final two seconds, went to the line and made two free throws for the lead. Virginia was without Beekman (6 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists) for the final 1:38 after a tough charge call led to his fifth foul.
With only 5.3 seconds to go, UVA inbounded the ball to Kihei Clark and he got the ball to the rim on the other end, but Osun Osunniyi blocked the attempt to send the Bonnies to the NIT Semifinals. Osunniyi had 10 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 blocks, while Welch had 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 2 assists after his critical 3-pointer late. Jaren Holmes also had 10 points, while Adaway and Lofton chipped in 9 each.
“It’s something I prayed for knowing I let my team down in the A10 Tournament,” Lofton said. “Everything comes full circle. I prayed for it. I said if I’m in this position again, I’ll hit ‘em and it happened.”
Before the late-game drama unfolded yet again, the Hoos and Bonnies dueled in a back-and-forth slugfest that featured 4 ties and 8 lead changes. The largest lead of the game was 6 points for either team. Both teams shot 37%. Neither lit it up from 3-point range, though players hit some key ones late for both teams. Virginia had one more rebound at 35-34 and two more turnovers at 9-7, but four more assists at 13-9.
Ultimately, the free throw line decided it. Bona went 9-9, while UVA went 6-8.
“We knew this game was going to be like this,” St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt said. “There’s not a lot of possessions in the game, and it was going to be a rock fight and we needed to be tough, and that they were going to make some shots and we had to buckle down. We did that. Like I said, we finished and that’s a good sign.”
Franklin’s 3-pointers in the final four minutes looked a lot like the North Texas game just two days earlier in the NIT. He got hot late in that game to score 17 straight points and he had it going again in this matchup with the final 7 points for the Wahoos.
That was part of a team-leading 17 points to go with 6 rebounds. Franklin knocked down 5 of 11 treys in the game, including one in the first half while getting fouled. He completed that four-point play to give Virginia an early 11-8 led. He matched his career high in each of the last two NIT games with 5 3-pointers in each on a combined 10-18 shooting.
Gardner joined him in double figures with 14 points, all of which came in the game’s first 25 minutes. That included an 8-point flurry in the first five minutes of the second half with some short jumpers and a goal-tending call near the rim.
That was part of a frontcourt theme for UVA to open the second half. In addition to those buckets, Kadin Shedrick scored all 8 of his points in the first 10 minutes after intermission too. That came from 2 dunks, 2 free throws, and a layup. Shedrick finished with 9 rebounds, 2 blocked shots, and 1 steal too. He passed Jay Huff for sixth place on the program’s single-season blocks list with 67 this season.
Still, outside of that scoring burst and Franklin’s 3-pointers, the Hoos didn’t produce enough offense consistently against a physical and tough-minded St. Bonaventure defense. Clark and Kody Stattmann each went 0-7 shooting. Clark’s only 2 points came at the free throw line, but he did have 6 assists.
In the end, it added up to the season-ending loss that left Virginia with a 21-14 record through a season of similarly close losses.
“A lot of people are upset,” Franklin said of the postgame aftermath. “You want to win in March, whether it’s in March Madness or the NIT, so, I mean, we’re not happy after any loss, especially after one that ends the season. So it’s kind of a somber mood in the locker room, I’d say.”
Ouch! Our seniors went 0 for 14!!
Ouch indeed. Still, love this year’s team — they gave it their all. And their work showed, a completely different team by year’s end than the one that lost to Navy and JMU.
The team did indeed improve but the officiating didn’t. To my mind officiating this year has been mediocre to poor and at the end of the game it was terrible. How can Beekman be called for a charge when his defender is in the air? Even the ESPN announcers questioned that call. I also thought the call on Franklin at the end was questionable.
I guess it was called for the same reason Arizona wasn’t called for a foul for mugging a TCU ball handler. The concept of not letting a foul call decide the game is blatantly stupid. That encourages the team on defense to hack away in desperation and when they get away with it, it’s a huge advantage.