By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
DURHAM, N.C. – The volume inside Cameron Indoor Stadium rose and rose Monday night as seventh-ranked Duke rallied in the second half. The Blue Devils finally regained the lead, and their fans’ roar in the final minute threatened to shake the storied arena.
Then Virginia’s Reece Beekman took a pass from Kihei Clark and buried a 3-pointer.
“Oh, man, it’s great,” senior forward Jayden Gardner said of the moment. “It’s loud and everybody’s yelling, and then Reece hits the shot and it’s silent. All you hear is the UVA fans. I love it.”
Beekman’s trey––only his team’s second in this nationally televised ACC game—put the Cavaliers up 69-68 with 1.1 seconds play. Paolo Banchero missed an off-balance 3-point attempt at the other end, and the Wahoos celebrated a stunning victory in their final game at Cameron against Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
“I’m glad we were 2 of 12 from [3-point range] instead of 1 of 12,” UVA head coach Tony Bennett said, smiling.
This is far from the most talented team Bennett has had in his 13 seasons as Virginia’s head coach, a tenure that included an NCAA title and multiple ACC crowns. The Hoos (15-9 overall, 9-5 ACC) have sustained some frustrating losses, and they’ve had to scrap for everything they’ve earned. But they’ve persevered, and they’re building momentum late in the regular season.
The victory, the Cavaliers’ third straight, came two nights after they defeated another one of the ACC’s top teams, Miami, with a complete performance at John Paul Jones Arena.
“I got a text from my dad,” Bennett said at his postgame press conference Monday night, “and he just simply said, ‘Lace ‘em up and do it again.’ You have a tendency sometimes to make this bigger than it is when you come in here, because it’s an unbelievable atmosphere. You grow up watching it, you know how talented their team is, Coach K, all that. We just said, ‘Be laser-focused to start and play our game, get it to our kind of game if we can and battle.’ ”
UVA’s players did as instructed. The Cavaliers didn’t shoot well from 3-point range, but they turned the ball over only five times and outscored Duke 52-28 in the paint. Moreover, the Hoos scored 20 points off turnovers and finished with 10 fast-break points, to only one for the Blue Devils (19-4, 9-3).
The Miami win was impressive. This one was unforgettable.
“I just can’t believe we got the win at Cameron,” said Gardner, who was born at Duke University Hospital in Durham. “I get to come home and get a big win at Duke. It’s just something you dream about as a kid … It’s really surreal.”
Gardner grew up in nearby Wake Forest. UVA center Kadin Shedrick is from Holly Springs, about 30 miles south of Durham. Both are well-versed in Cameron lore.
“Everybody dreams about playing in here,” said Shedrick, a redshirt sophomore. “This is the first time I’ve ever been here with fans, so the atmosphere lived up to the hype, for sure. So that was crazy. That meant a lot to me. That was a big game.”
Duke entered the game as the ACC’s first-place team. Two nights earlier, the Blue Devils had crushed arch-rival North Carolina 87-67 at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill. Players projected to be first-round NBA draft picks abound on the Devils’ roster, including the 6-foot-10 Banchero, 6-foot-6 AJ Griffin, 6-foot-4 Trevor Keels and 7-foot Mark Williams, but none dominated Monday night.
Banchero finished with nine points and took only one shot in the second half: his last-second attempt. Griffin, who scored 27 points against UNC, scored two against Virginia’s Pack Line defense.
Gardner, a transfer from East Carolina, drew the assignment of guarding Banchero, but this was team defense at its finest.
Banchero is “a great player,” Gardner said, “so we had to double sometimes in the post, and then sometimes I was just left one-on-one. I just had to hold my own out there, and I think that’s what we did.”
On offense, Virginia’s frontcourt players had their way inside. In 24 minutes off the bench, the 6-foot-11 Shedrick went 8 for 8 and scored a career-best 16 points. Starting center Francisco “Papi” Caffaro, who’s 7-foot-1, added eight points, and he and Shedrick pulled down six rebounds each. Gardner, who’s 6-foot-6, scored 17 points and grabbed eight rebounds.
Junior guard Armaan Franklin, a transfer from Indiana, struggled with his shot (4 for 13), but he finished with 11 points and tied his career high with four steals, the last one coming with 35 seconds remaining.
Beekman, a sophomore guard, did a little bit of everything, as he so often does. Foul trouble limited him to 25 minutes, but he still contributed seven points, three assists and two steals. In one of the game’s pivotal sequences, Beekman wiped the ball from Duke guard Jeremy Roach in the backcourt and scored to make it 66-66 with 1:47 left.
“That fired me up,” Bennett said.
Clark, a senior, was the only Cavalier who before Monday night had played significant minutes in front of a sold-out crowd at Cameron. Duke’s student section tried desperately to try to rattle him, but Clark was unfazed. He totaled eight points, nine assists, two rebounds and two steals.
“They’re a team where you need a couple days to prepare because they run their stuff so well, “ said Krzyzewski, who’s retiring at the end of this season, “and they have two really outstanding guards who don’t turn the ball over. Their precision with Kihei and Reece is one of the things that makes them really good.”
With 1:26 left, Keels, a former UVA recruiting target, made two free throws to put Duke up 68-66, and that was still the score when, with 10 seconds to play, Franklin missed a shot in the lane. Duke’s Theo John came down with the rebound, but Clark tied him up for a jump ball, and the possession arrow pointed to the Cavaliers with 7.2 seconds left.
After a UVA timeout, Clark went to the baseline to inbound the ball. Williams spread his arms to block Clark’s vision. Clark couldn’t find a teammate open, so he called another timeout. When the Cavaliers returned to the court, Beekman was the one inbounding the ball. He passed to Clark, who took three dribbles up the court and then swung the ball back to Beekman on the left wing.
In last year’s ACC tournament, Beekman’s 3-pointer as time expired gave UVA a 72-69 victory over Syracuse. He delivered again in the clutch Monday night, and Clark again supplied the assist.
“Just another big shot,” Beekman said, smiling, “and I hit it.”
Not since 2012 had an opposing player made a game-winning 3-pointer in the final two seconds to beat Duke at Cameron.
Bennett credited associate head coach Jason Williford with the play call. Williford, a former UVA standout, is responsible for the team’s out-of-bounds plays from under the basket.
“Had we lost, it would have been his fault, not mine,” Bennett said. “Just kidding.”
Williford said UVA expected the Blue Devils to come out in a zone, their defense for most of the game.
“We ran a zone play,” Williford said, “but we couldn’t get it in, and we called timeout.”
The Blue Devils went man-to-man. “We didn’t get a look [inside],” Williford said, “but we said, ‘Look, if we don’t have anything, get it out.’ ”
Williams lost track of Beekman, who did the rest after Clark spotted him open on the left wing.
“Just like I drew it up,” Williford said, laughing.