Road Win Keeps Hoos in Hunt

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Sprinkled throughout the crowd of 5,596 at Miami’s Watsco Center were pockets of Virginia fans, and their cheers grew louder as the second half progressed Saturday night.

“I think I heard more of them than Miami fans,” forward Jayden Gardner said after UVA rallied for a 74-71 victory over the Hurricanes.

For the Wahoos and their supporters, there was nothing routine about this win. If the Hoos are to be in the mix for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, they can’t afford many more missteps, and they bolstered their postseason credentials with a victory over one of the ACC’s top teams.

“This was a must-win game in our minds,” Virginia center Kadin Shedrick said, “but we’re also taking it one game at a time. We’re not listening to all the outside noise of tournament talk. We’re taking it one game at a time, trying to win every game we can, and we’ll see what happens in the end.”

Virginia (17-10 overall, 11-6 ACC) was coming off a frustrating loss to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. As the Cavaliers have all season, though, they avoided a second straight defeat.

“It’s huge to come over here and win on the road,” Gardner said. “This team is resilient.”

For a while Saturday night, a UVA victory seemed improbable. The Hurricanes (19-8, 11-5) scored the final nine points of the first half and led 38-30 at the break. In the locker room, Virginia head coach Tony Bennett told his players they needed to come out and get quality looks on offense and not make anything easy for the Canes.

Instead, the Hoos turned the ball over on their first two possessions of the second half and found themselves trailing by 10 with 19 minutes to play.

“It was kind of like: What’s going on here?” Bennett said.

But a huge momentum swing followed. It began with a 3-pointer by senior point Kihei Clark, whose shot started a 23-4 run that stunned the Canes and their fans.

“Kihei got it rolling,” Bennett said.

“We needed a little life,” Clark said, “and I’m just trying to spark my team. Hopefully it gave us the lift that we needed.”

No Cavalier struggled more against the Hokies than Clark, who was 1 for 9 from the floor and missed all five of his 3-point attempts in Blacksburg. Against Miami, he scored 14 of his 17 points in the second half, and Clark also had five assists.

“The bounce back that Kihei had was good,” Bennett said, “and we needed it all.”

Clark’s final points came with 13.5 seconds left and helped seal the Cavaliers’ sixth straight win over the Canes. He caught a long inbounds pass from sophomore guard Reece Beekman and dribbled in for a layup that gave him 1,001 career points at Virginia.

“Kihei’s a warrior,” Gardner said. “He’s a fighter.”

That’s also true of Gardner, a 6-foot-6 forward who transferred from East Carolina to UVA last year. He had a subpar second half in Blacksburg, but against Miami he made 9 of 14 shots from the floor and 5 of 6 from the line.

Gardner led all scorers with 23 points Saturday night and also had seven rebounds, two assists and three blocked shots.

“Just staying confident, staying resilient, just playing within myself, not trying to force things offensively,” Gardner said of his mindset. “Just staying solid. I think that’s what helped me and the team tonight.”

Virginia had no shortage of heroes in this one. With starting wing Armaan Franklin hampered by foul trouble and a sore toe, senior Kody Stattmann played 26 minutes and contributed eight points, four rebounds and two blocks. With 5:55 to play, Stattmann capped a spin move by banking in a shot to put UVA up 57-53.

“I thought Kody gave us a big lift,” Bennett said.

So did the 6-foot-11 Shedrick, a redshirt sophomore who came off the bench to record a double-double (13 points and a career-high 13 rebounds) in 30-plus minutes Saturday night.

Such performances are no longer uncommon for Shedrick, who blocked a shot late in the game that would have cut the Cavaliers’ lead to two. He also played well in Blacksburg, where he totaled 11 points and six rebounds.

“I think a lot of it just has had to do with confidence for me,” Shedrick said. “I’ve been working hard to make sure I keep my confidence up, even when things get tough for me, just keep working on my mental toughness.”

Beekman recorded a game-high seven assists. He scored only six points, but two came one of the game’s biggest shots. With 4:56 remaining, Beekman beat the shot clock with a jumper that pushed Virginia’s lead back to four.

Gardner was not to be outdone. With 1:38 to play, he hit a fallaway jumper from just inside the foul line as the shot clock expired to stretch Virginia’s lead to 65-57.

“That was significant,” Bennett said. “Again, it takes that to win on the road.”

SPECIAL GUESTS: Among those seated behind the Cavaliers’ bench were Kyle Guy, Trey Murphy III and Kyle Weaver. Guy and Murphy, of course, are former UVA standouts who now play in the NBA. Weaver played for Bennett at Washington State and helped the Cougars reach the NCAA tournament’s Sweet Sixteen in 2007-08.

Guy, a guard with the Miami Heat, was one of the stars of the UVA team that won the NCAA title in 2018-19. He attended the UVA-Miami game with his wife, Alexa Jenkins, and their son, Chance Anthony Guy.

“We had a shot go in and out, and I looked at Kyle, and he kind of smiled at me like, ‘I would have made that, Coach,’ ” Bennett said. “I know that was his thought.”

Bennett brightened at the mention of his former players. Guy was recently in Charlottesville, but Bennett hadn’t seen Murphy, who plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, in quite a while.

Weaver, who went on to play in the NBA, “helped turn our program around at Washington State. He lives now in Miami, and I hadn’t seen him forever,” Bennett said. “I brought him in before the game and just introduced him to the team and said, ‘This guy is one of the reasons I’m still coaching.’ … So it just means a lot to see those guys. That’s the reason you do it. You do it because you’re competitive, you want to win and all that stuff. But then when all that fades away, you look at the lives [touched] and you say, ‘That was worth it.’ And that’s the way I felt seeing those three.”

STRETCH RUN: Three regular-season games remain for UVA, and the next two are at John Paul Jones Arena. Virginia hosts No. 9 Duke (23-4, 13-3) at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Florida State (14-12, 7-9) at 4 p.m. next Saturday.

Duke defeated FSU 88-70 at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday night.

ESPN will televise the UVA-Duke game, the teams’ second clash this month. The Cavaliers upset the Blue Devils 69-68 at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Feb. 7 on a last-second 3-pointer by Beekman.

“It’s definitely going to be fun to play Duke in our home gym this time,” Shedrick said. “Hopefully our fans are ready to come and be loud, and we’re going to be ready to throw the first punch.”

UVA and FSU have yet to meet this season.

Virginia closes the regular season March 5 at Louisville. The starting time for that game has yet to be announced.

SOUND BITES: The win was UVA’s second over Miami this month. The Cavaliers defeated the Canes 71-58 at JPJ on Feb. 5. Among the postgame comments Saturday night:

* Miami head coach Jim Larrañaga: “We played a terrific first half, but the start of the second half Virginia really took over. Kihei Clark in particular just took over the game.”

* Larrañaga, a former UVA assistant coach, on Gardner: “He’s an outstanding offensive player. He’s got probably the best shooting touch I’ve seen from [within 15 feet]. He’s a handful for any frontcourt player. He’s skillful enough to score in any sort of situation.”

* Bennett on his message to his players: “That was the challenge: ‘Play as hard as you can for as long as you can, and whatever we do, win or lose, let’s make sure there was nothing left in that locker room. It was all on the floor.’ We were not perfect, but I think the guys tried to do that.”

* Gardner, smiling, on the miss that ended his streak of 30 straight made free throws: “I shot it long. It happens sometimes.”

* Bennett on Shedrick: “What helped us a lot with Kadin was his mobility, his mobility defensively to bounce those [Miami] guards out … He toughed it out in the second half.”

* Clark on Stattmann’s contribution: “Great minutes. I thought he did a great job. He’s still working on his slides and his defense, but I thought he had a great move in the lane with the spin and a layup. Big-time bucket.”

* Gardner on the formula for defeating Duke again: “Play with a sense of urgency from the start of the game, the start of the second half. We got to close out possessions, we got to rebound. All the stuff that we did in the first game, we just got to do it again. But this time they’re going to be even more hungry. They’re going to be alert. They’re not going to be asleep. So, we’re going to get their best shot, and they’re going to get ours.”

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