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

CHARLOTTESVILLE – For a basketball team that prides itself on playing stifling defense, the final minutes were as perplexing as they were frustrating Saturday. The Virginia Cavaliers extended their lead to 10 with 3:26 remaining, and they were a stop or two from securing an important win over Florida State on Senior Day at John Paul Jones Arena.

Instead, they broke down repeatedly on defense and suffered an excruciating defeat. The Seminoles hit their final eight shots from the floor, the last of which was a 3-pointer at the buzzer that lifted them to a 64-63 victory.

After junior guard Armaan Franklin hit a pull-up jumper to put the Wahoos up 63-61, FSU (15-13, 8-10) called a timeout. One second remained. When play resumed, Harrison Prieto ran the baseline and threw a long baseball pass to freshman guard Matthew Cleveland, whom the 6-foot-4 Franklin was defending. The 6-foot-7 Cleveland caught the ball about 25 feet from the basket and put up a shot before the horn sounded. It dropped through, silencing the home fans in the capacity crowd.

“That’s just a tough way to go out, on that one,” Franklin said.

 

For the first time this season, the Wahoos (18-11, 11-8) have lost consecutive games, and this defeat in all likelihood extinguished their flickering hopes of earning an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

Franklin, who finished with 13 points, made several big shots Saturday, including a trey that put UVA up 59-50 with 2:19 to play. Even with that lead, however, Virginia head coach Tony Bennett did not feel comfortable. He’d seen too many defensive lapses from his team, and there were more to come.

“I thought we were on the edge all night with our defense,” Bennett said.

Cleveland scored the Seminoles’ final eight points. His three-point play with 45.9 seconds left cut UVA’s lead to 60-59. With 14.7 seconds left, Franklin hit the front end of a one-and-one but missed the second, and Cleveland drove for a layup that made it 61-61 with 6.3 seconds remaining.

Franklin, after inbounding the ball, took a return pass and dribbled up for the court for  what seemed destined to be the game-winning shot. But the Noles prevailed at the buzzer, as they have several times at JPJ.

“That was just one of those fortunate shots for us that went in,” FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton said.

Cleveland scored 14 of his game-high 20 points in the second half.

“He got going a little bit,” UVA forward Kody Stattmann said, “and I think we probably just relaxed [defensively], and that’s something that we shouldn’t do in the last four minutes of the game. It’s probably the time where we need to lock in more and shut him down, but he got going a little bit and I think that hurt us.”

The Hoos led 34-29 at half, and Hamilton went into the break happy the Noles weren’t trailing by more.

“It seemed like we couldn’t find any cracks in [UVA’s defense],” he said.

Florida State had no such problems late in the game. It didn’t help the Hoos that one of their best defenders, sophomore guard Reece Beekman, fouled out with 45.9 seconds left. Still, Bennett said, it “didn’t feel like anyone had a particularly strong defensive game down the stretch … They just kept driving it by us.”

Forward Jayden Gardner led the Cavaliers with 21 points, and center Francisco Caffaro pulled down a game-high 11 rebounds and blocked two shots. Virginia’s most experienced player, point guard Kihei Clark, finished with a game-high six assists but missed 13 of 16 shots from the floor.

Even on a night when they made only 4 of 17 shots from 3-point range—Franklin’s teammates were a combined 1 for 11 from beyond the arc––the Hoos mustered enough offense to win. Their inability “to just get a stop cost us dearly,” Bennett said.

“We’ve been close on the edge in lot of games. We’ve won some close ones, and you can’t play with fire like that.”

Kihei Clark

BITTERSWEET: Honored in a Senior Day ceremony before the game were Clark, Stattmann, Jayden Nixon and student-managers Chris McGahren and Shane Nelson. (McGahren also has played for the Cavaliers this season.)

Asked after the game about that group, Bennett said, “It starts with the managers, who are unbelievable in terms of their commitment to our program, to just really not be about themselves at all. They give, they give, they serve. I’ve always said, if I’m hiring someone I’d look at guys like that first for what they do.”

Nixon, whose parents are UVA alumni, grew up in Charlottesville. He joined Bennett’s program as a walk-on in the summer of 2018.

“I’m so thankful that a couple of years he’s been here we’ve been able to award him a scholarship,” Bennett said.

A biology major, Nixon plans to go to medical school. Bennett praised Nixon’s contributions in practice. “His game’s really improved. You wouldn’t know that, because you don’t see him [in practice], but he’s really improved his game, and he’s just a wonderful teammate, and I’m so thankful for his time here.”

Stattmann is from Australia, and his parents flew over for the game. He made his first start since the 2019-20 season.

“Kody’s had kind of an up-and-down run, but he stayed faithful and just kept working and is a great teammate and a fine young man,” Bennett said. “I told his parents that, that they should be proud. They raised a real good young man.”

Clark was introduced last, to a thunderous ovation. As a freshman, he was a key member of the team that captured the program’s first NCAA title, and his profile in the program has grown every season since then.

“Kihei’s story is really special for him,” Bennett said. “You think of where he came from and all he’s accomplished and this one will sting for him on a Senior Night. But that’s part of this game. There’s nothing guaranteed, and it’ll be hopefully a lesson and hopefully we’ll grow from it. There’s not a whole lot of season left, so we’ll apply what we learned and get as ready as we can for the next one.”

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE: Next up for the Cavaliers is their regular-season finale, next Saturday against Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center. ESPN2 will televise the noon game.

Louisville (12-16, 6-12) lost to Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., on Saturday night.

The Cavaliers have won 12 of their past 13 games against the Cardinals and lead the series 18-5. When the teams met Jan. 24 at JPJ, Virginia won 64-52.

Kody Stattmann

SOUND BITES: The Hoos fell to 10-3 under Bennett in Senior Day games at JPJ. Two of the losses were to FSU, and the other was to Maryland. Among the postgame comments Saturday evening:

* Hamilton on the game’s final play: “It was great pass. No doubt about that. The pass might have been better than the shot.”

* Hamilton on Clark: “I can’t say enough about the respect I have for him … He’s a coach on the floor. I’m not going to say I’m disappointed to see him go.”

* Hamilton on the series: “I just think that we have a tremendous amount of respect for Virginia and what they do.”

* Franklin on whether the Cavaliers concern themselves with NCAA tournament projections: “No, we don’t pay attention to that. We try to go out and play every game, play hard, and let the chips fall where they may.”

* Franklin: “I think we kind of broke down on the defensive end in the last three or so minutes … We hang our hat on defense, and that’s the time where we have to lock in even more and be in our gaps and keep the ball in front.”

* Franklin on Clark: “We wanted to win for him, and for all our seniors, managers, everybody. We definitely know what he means to this program, what he’s done for the program … You want to send him off the right way, but we couldn’t get it done.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click here and subscribe.

Jayden Gardner