Duke win moves Hoos closer to NCAA bubble conversation
After Monday night’s unlikely for the Virginia basketball team, the whispers are getting louder.
It took a victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium, a place where UVa historically has struggled mightily (just 9-54 entering the game). It required finding a way to win despite making just 16.7 percent of their 3-pointers and getting 13 fewer trips to the free throw line than the home team. And oh yeah, it came on a night when the Wahoos took the floor as an 11 1/2-point underdog against the No. 7 team in the country.
But Reece Beekman’s 3-pointer with 1.1 seconds remaining clinched the biggest win of the season for the Cavaliers, a 69-68 victory over a Duke team that entered the game 10th in the country in the NCAA’s NET rankings. That’s the kind of Quadrant 1 resume booster that a team like UVa desperately needs as it tries to play its way back onto the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Virginia led for almost 31 minutes on Monday night and never trailed by more than three points. They held Paolo Banchero, who entered the game leading the Blue Devils in scoring at 17.2 ppg, to just nine points, the first single-digit scoring night of his career. AJ Griffin, another freshman who scored 27 in Duke’s win at North Carolina on Saturday, finished with just two (on 1-of-7 shooting) against the Hoos.
The highest-scoring team in the league entering the game, Duke only had two players finish in double figures on Monday night. UVa had three: Jayden Gardner (17 points), Kadin Shedrick (16 points) and Armaan Franklin (11 points). Those 16 points for Shedrick were a career high, on 8-of-8 shooting off the bench. Kihei Clark’s nine assists were a season high. Eight of them came in the second half, when the senior either scored or assisted on 11 of the Hoos’ 16 field goals.
The Wahoos turned the ball over a season-low four times. They outscored Duke 52-28 in the paint, 20-2 off turnovers and 10-1 on fast break points.
Still, the Hoos had to overcome a free throw disparity that saw Duke go to the line 22 times (and make 18) to UVa’s nine (with five makes). UVa was just 1-of-11 from beyond the 3-point line before Beekman’s game winner, which he told UVa radio analyst Jimmy Miller afterward had surpassed his buzzer-beater against Syracuse at last year’s ACC Tournament as the biggest shot of the sophomore guard’s career.
“It’s gonna be pretty hard to top this one here,” Beekman said.
That shot came on the heels of back-to-back home wins against Boston College and Miami, giving UVa its first three-game ACC winning streak of the season (after going a month between consecutive victories). Virginia improved to 15-9 overall and, at 9-5 in the conference, moved into a three-way tie for fourth place in the ACC with Miami and UNC, just a game behind the Blue Devils and Notre Dame at the top of the league standings.
The two previous home wins prior to Monday night only nudged Virginia’s NET up nine spots to No. 88. Beating Duke pushed that ranking up another eight spots to No. 80, which ranks eighth among ACC teams.
UVa now has two Q1 victories on its resume, with the November neutral-court win against Providence the other. A few more, and the bubble talk surrounding the Wahoos would get a whole lot louder. There are other opportunities down the season’s final stretch.
“Our schedule is still tough,” Beekman pointed out to Miller. “Play Duke again, got Miami again and Florida State. We just want to finish our season off strong and see how far we can go.”
Six games remain on the Hoos’ regular-season schedule. As of Tuesday morning, half of them—next Monday’s visit to Blacksburg to face a Virginia Tech team that has suddenly won four straight, then a trip to Miami on February 19th and the rematch with Duke at John Paul Jones Arena on February 23rd—are potential Q1 wins.
Before that critical three-game stretch, the Wahoos are at home on Saturday against Georgia Tech. After the Duke rematch, UVa hosts Florida State and travels to Louisville to end the regular season.
Four of those final six games are against teams the Hoos already beat this season, though only one of those four wins came away from JPJ. That was Monday’s unlikely victory in Durham. It was just the second time Virginia beat Duke at Cameron since 1995, just the fourth time since 1983.
UVa coach Tony Bennett told Miller on Monday night that after the Miami win last weekend, he got a text from his father that simply said, “Lace ‘em up, do it again.” If the Wahoos can do what it did on Monday night a few more times down the stretch, they’ll be talked about as a potential NCAA Tournament team come March.
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