ORLANDO, Fla. – In the huddle, after fouling out with 6:25 to play, Furman guard Mike Bothwell told his teammates they would find a way to win their first-round NCAA tournament game against Virginia.
Fellow fifth-year senior Jalen Slawson told Bothwell he wouldn’t let their run end.
“I told Mike that we weren’t going to let today be his last time putting a jersey on,” Slawson said after.
Instead, stunningly, it would be the end for the fourth-seeded Cavaliers, their third first-round exit in their past four NCAA appearances. Since 2012, it’s the sixth time Tony Bennett’s team has failed to escape the tournament’s opening weekend.
No. This upset doesn’t rival the 2018 loss to UMBC. That loss, the first ever by a No. 1 seed against a 16, is unmatched for its historical significance and turned out to be the prelude to Virginia’s remarkable 2019 national championship run.
This year’s UVa team had been up and down all season, at times a dominant unit fueled by its defense. Early in the year, it looked like a lethal outside shooting team, but that didn’t last. Still, early-season wins in Las Vegas over Baylor and Illinois, followed by a comeback victory at Michigan, had the Cavaliers looking capable of a deep run in March.
That part is similar to 2018, when the unheralded Retrievers absolutely blitzed the tournament’s top overall seed.
The stunning part of Thursday’s collapse is that a Virginia team full of veterans and a program with championship pedigree wilted under the pressure of March, while a mid-major appearing in the NCAAs for the first time since 1980 showed them how it’s done.
“All year we’ve been saying that this team just knows how to win,” said Furman coach Bob Richey, whose team was driven by losing last season’s Southern Conference championship game on a 35-foot heave at the buzzer.
Similar to UVa in 2019, the Paladins made sure their dream denied turned into a dream delayed.
And in doing so, they authored another March nightmare for the Cavaliers.
How? There were some familiar culprits, both from this season and from nightmares past. Thursday’s game ultimately ended after Virginia’s most seasoned player, fifth-year point guard Kihei Clark, couldn’t handle Furman’s desperate full-court press, when the Paladins trailed by 2 with 7 seconds left.
Trapped near the baseline, unable to locate an official to call timeout, and worried Furman might get a tie-up with the possession arrow in its favor, Clark flung an ill-advised pass toward midcourt, where it was picked off by Garrett Hien, who passed it back into the offensive end.
JP Pegues sank the game-winning 3-pointer with 2.2 seconds to play.
The trouble with the trap evoked painful memories of the 2016 Elite Eight, when it was Syracuse’s press that shook, rattled and ultimately stunned UVa, just when it was on the doorstep of the Final Four.
The program’s history, of course, had no impact on this latest loss. But this year’s team’s flaws certainly did. A bad free throw shooting team for most of the season, Virginia’s Clark and freshman Isaac McKneely each missed free throws in the final 35 seconds, both times with chances to give UVa a 5-point lead.
But long before those final, painful moments, the Cavaliers had ceded control of the contest, unable to answer when Richey and the Paladins threw a strategic curveball their way. Furman switched to a zone defense, just past the midway point in the second half.
After getting drives to the basket and finishes at the rim for almost the first 30 minutes, Virginia looked flummoxed by Furman’s 1-3-1. It’s true, the Paladins had not showed the zone much, if at all, this season. Bennett said the Paladins played zone less than 1% of the time going into Thursday.
Still, surely Clark – the ACC’s all-time winningest player – and his veteran teammates could handle it.
“I feel like the zone slowed us down a little bit, took us out of rhythm,” junior guard Reece Beekman said. “I feel like that was a turning point in the game for them, and then they executed that pretty well.”
The team that hadn’t been there, hadn’t done that, got the job done. The team that, at its best, might have been a Sweet 16 team, is going home early. Again.
