#25 Virginia goes ice cold down the stretch in 66-58 upset loss to Navy in opener

It was a tale of two halves for #25 Virginia. Neither was good for the Cavaliers, who were upset, 66-58, by Navy in their season opener on Tuesday.

The first half was a tale of Virginia not being able to live up to what coach Tony Bennett expects from his teams defensively. Navy hit eight of its first 10 from three, shot 53.6 percent from the field overall, and had 42 at the break.

Bennett and his staff plugged the holes, and the ‘Hoos climbed back into it, tying the game at 55 with 8:45 to go on a Kadin Shedrick layup.

The Middies, at this point, went zone, and UVA reacted as if they’d never seen a team dare try such a scheme.

The Cavaliers had four chances to take the lead, but came up empty each time, and Sean Yoder finally broke the tie with 5:20 to go with a driving layup.

You could say that ignited the 9-0 run that closed things out, but it was more a crawl than a run.

Virginia wouldn’t score again until a meaningless three from Indiana transfer Armaan Franklin, who had seven points on 2-of-11 shooting, with 14.7 seconds left.

“It’s hard to beat a solid team when you turn the ball over 14 times and you give up 10 offensive rebounds,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “Seven fast break points are the important things when you’re in tight games possession games. We’ve got to become a little tougher physically and a little more gritty, mentally to last longer in these games. That’s part of the growing process.”

Jayden Gardner, an East Carolina transfer, was as advertised in his debut for Virginia, scoring 18 points on 7-of-13 shooting and hauling in 10 rebounds, but he got only one shot from the field in the final 12 minutes.

Kihei Clark had 12 points, but was just 3-of-9 from the field.

Reece Beekman had eight points and six assists for Virginia, which shot 41.2 percent (21-of-51) from the floor and was just 4-of-16 (25 percent) from three.

Navy got 19 points from John Carter Jr. and 15 points from Yoder in the upset.

“Yeah, it’s obviously a very, very good win for us,” Navy coach Ed DeChellis said. “I’m really, really proud of our kids. Great atmosphere in here. We haven’t played in front of fans in a year, like everybody else. I thought we did a good job of holding our composure and continuing to try and make some plays on both ends of the floor.”

Story by Chris Graham