A near-unanimity of the pundits said Virginia didn’t deserve an NCAA Tournament bid. The Cavaliers, over the course of 40 almost entirely inept minutes of basketball, proved them right.
The final score was, whatever it was.
The scoreboard says Colorado State 67, Virginia 42.
It wasn’t that close.
This one was over, like so many of Virginia’s losses this season, early.
The 2023-2024 ‘Hoos won 23 games, but when they lost, they got behind out of the chute, and stayed behind.
This one was the sixth loss by 20+ points, and as was the case in those others, it was over by halftime.
Virginia didn’t score in the final 9:20 of the first half, shooting, and I’m not making this up, 5-of-29 from the floor, missing their final 15 shots of the half, but was somehow only down 27-14.
Any thought that, hey, they can’t keep shooting that bad, well, yeah, you’re not going to shoot 17.2 percent for 40 minutes.
Though actually, the streak of misses would get to 19 before Reece Beekman bounced one off the front rim at the 16:37 mark.
The make elicited a sarcastic cheer from fans at the UD Arena, as it should have.
Tony Bennett had no answers to fix his once-again broken offense, and had even less in terms of answers on the defensive end.
Colorado State, which shot 55.3 percent for the game, consistently got good looks in the paint and at the rim, as Virginia settled for way, way, way too many midrange jumpers.
As in, 29 midrange jumpers.
Virginia made six of those 29 midrange jumpers.
Six.
Colorado State opened the second half on an 8-0 run to get the lead past 20, and Virginia only got as close as 15 once, and very briefly, on a Jake Groves three at the 10:02 mark that made it 44-29.
UVA made three of its last 11 shots after that Groves three to fade into the night.
Helluva way for Beekman to go out. The senior point guard finished with 15 points, but was just 4-of-16 from the floor – though he was 7-of-7 at the line.
Beekman came back after testing the NBA Draft waters last spring for this, and his reward is that the mock drafts for 2024 have him well off the big board.
Well, that, and the degree that he’ll finish up here in a couple of months.
Grad transfer Jordan Minor also finished up his college career tonight, and had decent counting numbers – seven points and two rebounds in 20 minutes, and a rotation-guys best plus/minus of -6.
Groves, another grad transfer, finished up his college career on a down note – three points on 1-of-8 shooting, 1-of-4 from three, and an inexplicable 0-of-4 at the line.
Did we see the last of Ryan Dunn in a UVA uniform? If so, we got another subpar performance from the 6’8” sophomore who none of us can figure out why he gets the love from the NBA mock draft people that he does.
Dunn finished with a quiet five points and five rebounds in 26 minutes.
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Chris Graham
