One of the exciting first finishes of the 2023 NCAA Tournament also gave us our first game March Badness to consume in the form of Virginia’s stunning 68-67 loss to the Furman Paladins. Dressed in purple Willy Wonka, Furman won his golden ticket to the tournament for the first time in 43 years, after winning the SoCon Championship game. However, it was Virginia’s final minutes that sealed their own ignominious fate. There’s the Princeton offense and then there’s the South Harmon Institute of Technology (SHIT) offense, Virginia ran on the stretch.
Early in the second half, it looked like Virginia was about to overwhelm Furman, until the latter moved to a 1-3-1 zone midway through the second half and immediately started to reduce Virginia’s double-digit lead. We have seen this before from the Tony Bennett System teams. UVA bots forget how to operate when they encounter brave mid-majors.
Where did Virginia go wrong?
After defending the lead for the final five minutes, turnovers and misguided heat control shots from distance pushed Virginia to a 63-67 lead with 19 seconds left. Bennett’s Wahoos operate with machine-like efficiency. However, in the final 20 seconds, Virginia’s attack looked like a broken vending machine.
A missed free throw by Kihei Clark and two free throws from Furman’s Garrett Hien at the other end brought the Paladins within two points. On the ensuing face-off, Reece Beekman inexplicably looked back after encountering the trap and threw a rebound pass to Clark, who was immediately caught in the pincers of Furman’s trap deeper under the wrong basket. At that point, instead of a) throwing the ball over a defender’s leg b) throwing a jump pass to wide-open teammate Isaac McKneely, or c) calling a timeout, Clark misjudged the time that he had left and the strength of his arm as he wrapped a hook pass that was intercepted by Hien, who threw it to Pegues for the 3-point winner.
Furman’s second top scorer Jalen Slawson was still in shock as he entered the locker room, bellow, “He just fucked the ball!” in response to a question.
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Who deserves the blame?
The obvious blame was placed on point guard Kihei Clark. The fifth-year guard committed a cardinal point guard sin with less than seven seconds left, but Tony Bennett testified to his fifth-year starter’s sacrilege. Any head coach worth their salt would have the situational awareness to realize that a point guard who recovers his dribble while stuck in the corner of an opposition backcourt is in danger.
Instead, Bennett kept his time out until After JP Pegues a triple redeemer dunked the net to give the Paladins a one-point lead. For Virginia, the loss extends her NCAA Tournament winless streak into her fourth year.
The last time the Wahoos won an NCAA Tournament knockout game was their national championship victory over Texas Tech. In 2022, their season ended in the NIT quarter-finals. The 2021 Cavs limped off in the first round and were kicked out of the tournament by 13-seeded Ohio. Virginia’s early exit is nothing new. In 2018, they were the first 1 seed to be taken down by a 16 seed in NCAA Tournament history. However, Virginia was simply unprepared once this game started.
Bennett is the hottest and coldest coach in the country. It may have to do with the way he programs his attack moves and leaves them devoid of self-expression when games crash, leaving them vulnerable, but Furman’s trap can’t be worse than what Clark sees it in practice every day. There’s a big blame to blame and Bennett will have to simmer this one for another year, but he becomes an eternal competitor to March Badness.