Virginia's Isaiah Wilkins (21) is
consoled after fouling out during
the second half of the team's
first-round game against UMBC in the
NCAA men's college basketball
tournament in Charlotte, N.C.,
Friday, March 16, 2018. (Photo: Bob
Leverone, AP)
Top-seeded
Virginia
left to
make
sense of
historic
NCAA
loss By
AARON
BEARD
APNews.com
CHARLOTTE,
N.C. -
The
doors to
the
Virginia’s
locker
room
opened,
the last
protection
for a
group of
players
sitting
in a
state of
shocked
quiet
after
the most
improbable
of
losses.
Some
fought
back
tears.
Some
hung
their
heads or
stared
blankly
down at
their
cellphones.
Others
could
only
shake
their
head.
And
now it
was time
to
confront
the
questions
along
with the
disbelief:
how
could
this
have
happened?
How
could
Virginia
— the
team
that
rolled
through
the
Atlantic
Coast
Conference
and
claimed
the No.
1
overall
seed in
the NCAA
Tournament
— become
the
first
top seed
to lose
to a No.
16 seed
with
Friday’s
74-54
loss to
UMBC?
“If
you play
this
game and
you step
into the
arena,
this
stuff
can
happen,”
Virginia
coach
Tony
Bennett
said.
Yet
it was a
jarring
turn of
events
specifically
because
it
hadn’t
happened.
Ever.
135-0.
That’s
where
No. 1
seeds
stood in
NCAA
Tournament
history
against
16-seeds.
Sure,
there
had been
a few
close
calls —
most
notably
Georgetown
surviving
against
Princeton
in 1989
for a
50-49
win when
a
freshman
named
Alonzo
Mourning
blocked
Kit
Mueller’s
final-play
shot.
But
there
had been
nothing
like
this
before.
The
questions
following
the
Cavaliers
(31-3)
to
Charlotte
were
more
about
whether
this
would be
the year
for
Bennett’s
program
to shake
a modest
history
of
postseason
stumbles
and make
the leap
to the
Final
Four,
which
had
eluded
him in
two
previous
NCAA
Tournaments
as a top
seed.
Virginia
had its
calling-card
defense
allowing
just
53.4
points
per
game,
while
the
offense
offered
more
perimeter
scoring
options
in Kyle
Guy,
Devon
Hall and
Ty
Jerome
even as
the
Cavaliers
still
played
the
methodical
offensive
pace
that
reduced
the
number
of
possessions
and
often
turned
games
into
grind-it-out,
ugly
crawls.
Even
after
losing
ACC
sixth
man of
the year
De’Andre
Hunter
to a
broken
left
wrist
suffered
during
the
league
tournament,
Virginia
(31-3)
arrived
at the
NCAA
Tournament
with a
school-record
win
total
and five
straight
weeks at
No. 1 in
the AP
Top 25 —
the
program’s
first
time
atop the
AP
rankings
since
the days
when
7-foot-4
great
Ralph
Sampson
roamed
the
paint.
That
Virginia
team
lost the
top spot
after a
December
1982
loss to
NAIA
team
Chaminade
in what
many
have
considered
the
biggest
upset in
college
sports.
And now
the
first
Cavaliers
team to
make it
back
there
has
perhaps
an even
more
shocking
loss,
this one
to end a
season.
“It’s
not the
end of
the
world,”
senior
forward
Isaiah
Wilkins
said of
Bennett’s
postgame
message
to the
team.
“It
feels
like the
end of
the
world.
But it’s
not.”
As
stunning
as the
loss
itself
was the
way it
unfolded.
The
America
East
Conference
champion
Retrievers
— who
had lost
by 44
points
at
Albany
on Jan.
21 —
turned a
21-all
tie into
a
second-half
romp.
They
scored
53
points
and shot
68
percent
while
spreading
out
Virginia’s
suddenly
flummoxed
defense.
Meanwhile,
Virginia
couldn’t
make a
key shot
to stem
UMBC’s
surge,
making
just 3
of 13
3-pointers
after
halftime
and 4 of
22 for
the
game.
The
lead
grew and
grew,
sending
murmurs
at first
through
the
Charlotte
crowd
that
soon
began to
churn
into a
growing
buzz and
a
tangible
feeling
that a
historic
moment
was
quickly
becoming
inevitable.
Virginia
never
figured
out a
way to
stop it,
either.
“I
don’t
know, I
can’t
think
about
it,”
Hall
said
when
asked
when he
felt it
was
getting
away. “I
don’t
know,
man.
They
were
hitting
mostly
every
shot
they
took. We
were
scrambling
behind
the
plays.
Don’t
know,
can’t
tell
you.”
By
the
final
minutes,
the
Retrievers
were up
big and
in
celebration
mode
with
constant
gestures
seeking
more
noise
from
their
already-rowdy
section
of fans.
It was
the kind
of
position
everyone
expected
the
Cavaliers,
not the
Retrievers,
to be in
as the
game
wound to
a close
just
like
every
other
1-seed
before
them.
These
games
are
supposed
to be
routine,
almost a
formality.
Instead,
the
Cavaliers
ended up
trying
to find
answers
to
locker-room
questions
when no
easy
ones
were to
be had.
“Somewhere
in the
game, we
just got
lost and
we lost
our
heads
and lost
what our
vision
was and
what
we’ve
been
doing
all
year,”
graduate
guard
Nigel
Johnson
said.
Asked
whether
he
worried
one bad
night
would
overshadow
the
season,
Wilkins
cut off
the
question.
“I
don’t
care
about
that,”
Wilkins
said as
he
fought
back
tears.
“I don’t
care
about
that.”
It
certainly
creates
a
complicated
legacy.
This was
a team
that
went
20-1
against
ACC
opponents,
won the
program’s
third
ACC
Tournament
title
and
spent
the past
two
weeks of
the
season
as a
unanimous
AP No.
1.
It
was all
part of
wildly
unexpected
climb
from
being
picked
to
finish
sixth in
the ACC.
In
the end,
the
Cavaliers
stunned
everybody
one last
time.