Tuesday night marked the end of the line for the Virginia Cavaliers basketball team this season. After jumping out to an early lead to start the game the cold shooting funk that has often plagued the team on the road reared its ugly head against the Stanford Cardinals. The result was a 65-49 loss in front of a national TV audience on ESPN. Although the loss on Tuesday was disappointing there were plenty of pleasant surprises for the Cavaliers this season and there should be plenty of optimism going into Dave Leitao's second season at the helm next year.
The opening minutes of the game saw the Cavaliers jump out to 6-0 lead but the team's hot shooting early came to a screeching halt as Stanford grabbed the lead and never looked back. Poor outside shooting and the lack of dribble penetration by the backcourt duo of Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds slowed the offense. Reynolds lead the Hoos with 9 points and freshman Laurynas Mikalauskas chipped in with 7 points in the first half.
Sean Singletary tries to drive around the Stanford defense as Adrian Joseph and Laurynas Mikalauskas look on in the background.
The second stanza started slowly for the Hoos as the team was never able to rally to get the margin under 9 points. The senior trio of Chris Hernandez, Matt Haryasz, and Dan Grunfeld powered the Cardinals to a victory while the poor shooting from the Cavaliers sealed their fate.
First team All-ACC point guard Sean Singletary battled a hip injury and his shooting suffered the most as he went 6-20 from the field but lead the team in scoring with 13 points. J.R. Reynolds added 12 points while Mikalauskas finished with 11 points, 6 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots.
Afterwards coach Leitao had this to say, "Today we took more off-balance shots than anything. Stanford had a lot to do with it. They played us physical and they bumped us, which is a good way to play us. We weren't patient enough to make extra passes."
On the night the Cavaliers shot 37% from the field while only connecting on 10% of their shots from behind the three point line. Stanford meanwhile enjoyed the homecourt advantage and hit on 49% from the field and 50% from deep. The Cardinals will now face Missouri State in the next round.
With the last game of the season our HooNation.com Player of The Game award goes to freshman Laurynas Mikalauskas who played well inside despite the rest of the team's cold shooting.
Stay tuned as we will soon announce the HooNation.com season awards for this season.