It was a comeback fueled by two freshmen coming off the bench. Unfortunately, the comeback was too little, too late as the Virginia Cavaliers (16-8, 5-5) fell to the visiting Miami Hurricanes (12-11, 4-6) by the score of 66-60 last night.
The freshman duo of Takisha Granberry and Denesha Kenion scored seven consecutive points that helped jumpstart the sluggish Cavaliers late in the second half. After Kenion was fouled stealing the ball from Miami's Tamara James and hit two consecutive free throws, the score was tied at 53 with two and a half minutes to go. But that would be as close as Virginia would get to victory.
"Good teams make runs at you," Miami coach Ferne Labati said. "And when they made that charge at the end, we were trying to stop it right there. If it had continued any longer, that would have been the ball game."
James helped Miami close out the game with six of her game-high 31 points in the closing moments. James hit a field goal with 38 seconds left and had four points from the free-throw line in the closing possessions of the game.
The game started well for the Cavaliers, as they jumped out to an early lead, 12-9, following a jump shot from Tiffany Sardin six minutes into the game. Virginia, however, would not score for the next eight minutes. It wasn't until Granberry hit a fast-break lay-up that the Cavaliers were able to break through the 12-point barrier.
"We were taking threes instead of twos," Virginia coach Debbie Ryan said of the scoring drought. "We had a stretch of five missed threes and two turnovers, and it wasn't until I got [the team] into timeout that I was able to tell them that we weren't going to do that anymore."
The Cavaliers were unable to hit many shots from outside the paint in the first half. Only eight of the 22 points Virginia scored in the first half were from jump shots, and two of those were free throws. Miami held the Cavaliers to 34.5 percent shooting in the first half -- a figure that would have been worse if not for Brandi Teamer's 4-8 shooting performance.
Teamer would score a team-high 23 points while pulling down 12 rebounds for her third double-double of the season. Teamer's high point total was a product of strategy as James, who was defending her, gave up four inches of height to Teamer.
"[Miami] couldn't really guard us inside, so we were really trying to pound it inside," Ryan said. "We knew we probably had a mismatch in there."
In the second half, Ryan turned to her freshmen to provide a spark off the bench for the lethargic Cavalier offense. Kenion scored five of her career-high eight points after the break. Granberry also increased her production in the second half, scoring seven of her nine points.
"Our team needed us," Granberry said. "We needed someone to step up, and we decided to take the challenge."
The freshmen also helped in other aspects of the game. Granberry hit Virginia's lone three-point shot of the game with only three minutes remaining in the game. Kenion delighted the crowd and pumped up her team by stealing the ball three times in the second half.
"I just really wanted to win," Kenion said of coming off the bench. "I thought I could come out and bring energy and get my team pumped up."
Virginia had an opportunity to foul Miami when it was down by three with a minute left, but, according to Ryan, the right players never got the ball.
With the loss, Virginia finds itself on the losing end of a third consecutive conference game -- a streak the Cavaliers would like to stop this weekend at Virginia Tech.
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