Southern Methodist junior guard Boopie Miller rose. He stopped his dribble, picked up the ball and rose, falling to his right behind the three-point line, the eyes of a standing stadium on him. And then, with the final seconds flashing away in a game his team trailed by two points, Miller shot.
The ball splashed cleanly through the basket. Miller, at about the same time, careened backward into his team’s bench, where he promptly disappeared in a wave of bodies. Nearly everyone in the stands froze. A tight game that had looked decided in one direction had swung, suddenly and violently, in the other.
The Mustangs (13-4, 4-2 ACC) defeated the Cavaliers (8-9, 1-5 ACC) 54-52 Wednesday at John Paul Jones Arena, vaulting to the victory on junior guard Boopie Miller’s three-pointer with 0.4 seconds left. The shot silenced a bouncing arena and handed the Cavaliers a third-straight defeat, this time in crushing late fashion.
Sophomore center Blake Buchanan led Virginia in scoring with 11 points, galloping in late for three offensive rebounds in his best game this season. Freshman guard Ishan Sharma added 10 points, including a pair of late threes.
Miller and senior guard Chuck Harris scored 12 for the Mustangs, who suffered through an uncharacteristically rough shooting night. They managed in the end, though, to escape.
With less than 90 seconds on the clock, junior guard Andrew Rohde, who had been largely absent in the box score up to that point, intercepted a poorly aimed pass, quickly catching Buchanan in transition for an alley-oop dunk. With Virginia now leading by three points, a white-clad student section, which filled the nowhere-near-capacity John Paul Jones Arena with cheers all night, erupted into its loudest roar of the game.
Free throws, forced errors and clutch Buchanan rebounds grew the lead to five entering the last half-minute, giving the Cavaliers a small cushion with the game in hand.
“My hope is that that’s who Blake is from here on out,” Interim Coach Ron Sanchez said. “I think he showed flashes of that last season as a first-year guy.”
But Southern Methodist, having had a disastrous night shooting from distance up to that point, picked up steam at just the right time. One big shot then another, Virginia entered the last 10 seconds up only one.
Senior guard Taine Murray, a 65 percent foul shooter, was fouled and sent to the line. He missed the first. Then he missed the second. The Mustangs called a timeout, and junior guard Boopie Miller received a pass and launched that leaning three from several feet beyond the arc. There was not enough time for anybody to hold their breath. Miller’s heave was good, Southern Methodist led by two points, and Virginia did not have enough time to make its way up the court and back into the game.
All season, Sanchez has said that this is a young team that will grow as the year progresses. Entering the game on a three-game losing streak, it was Virginia’s young guys that carried the team to the finish line today, while some of the usual sources of offense fell short of expectations.
Usually productive scorers, neither Rohde nor junior guard Isaac McKneely made a shot in the first half, and they both finished the game 1-9 from the field and 0-6 from distance. Offense instead came from two young guys — Buchanan and Sharma — with junior forward Elijah Saunders and sophomore guard Dai Dai Ames accounting for the majority of the team’s first-half offense.
“To be in the game against a team that is that gifted offensively with two of our leading scorers not performing to their standard,” Sanchez said, “to me is definitely a step in the right direction with this group.”
Southern Methodist led 27-25 at halftime. It scored 24 of those points in the paint, shooting an abysmal 1-12 from beyond the arc, an unexpected occurrence given that the team leads the conference in three-point percentage and a number of their attempts were largely uncontested.
Having given up five offensive rebounds in the first half and another three in the second, Sanchez said after the game that being active on the boards is a priority for the team. Now 17 games into the season, Virginia has yet to out-rebound an opponent in a loss and is the worst rebounding team in the entire conference.
“In private we’re having some conversations about our rebounding for sure with the individuals whose roles are to do that,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to play the guys that do their jobs out there. We were disappointed in the effort on the offensive glass and definitely did a much better job in the last 10 minutes of the game.”
Virginia’s next game is Saturday at noon at Louisville. The Cardinals (13-5, 6-1 ACC) trounced the Cavaliers less than two weeks ago, and have since won three games against Clemson, Pitt and Syracuse.
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