MEMPHIS, Tenn.-In the NCAA tournament's South Region Friday afternoon, opportunity knocked three times for the Virginia men's basketball team. But, time after time, the Cavaliers could not answer the door.
Casey Calvary, Gonzaga's senior forward, scored with 9.4 seconds left, ending the Cavaliers' first NCAA appearance since 1997 and extending Virginia's postseason losing streak to 10 games. Gonzaga advanced to the round of 32, 86-85. The 12th-seeded Bulldogs (26-6) are awaiting a Friday match with Michigan State, the top seed in the South, after beating Indiana State, 85-68, on Sunday.
After falling to Georgia Tech, 74-69, in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament on March 9, the Cavaliers (20-9) hoped to get their first tournament win since 1995, when they beat Kansas to get to the regional final. Virginia, a No. 5 seed, held a slim 85-84 lead over Gonzaga with 21.4 seconds left when Cav freshman forward J.C. Mathis toed the free-throw line with a chance to put the Bulldogs away. Mathis, however, missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Gonzaga center Zach Gourde grabbed the rebound.
"I can't make any excuses about me being a freshman in the NCAA Tournament," Mathis said. "I just didn't make the free throw."
The Bulldogs placed the ball in the hot hands of junior guard Dan Dickau, who already had a team-high 29 points. He drove hard down the lane and toward the basket, but Virginia forward Adam Hall blocked Dickau's layup attempt off the glass.
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With only 10 seconds left, the Cavaliers only needed to recover the ball to ice the win. But though orange and blue uniforms littered the paint, the ball bounced into Calvary's open arms, and the senior put the Bulldogs ahead by one.
"I wanted to get in the middle of the lane and put up a shot," Dickau said. "I was either going to make it, or [Calvary] was going to pick up the scraps. Thanks Case."
Gillen said that he contemplated taking the Cavaliers' last timeout after Calvary's basket, but he did not want to give the Bulldogs an opportunity to set up defensively. Instead, Gillen opted to give the ball to guard Roger Mason Jr., who was hitting almost every shot he took and had 30 points.
"I thought with Roger going to the basket, we had a better chance rather than having their defense set and switching on all screens." Gillen said.
After slowly dribbling the ball past halfcourt, Mason drove to the basket and tried to hit a running jumper in the paint over the 6-foot-8 Gourde as time expired.
"When you got a guy with 30 [points] taking an 8-footer, its terrifying," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. "I'd rather be shot at than go through that."
But when Mason's shot bounced off the backboard and harmlessly off the rim, the Cavaliers could do little else but watch as the Bulldogs celebrated their third consecutive first-round upset in the NCAA Tournament.
"We had a chance to win with the free throws, a chance to win with the blocked shot and a chance to win with Roger," Gillen said. "We had three chances to win the game, and to go 0-3, you've got to give [Gonzaga] credit."
Gillen questioned whether Gonzaga's win was as big an upset as many believe.
The Bulldogs "are much better than a 12-seed," Gillen said. "Dickau can play with any point gaurd in the country, Calvary can play with any power forward in the country. They're a big time team playing in a good conference, but not a premier conference."
Throughout Friday's game, Virginia could not overcome its lack of size underneath the basket. The Bulldogs ushered out their three 6-8 big men - the 235-pound Calvary and 250-pounders Cory Violette and Gourde - to batter the Cavaliers' smaller frontcourt. Cav center Travis Watson's early foul trouble further compounded Virginia's problem. Watson picked up his third foul six minutes into the game and was on the bench for the rest of the first half. He finished the game with only six points and nine rebounds.
"It was tough" to sit out 14 minutes of the first half, Watson said. "I think that a couple of the calls they made against me were bad calls, but I tried not let it affect my concentration the rest of the game."
Without Watson, Virginia missed a vital offensive presence. Mason did his best to compensate. His career-high 30 points ties him with Bryant Stith for the third-most points scored by a Cavalier in an NCAA Tournament game.
But the rest of the Cavaliers gave Mason little support. Only Mason and senior guard Donald Hand (14 points) finished the day with more than nine points. All too often, a Virginia player drove down the lane and put up a shot only to see it dribble off the rim or clang off the back iron. For the game, Mason sank 57.9 percent from the field, but the rest of the Cavaliers managed only 40 percent.
"They're not easy shots, but you've got to make them to win in the NCAA tournament," Gillen said. "It's a fine line between victory and defeat. We tiptoed the line and we fell off."
The Bulldogs rode Dickau to a 48-42 first-half lead. Dickau tallied 21 points and went 4-for-5 from three-point range in the opening period.
"Dickau hit some unbelievable shots," Gillen said. "He his some threes [that were] scud missiles."
The Cavaliers shut Dickau down in the second half and limited him to eight points. But Calvary was Gonzaga's savior in the second half. After tallying three points in the first period, he scored 13 in the second. He finished the game with 16 points and 15 rebounds.
Behind Calvary's play, the Bulldogs stretched their lead to 13 points with 11 minutes left to play. But the Cavaliers fought frantically to close the gap, and Mason gave Virginia the lead when he hit his fifth three-pointer with 1:40 remaining.
But Calvary's last minute heroics left the Cavaliers singing the blues along the banks of the Mississippi. In a NCAA Tournament full of close games, Virginia became one of many teams checking into Heartbreak Hotel.
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