WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.
In Virginia's 90-68 loss to Wake Forest Sunday, three classic movie story lines played out on the hardwood.
First, there was the traditional samurai movie motif of a student returning to defeat his master.
As almost everyone knows by now, Wake coach Skip Prosser served as an assistant to Pete Gillen for eight years at Xavier before replacing Gillen as head coach in 1994.
Now Prosser is piloting one of the nation's top programs, a team that is currently ranked No.6 in the country and was picked by many pundits to win the ACC at the beginning of the year. The Deacons are second in the conference at 11-3, and with a solid run to finish out the year could make a solid case for a number one seed in the NCAA tournament.
Prosser's former mentor is following an entirely different road. After a fast start to his tenure at Virginia, Gillen's job security has been the program's running story for past three seasons.
Gillen's troubles continued yesterday with the Cavaliers' seventh ACC road loss. Despite the Cavaliers' mid-season resurgence (a three-game winning streak prior to the North Carolina loss eleven days ago), they are in danger of slipping below .500 overall with just two games left on the regular season schedule.
Gillen's best coaching move of the year -- spreading out the offense and slowing down the game -- still didn't put the Cavaliers in position to knock off the Deacons. Foul trouble plagued Virginia, especially Sean Singletary, perhaps Virginia's hardest working player, who fouled out with almost eleven minutes left in the second half.
Prosser doesn't seem to relish the role of winning big over his former boss.
"It's always hard when you have to coach against a really dear friend," Prosser said after the Deacon win.
The second theme that played out seems to be a staple of all sports movies. I like to refer to it as the "mid-movie montage." This is where the majority of the regular season is condensed to about three minutes of footage in which the star player or a team seems completely unstoppable. In Hoosiers, Jimmy Chitwood and the rest of the squad exploded through several different teams before the next dramatic problem hit them.
Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, no Virginia player had an outing that would be included in that kind of highlight reel. Wake point guard Chris Paul's performance in the first half of the game certainly could be part of his own "mid-movie montage," however.
Paul scored or helped his team in almost every facet of the game early on. He knocked down a lay-up, then a leaner in the lane as well as a mid-range jumper. The sophomore also crossed over a Cavalier guard before finding a wide-open Justin Gray for three. Paul finished the highlight reel with a steal and a breakaway dunk, his first of the season, all in the first 7 minutes of the game.
Paul finished with 17 points, five assists and four steals, just another day at the office for the National Player of the Year candidate.
Sure, the student defeats his master story line is compelling and everyone enjoys seeing a great player do what he does best. But whether it's "Rudy," "Little Giants" or the kids from "The Sandlot," everyone loves an underdog, and despite the Deacons' big win, they also provided the game's "Rudy-esque" story line.
With two minutes left in the game, Wake's John Buck, a junior forward with a .1 points per game average, trotted onto the court to the delight of the entire Demon Deacon' student section.
With 25 seconds on the clock, fellow junior Brian Jessen stole the ball from Cavalier reserve Billy Campbell. Jessen pushed the ball ahead to Buck who dunked it to finish off the fast break, putting an exclamation point on the Deacon win, as well as rubbing salt in the Cavaliers' wounds. Buck received perhaps the loudest cheer from the Wake faithful during the entire game after the dunk.
"As I was running back up the court, I was thinking, did the shot clock go off? Did I travel?," Buck said. "That's a huge thrill that I'll never forget."
The only movie theme that seemed absent from the game was the "miraculous upset." With just N.C. State and Florida State left on the conference slate, both teams the Cavaliers beat earlier in the year, Virginia fans will have to wait until the ACC tournament to see if Gillen and the Cavaliers can put together that story line.
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