Heads hung low, the No. 9 Cavaliers walked off the court in Philadelphia, Pa., their season over. They had clawed their way back into the game just minutes earlier — overcoming a single-digit deficit that, for nearly half an hour, had seemed insurmountable.
But players get tired, shots stop falling and tougher teams find ways to pull away.
Sunday, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, that team was No. 23 Tennessee, which ended the Cavaliers’ (30-6, 15-3 ACC) run with a 79-72 win, surviving a late surge and cementing its victory in the final two minutes of play.
In those last two minutes, momentum that Virginia had built in a preceding 16-7 run dissipated. Bad misses and bad fouls led to the Cavaliers scoring just one point in the final 120 seconds, while the Volunteers (24-11, 11-7) missed just one of 10 free-throw attempts to retake the lead and punch their ticket to the Sweet Sixteen.
The game had been an uphill battle for the Cavaliers from the onset, as they struggled against a hardnosed Tennessee defense and failed to stop the Volunteers from finding the extra pass for easy baskets.
After a neck-and-neck opening eight minutes that saw Virginia bring the fight to Tennessee on the boards and play excellent transition defense on several occasions, a 12-0 Volunteers run broke the game open. Utilizing punishing defensive aggression with quick passes to open shooters, or lobs to rolling big men, Coach Rick Barnes’ squad built an eight-point lead that the Cavaliers would spend nearly all of the remaining minutes trying to overcome.
Tennessee’s backcourt of senior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie and sophomore guard Bishop Boswell gave Virginia fits through the first half, harassing Virginia ball handlers, passing well and each shooting 50 percent from three. The Volunteer’s brawny and physical frontcourt — spearheaded by senior center Felix Okpara, junior forward Jaylen Carey and freshman forward DeWayne Brown II — forced switches and capitalized off of them with timely rolls, also making two-point scoring immensely difficult for the smaller Cavaliers.
Through the first half, Virginia managed to keep the game in sight with an excellent performance on the defensive glass, holding the best offensive rebounding team in the country to just one offensive board. The Cavaliers backcourt, especially, made that possible, with freshman guard Chance Mallory, graduate guard Dallin Hall and graduate guard Jacari White crashing the defensive glass aggressively.
After a slower, more back-and-forth end to the first half, Virginia headed to its locker room trailing 36-31. They returned to the court with more offensive dynamism, starting the second half well, but found themselves unable to cut the deficit as the Volunteers extended their lead to a game-high nine.
After fighting to keep the Tennessee lead at two possessions, the Cavaliers found some vigor with about nine minutes left on the clock. Trailing nine, an offensive surge led by Hall, Mallory and freshman forward Thijs De Ridder cut the lead to seven, then five, then three, before tying the game at 66 apiece with 4:44 remaining.
“Coach called a good set that allowed us to get downhill into the paint and make some reads,” Hall said. “We started making really good decisions and finding shooters and guys stepped up and hit really big shots, so that was something that worked going down the stretch.”
After exchanging free throws and two-pointers, the game remained tied a minute later. After a two from sophomore forward J.P. Estrella, a De Ridder three off a Hall assist took the lead for Virginia with 2:03 remaining.
But then the well dried up. A bad miss on a hook shot from Hall was followed by Mallory fouling on an attempted pass interception. Two unfortunate misses by graduate guard Jacari White — whose 26 points against Wright State was what put the Cavaliers into the second round — and an errant pass that went out of bounds off Hall’s fingers saw Virginia fail to do what was needed to hold and retake the lead it had held for just 26 seconds. Tennessee, in the bonus for a majority of the second half, was able to hit its free throws and build its seven-point margin of victory.
After the game, Coach Ryan Odom complimented the leadership of the graduating seniors, and praised the buy-in that the entire roster showed from the get-go. Winning 30 games is difficult, he said, and though the ending was difficult, he remains proud of his team and what they accomplished.
“Rarely does it end like any of us want it to end,” Odom said. “You have to just try to put things in their proper perspective, which is not easy to do in moments like that. That was a good game and our guys fought. They just fought and fought and fought. We had a chance there at the end when we took the lead but it wasn't meant to be.”
He noted just how much of a legacy the 2025-26 Virginia Cavaliers were able to build in just a year together, speaking fondly of how they bonded and connected with the community. These players will be brothers for life, he added, ones that managed to do something really meaningful this season.
“When you are able to assemble a group of people that have very high character and care about one another,” Odom said. “Special things can happen.”
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