With only 1.2 seconds left, and the UVA men’s basketball team down 70-67 in the squad’s first marquee home matchup against the Syracuse Orangemen on December 5, senior point guard Sean Singletary stood just above the arc. But this time he wasn’t pulling up to hit a game-tying score, nor to pass to a wide open Mamadi Diane or Adrian Joseph to hit it in his stead. Rather he was standing alone, doubled over clutching his shorts, his teammates keeping their distance. What he had to do now was hit the first shot and intentionally miss the second so that the Cavaliers might be able to tip in the rebound in order to send the game into overtime.
 A seemingly sickly Sean Singletary was a little off balance the entire game against Syracuse, finishing with a hard-earned 10 points. |
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What Singletary was thinking as he stood there we don’t know. He wasn’t available for comment after the game, and so no one could confirm that he was suffering from strep throat or a flu bug or whatever other illness that TV commentators speculated on ad nauseum during the telecast. Perhaps he was struggling to put out of his head his poor shooting night, his uncharacteristic 11 misses from the field, his extremely uncharacteristic 5 misses in a row from the charity stripe (he had gone 22 straight coming into this game). Perhaps he was thinking of the irony that now he had to miss a shot to give his team a chance. Perhaps he was trying to silence any sickness, steady the buzz of a fever or the ache in an arm.
Whatever he thought or didn’t think, Singletary mustered the strength to do what he had to do: hit the first shot and miss the second. The 13,600 in attendance held their breath. Joseph and Mike Scott scraped for the rebound, but instead it was Syracuse’s 6’9" center Arinze Onuaku who came up with the board to seal Syracuse’s 70-68 victory over UVA.
The loss was the second of the season for the Cavs (7-2), and only the second loss ever in two seasons playing in the John Paul Jones Arena. The match was a heartbreaker—UVA put together a solid run in the first half to go up 36-29 at the break. But Syracuse, a powerhouse basketball school thanks to its veteran coach Jim Boeheim, toughened up its 2-3 zone defense and forced UVA into taking too many hasty, superlong 3-point shots—half of all the Cavs’ shots were from beyond the arc (though they hit 11, enough to get free chicken from Raisin’ Canes for fans in attendance). And the Orangemen locked down on Singletary, allowing Joseph to score a team-high 19, but also allowing him to turn the ball over five times.
After the game, Coach Dave Leitao seemed offended at questions about Singletary’s poor play. "There’s nothing that he can do that’s going to draw criticism from me," said Leitao. "He’s done far, far more than anybody could have ever imagined and will do much more before his career is over. So when he has a night when he’s less than perfect, the last thing any of us need to do is throw any criticism his way. …He’s our guy."
The Cavs bounced back on Friday against Longwood, and have a break for exams until December 19, when they’ll face a surprisingly decent Hampton team in the JPJ.
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