Thomas scores 20, Miami beats Virginia 70-68 in OT
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Rion Brown made three free throws to tie the game with 13.7 seconds left in regulation, Adrian Thomas finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds and Miami beat Virginia 70-68 on Saturday.
Thomas made a career-best six 3-pointers for the Hurricanes (14-9, 3-6 Atlantic Coast Conference). Reggie Johnson scored 16 and Malcolm Grant added 11 for Miami.
Mustapha Farrakhan scored 20 for Virginia (12-11, 3-6). Joe Harris scored 18 for Virginia, but missed two free throws with his team down 68-66 with 5.8 seconds left.
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The Cavaliers fouled Miami on 3-point tries twice in the final minute of regulation, proving costly. Virginia also was 9 of 22 from the line.
"They were 17 of 22. We were 9 of 22," Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. "There's the difference."
Virginia's defense had frustrated Miami for the first 39 minutes. In the last minute of regulation, the Cavaliers only frustrated themselves.
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Leading by five with 38.9 seconds left, Virginia's ungluing began when Grant was fouled on a 3-point attempt by Farrakhan. Grant made the last two of the ensuing three attempts, and the Hurricanes were within 53-50.
After Farrakhan made two free throws — no small feat for Virginia, considering it had been 3 of 11 at the line in the game's first 39 minutes — Brown hit a deep 3 to get Miami within 55-53 with 28.7 seconds remaining. And with Miami down three, Zeglinski ran into Brown as he tried a 3-pointer 15 seconds later.
Brown made the first two, after which Virginia coach Tony Bennett called time-out in an effort to ice the freshman. But Brown rattled in the third, and Miami got the stop it needed to force overtime.
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It was setting up as another end-of-game heartbreaker for Miami, which went 0-4 in a four-game stretch late last month, those losses all by 11 points and each essentially decided in the final possession.
This time, though, the Hurricanes survived — despite shooting 39 percent for the day and surviving a horrid start.
Virginia's offense was again anemic in the first half, scoring only 23 points — the sixth time in the last eight halves in which the Cavaliers failed to crack the 30-point mark.
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Nonetheless, they were good enough to take a three-point lead at the break.
Miami started 0 for 8 and 1 for 14 from the floor, trailing 10-2 after nearly 9 minutes. The Hurricanes slowly clawed out of what became a nine-point deficit and pulled into a 20-20 tie late in the period, before Jontel Evans beat the halftime buzzer with a 3-pointer for the Cavaliers.
Johnson had a three-point play with 13:32 left to give Miami its first lead, 35-32. But the Hurricanes went cold again, managing only two points in the next 6½ minutes — and when Harris hit his fourth 3-pointer of the day with 3:37 left, Virginia turned a mostly empty building silent by taking a 51-44 lead.
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Miami rallied, and in the end, it became Virginia's 13th straight loss in the state of Florida since February 2001.