Senior Night: Memorable in Many Ways
I've been doing a lot of praying lately to various sports gods - praying that Sean Singletary's career at U.Va., along with Chris Long's career at U.Va., would never come to an end.
Apparently, no one was listening.
Last night marked the final home game (save for possible NIT or CBI appearances) for 4 players on our men's basketball team: Tunji Soroye, Ryan Pettinella, Adrian Joseph and Sean Singletary.
And what a memorable game it was.
The Hoos crushed Maryland's NCAA hopes with a 91-76 celebration victory. Tunji was injured and did not play. Pettinella was serviceable. Adrian was solid. Singletary was... well... Singletary.
There's not many more ways that this man can be described. At times during the game he just ran the offense and looked for the open teammate. Other times he calmly drilled 3pointers. And on several occasions he put on a clinic titled "How to Make Your Defender Look Bad." He ran circles around Gist. He froze Osby in his tracks. He nailed threes over Vasquez. It didn't seem to matter what Maryland did. Sean was prepared. And he found a way to exploit it.
That will be one big way I'll remember Sean - it was a very rare day in his 119 game (so far) career when a team found a way to take Singletary out of the game. He was always scrapping, fighting, scoring.
He'll be announced as an All-ACC First Team member today in all likelihood. That'll make him one of only 25 players in ACC history to be three-time All-ACC players.
He surpassed the 2000 point mark in the game last night too - his 27 points leaving him with 2002 points as the regular season ended. He's only the 5th Cavalier to ever reach that mark (Ralph Sampson, Jeff Lamp, Buzzy Wilkinson and Bryant Stith being the other 4).
For the record, the rest of the game was quite entertaining as well. The game was close until the last 10 minutes or so when Virginia broke out on a 13-3 run and the lead never got under 7 after that point. I think we had 5 players in double-figures including two of the 3 seniors who played (Adrian Joseph had 13 points).
All in all it was a great way to send Sean off and thank him for his contributions. His name will be hanging from the rafters at JPJ for as long as the building is standing.