A Tony Bennett Moment: Hunter Stuns Louisville at the Buzzer in 2018

Matt Newton | Feb 7, 2025

Jamie Rhodes-Imagn Images

Ahead of the ceremony honoring Tony Bennett on February 8th, Virginia Cavaliers On SI is taking a look back at some of UVA basketball's best moments of the Tony Bennett era.

In Tony Bennett's 15 years at Virginia, the Cavaliers pulled off some incredible late-game comebacks against immeasurably long odds. The final three games of UVA's run to the 2019 National Championship are the most notable given the stakes of those games, but the most improbable finish was arguably a game that took place in the regular season a year earlier at Louisville.

Having said goodbye to London Perrantes and a few other key players, Virginia came into the 2017-2018 season unranked as the team turned the page to its promising, but young and yet unproven core of Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, and De'Andre Hunter. The Cavaliers proceeded to take the college basketball world by storm, losing just one game before the month of February and cruising through an Atlantic Coast Conference that was still considered the class of the sport at that time. UVA went 28-2 in the regular season, 17-1 in ACC play, and was just a painful one-point home loss to Virginia Tech from going unbeaten in conference play.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of that season was that Virginia went undefeated on the road in ACC play, including a big win over Duke, the program's first win at Cameron Indoor in 23 years. But the Hoos very nearly gave that streak away in their final road game of the season against a Louisville team with an interim head coach following the firing of Rick Pitino before the season began. The Cardinals were still trying to make a run at the NCAA Tournament and a win over the No. 1 team in the country was just what their resume needed. It was a massive opportunity and the Cards played like it.

Louisville built a 10-point lead in the first half and held that lead for nearly the duration of the game. Trailing by as many as 13 points in the second half, Virginia eventually battled back and managed to tie the game with two minutes to play. But that's not the comeback we're here to talk about.

UVA came up empty on its next few possessions and Louisville used a series of free throws to take a 64-59 lead with only 11 seconds to go. Tony Bennett's Cavaliers would need a miracle to erase that deficit.

Ty Jerome got the ball quickly up the floor and knocked down a stepback three. Louisville's Darius Perry was fouled and went to the line with 5.8 seconds to go. UVA needed Perry to miss one of his foul shots in order to keep it a one-possession game.

No dice. Perry sunk both free throws and that should have iced that game, with the Cardinals leading by four points with less than six seconds left on the clock.

The operative word there is "should." With only a few precious seconds remaining, all Louisville needed to do was let Virginia bring the ball up the floor and take whatever shot that would undoubtedly kill the remainder of the clock; whether it went in or not didn't matter.

Ty Jerome got the ball up the floor and attempted a three-pointer with about two seconds to go. Had the Cardinals left him alone, the game would have been over even if he made it. Instead, Perry fouled Jerome on the arm on the attempt and the clock was stopped with nine-tenths of a second remaining.

That was a critical mistake, but Virginia was still in a tough spot and Louisville still had a fairly simple route to securing the win. Jerome went to the line and made the first two free throws to make it 64-62. Tony Bennett inserted Jay Huff and Mamadi Diakite to try to tip in Jerome's intentionally missed free throw. The odds of that plan working were slim, but the Cavaliers didn't even give themselves that chance. Diakite was called for a lane violation on the attempt, giving the ball, and presumably the win, to Louisville.

All the Cardinals had to do now was inbound the ball and they'd have a big-time victory against the No. 1 team in the country.

But then came Louisville's second pivotal mistake. The Cardinal player assigned with the task of inbounding the ball, senior forward Deng Adel, was informed very clearly before the play that, unlike after a made basket, he had to remain stationary and was not allowed to move his feet along the baseline in order to get the ball in bounds. Bewilderingly, Adel took the ball from the ref and after a second, started to shuffle his feet along the baseline to get a better angle.

The ref called the violation right away, giving possession back to Virginia.

Suddenly gifted a chance at one more shot to tie or take the lead, the Cavaliers went for it all and didn't miss.

Initially, Virginia seemed to botch the play it was trying to run, as both De'Andre Hunter and Kyle Guy both ran towards the same spot on the left wing. Guy quickly reversed back to the top of the key, leaving Hunter with a small window of opportunity on the left wing. Jerome fired him the ball and Hunter released his three. He got it off in time, but the angle was way off. As it turns out, Hunter missed it just badly enough to perfectly bank the three-pointer in off the backboard.

Final. Virginia 67, Louisville 66.

Thousands of Louisville fans at the KFC Yum! Center were stunned into silence and the UVA bench erupted and stormed the court, tackling Hunter to the floor.

Tony Bennett had a moment of celebration, then quickly turned to the Louisville bench with an apologetic, almost regretful expression on his face for having robbed the Cardinals blind of a season-changing win.

For Virginia, it completed the remarkable feat of going unbeaten on the road in ACC play and goes down as one of the most memorable games of the Tony Bennett era.

ESPN has a win probability graphic on its gamecast. Louisville's probability of beating Virginia was frequently north of 95% and was even above 96% when the Cards went ahead by five with 11 seconds to go. But it ain't over 'til it's over.

ESPN

You can watch just the final 30 seconds of the Virginia-Louisville game, which took nearly 15 minutes of real time, in the YouTube video below.

Other stories in our series on Tony Bennett's best moments at Virginia

A Tony Bennett Moment: Grant Kersey Makes Basketball Fun Again

A Tony Bennett Moment: Beekman Takes Down Duke at the Buzzer in Cameron

A Tony Bennett Moment: Virginia Wills Itself Past Gardner-Webb

A Tony Bennett Moment: Reece Beekman's Buzzer Beater vs Syracuse

A Tony Bennett Moment: Virginia Captures the Main Event Title in Las Vegas