Last night in Coral Gables, the UM men's basketball team extended its winning streak with a last-minute, stress-inducing decision over Virginia.
Unlike high-wire finesse wins over Duke and UNC, the Hurricanes recent match-ups against ACC competition like Florida State, Clemson, and now Virginia have all been mud-splattered and grimy, tough low-scoring endurance tests that show the Hurricanes can dog it out equally as well as they can execute perfectly played pretty ball.
Yesterday's game came down to the last 15 seconds of play.
Virginia evened the score at 50. With the clock draining away, point guard Shane Larkin put the ball with big man Reggie Johnson, not only a tough presence in the low post but a reliable scorer. He put in the winning basket, and Virginia failed to get off another successful shot.
The dramatic win came only a day after UM was voted the number-two team in the country in the latest AP Poll. But not all the news out of Coral Gables in the past 24 hours has been good.
The NCAA -- being the tactless, ill-managed clusterf*ck that it is -- leaked word shortly after the UM win last night that the school would soon be served with official allegations stemming from the Nevin Shapiro scandal.
The Miami Herald is reporting that the school will be hit for "a lack of institutional control." ESPN reports that former UM basketball coach Frank Haith was also served with a notice of allegations but that Haith, the current Missouri coach, is not facing ethical violations. UM President Donna Shalala aggressively denied wrongdoing in a statement last night released to students and alumni.
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