March Madness: Impact of UMBC’s historic upset over Virginia

Was a key injury for Virginia overlooked?

The loss of De’Andre Hunter was huge for Virginia, but it didn’t shake many feelings about how far people thought they would advance. In hindsight, it was the absence of the fourth leading scorer on a team that doesn’t score much to begin with.

The bad play of Hall (who Hunter would usually sub for) really highlighted the lack of a bench for the Cavaliers this late in the season. Any time a team loses a key rotation player this late in the season, it’s a big issue. And while there were certainly other reasons why the Cavaliers lost, losing Hunter was one of them.

Did UMBC really fit the profile of a giant-killer?

This was a very strong field of 15 and 16 seeds in this year’s tournament. There are usually some automatic qualifiers who weren’t good in the regular season but gets hot in the end. And while there were several teams who weren’t champions but won their conference tournaments, they were two or three seeds like UMBC.

Speaking of the Retrievers, they really were the likeliest of the 16 seeds to pull off this upset. Radford didn’t have enough firepower, and while Penn gave Kansas a run for their money, their lack of an elite individual scorer hurt their chances. Texas Southern had a 23.5 ppg scorer, but the Tigers didn’t have the defense.

That’s where UMBC comes in. They had a solid offense and defense, and have three double-digit scorers to accompany Lyles, who coming into the game averaged 20.2 ppg. In many upsets, sometimes you need a star to go off, and that’s exactly what Lyles did in this one.