At halftime of Minnesota's game against Virginia, the Golden Gophers had to be feeling pretty good. They'd scored 1.26 points per trip and forced turnovers on a quarter of Virginia's possessions, resulting in a 39-29 lead. It looked like the first game of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge was going to go as expected, staking the Midwesterners to an early 1-0 lead.

Then the second half happened. On the first possession, Minnesota got a three-point play from Trevor Mbakwe to extend the lead to 13 points. From there, the wheels fell off. Over the next 21 possessions, spanning 14 minutes of clock time, Virginia turned it over just once to explode on a 39-12 run. For those of you scoring at home, that's an extended stretch of 1.86 points per possession for the Cavaliers, a team that hasn't exactly set the world ablaze with their offense under Tony Bennett. Minnesota would never recover from this bombardment, and Virginia came away with the 87-79 upset win.

Perimeter defense was clearly the culprit, as most of the damage was done by guards Joe Harris and Mustapha Farrakhan (for the game, a combined 47 points on 26 shots). As a team, Virginia shot just 38 percent on twos, but the Cavs almost never missed when they decided to launch from deep (10 for 13). Al Nolen probably couldn't have stopped this barrage all on his own, but his absence was certainly felt. Even the return of Devoe Joseph couldn't help the Gophers--Joseph played well on the offensive end (16 points on 12 shots, 2 assists, no turnovers), but his plus/minus was an ugly -17.

Blake Hoffarber had another nice line with 19 points (14 shots), 5 assists, and 1 turnover, while Trevor Mbakwe delivered 18 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 blocks. Again, the offensive end and the interior defense were plenty good for a victory, but the perimeter defense gave it all away.

Coming into the Challenge, this was supposed to be the most clear-cut game of all, with Virginia given just a 12 percent chance of victory by Ken Pomeroy's ratings system. This Minnesota loss has put the Big Ten behind the eight ball, and the conference probably needs to win four of the next five games to feel good about a repeat victory. That's certainly possible--only Michigan should be an underdog Tuesday night--but the margin for error just got a heck of a lot smaller.

- Posted by Mike Portscheller