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Virginia basketball: UVa's roller-coaster win over Cal

Reliving the madness through KenPom's excellent graphs

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: The visual content in this post and the numbers behind it come from KenPom. If you don't have a KenPom account, get one. It's worth ten times what you get for access to advanced numbers, opponent breakdowns, individual stats—all the things you need to win arguments against the casual hoops fan.

We've broken down the crazy win over Cal in a ton of different ways. We had words. We had numbers. We had video. We had shot charts. But the utter craziness of those last few minutes is best summed up in the win percentage graph from KenPom.com.

Cal win pct graph

Virginia started the game with a 92% chance of victory, based on performance through the season to date. Even through the Hoos' 0-fer start, even with the general crumminess of the first half, the orange-and-blue were still the odds-on favorites at halftime.

But when Cal stretched its lead to nine points in the second half, the Golden Bears seized the advantage for the first time. Over the next 15 minutes, that advantage would zig-zag back and forth between the teams. After Darius Thompson's thunderous dunk in the 39th minute almost won it for Virginia, the Hoos still held better than a 75% chance of winning as overtime began.

When Cal scored what would be its final points of the game with just under two minutes to play, UVa was all but done. Cal held almost a 90% win probability. In two shots, Virginia flipped that on its head and walked off victorious.