Trey Murphy III found out late Tuesday night that he would receive a waiver from the NCAA to play immediately for the Virginia Cavaliers. On Wednesday afternoon, Murphy came ready to play. The 6’9” junior transfer from Rice scored a team-high 21 points for UVA and Virginia defeated the Towson Tigers, 89-54 in their season opener at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut.
The Hoos were led by two transfers: Murphy and Sam Hauser, a grad-transfer from Marquette, who scored 19 points in his UVA debut. Murphy and Hauser combined to go 11 of 13 from three-point range. Virginia hit 15 threes as a team and shot an outstanding 51.7% from three-point range, a far cry from last season’s abysmal shooting Cavaliers squad.
In the first half, it was Jay Huff who got the Hoos rolling with his inside game. The redshirt-senior finished the game with 14 points, 4 rebounds, and 3 blocked shots. Sam Hauser hit a pull-up three as time expired to give the Cavaliers a commanding 42-19 lead at the half.
Towson quickly scored eight straight points to cut the UVA lead to just 15 at the beginning of the second half, but another Murphy three stopped the run and Towson never got that close again.
Virginia’s 89 points are the most the team has scored since UVA scored 100 against Marshall on December 31st, 2018. All 17 of the players on UVA’s roster entered the game and 11 players scored.
Virginia will play San Francisco on Friday at 11:30am. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
