Highlight Hoos 2021-2022: Jayden Gardner | UVA Men's Basketball

The East Carolina transfer earned Third-Team All-ACC honors in his first season at UVA

Author:
Matt Newton
Publish date:
Jul 17, 2022 2:06 PM EDT

With the 2021-2022 Virginia athletics season officially completed, we enter the college sports offseason optimistic for things to come for the Cavaliers next season. But with the fall seasons still a couple of months away, we have time to take a look back at some of the incredible athletic accomplishments achieved by UVA student athletes during the 2021-2022 sports year in a series called Highlight Hoos.

So far, we've covered Diana Ordóñez (Virginia women's soccer), Mia Barnett (Virginia cross country and track & field), Leo Afonso (Virginia men's soccer), Brooklyn Borum (Virginia volleyball), Amber Ezechiels (Virginia field hockey), Alex Walsh and Kate Douglass (Virginia swimming), Dontayvion Wicks (Virginia football), and Jay Aiello (Virginia wrestling).

Today, we take a look at Jayden Gardner, who was one of the biggest impact transfers in all of college basketball last season.

In his first season playing basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Gardner led the Cavaliers in scoring and rebounding, averaging 15.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. He finished the season ranked 12th in the ACC in scoring and seventh in the conference in field goal percentage at 50.1%.

With a silky smooth mid-range jumper and an array of crafty moves to get to the basket, it took Gardner little time to settle into his role as the team's go-to scorer. He recorded a 21-point, 13-rebound double-double in Virginia's dominant victory over Providence to win the Legends Classic Championship and he was named the Legends Classic Most Valuable Player. Gardner also hit a clutch game-winning jumper with less than a second left to beat Pittsburgh.

Perhaps more impressive was Gardner's improvement on the defensive end of the floor. After struggling at first to get comfortable in the Pack Line Defense, Gardner transformed into an asset in Tony Bennett's defense. Duke's superstar freshman Paolo Banchero, who was just selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft, scored in double figures in all but two of his games last season. Those two games both came against Virginia with Jayden Gardner as the primary defender guarding him. Gardner held Banchero to a combined 5/22 shooting (22.7%) in the two games.

At the end of the season, Gardner was named to the All-ACC Third Team, becoming the 13th Cavalier to earn a Third-Team All-ACC selection in program history. He was also named to the All-ACC Academic Team.

Virginia is set to return each of its six leading scorers from last season, led by Gardner, who will look to lead the Cavaliers back to the NCAA Tournament in his final season of college basketball.

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