Gradle artifactory plugin not resolving JAR dependencies - gradle

Question

I am upgrading my build to Gradle 7.4.2 running with Java 11 and use Artifactory as my repository. I am using the latest Gradle Artifactory Plugin and my builds are failing to resolve JAR dependencies now.
In Artifactory I'm using a virtual repository to resolve dependencies like Apache Commons Text as well as my own local collection of JARs that I've deployed to a separate Artifactory repository that is connected to the virtual repository.
My build was resolving my JAR dependencies fine under Gradle 5.6.4/Java8. Now my build fails with errors like this.
Resource missing. [HTTP GET: https://artifactory.myco.com:443/artifactory/collective-gradle-virtual/com/myco/a/myjni/2.5-AABBCC/myjni-2.5-AABBCC.pom]
Resource missing. [HTTP GET: https://artifactory.myco.com:443/artifactory/collective-gradle-virtual/com.myco.a/myjni/ivy-2.5-AABBCC.xml]
The final build error message said something similar:
> Could not find myco.com.a:myjni:2.5-AABBCC.
Searched in the following locations:
- https://artifactory.myco.com:443/artifactory/collective-gradle-virtual/com/myco/a/myjni/2.5-PH44157/myjni:2.5-AABBCC.pom
- https://artifactory.myco.com:443/artifactory/collective-gradle-virtual/com.myco.a/myjni/ivy-2.5-AABBCC.xml
Required by:
project :MyJAR
Is there some change between Gradle/the Gradle Artifactory Plugin/Java 11 such that the build can no longer resolve JAR artifacts?
I even tried creating a myjni-2.5-AABBCC.pom file and deployed it to the same path as the JAR. That fails too because the repository has the JAR and POM in com.myco.a and the resolver is looking for it in com/myco/a.
I also changed my dependencies to append #jar at the end in the hopes that would change the resolver behavior. It did not.
My dependency looks like this:
dependencies {
implementation 'com.myco.a:myjni:2.5-AABBCC#jar'
}
My artifactory block is this:
artifactory {
contextUrl = "https://artifactory.myco.com:443/artifactory"
resolve {
repository {
repoKey = 'collective-gradle-virtual'
username = "${artifactoryUser}"
password = "${artifactoryKey}"
maven = true
}
}
}
Update 1
I discovered that even though my existing setup worked fine before the upgrade, for some reason now, it requires a POM file to exist with the actual JAR. I also suspect that the use of dots in the group name is causing problems with locating the POM file. So I'm renaming those groups to not have dots.
UPdate 2
I restructured my repository to change the dotted group name in the repository to a maven-style directory tree and added a POM for each dependency. Now the dependencies resolve, but I don't understand why the behavior changed when I upgraded Java, Gradle and the Gradle Artifactory Plugin.