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Saturday, March 24, 2012
Robinson leads Kansas to 60-57 win over NC State
By DAVE SKRETTA, AP Sports Writer
Mar 24, 2:00 am EDT
ST. LOUIS (AP)—Thomas Robinson kept missing easy buckets. Tyshawn Taylor had a shooting performance he’d rather soon forget. Kansas made just two shots from outside 5 feet, and seemed to be in constant trouble against North Carolina State.
Yet a smile kept creeping across Robinson’s face. Taylor spent most of the second half Friday night trying to calm down coach Bill Self, who was stomping along the Jayhawks’ sideline.
“We haven’t been a picture-perfect team all season,” Self said later, “but that’s one thing that’s exciting. The guys take pride in not being perfect. They take pride in winning ugly.”
They certainly won a muddy brawl against the Wolfpack.
Robinson had 18 points and 15 rebounds, Jeff Withey blocked 10 shots to finish one shy of the NCAA tournament record, and the second-seeded Jayhawks held on for a 60-57 victory. They advanced to play top-seeded North Carolina, led by former coach Roy Williams, which escaped with a 73-65 overtime victory over No. 13 seed Ohio earlier in the night.
All the upstarts have headed home.
It’s the bluest of the bluebloods in a Sunday showdown for the Final Four.
“They’re a great team, great coach, great program,” Robinson said. “It’s two great programs and when we do meet, I’m pretty sure it’s going to go down as a big one.”
It figures to be a little more sexy than their game against the Wolfpack.
Both teams struggled to make shots, run offense and get into a flow. Kansas (30-6) even squandered an eight-point lead in the final few minutes, failing to wrap up the win until Richard Howell’s off-balance heave at the buzzer came up well short.
“The guys are tough. They’re tough,” Self said. “They find a way.”
C.J. Leslie had 18 points to lead N.C. State (24-13), despite sitting much of the second half with four fouls. Scott Wood finished with 12 points on 2-for-10 shooting, though his biggest error wasn’t a missed shot but the shot he never even got to attempt.
N.C. State had pulled within 58-57 on a transition layup by C.J. Williams with just over a minute remaining. The teams swapped possessions before Kansas managed to get a layup from Elijah Johnson off an inbound pass from Taylor with 13.5 seconds left.
The Wolfpack crossed midcourt and called a timeout to set up a play, which was designed to get the ball to Wood off a baseline pass. Instead, a skip pass went high and the sharpshooter stepped out of bounds trying to pull it in, giving the ball back to Kansas with 5 seconds to go.
Robinson was fouled and missed the free throw at the other end, but a pass down court and Howell’s tightly guarded shot at the buzzer came up nowhere close, allowing Kansas to escape.
“We did not execute very well. The end of the day, that’s my responsibility,” Gottfried said.
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Louisville storms back to edge Florida, advances to its ninth Final Four
CBSSports.com wire reports
March 24, 2012
PHOENIX -- Hated to do that to ya, kid.
Rick Pitino nearly came unhinged and his point guard watched the end of the game from the bench. When it was over, though, it was Pitino and Louisville making plans for the Final Four and his protege, Billy Donovan, and the Florida Gators wondering what the heck happened.
Chane Behanan made the go-ahead basket with 1:04 left Saturday and the fourth-seeded Cardinals finished the game on a 23-8 run for a 72-68 victory over Donovan's stunned Florida team in the West Regional final.
Russ Smith followed Behanan's bucket with a pair of free throws and then Florida freshman Bradley Beal and teammate Kenny Boynton each missed chances to tie.
Louisville made one more free throw to seal the game and reach its ninth Final Four, and second under Pitino, despite playing the final 3:58 without point guard Peyton Siva, who fouled out.
Florida (26-11) went out in the regional final for the second straight year, with Donovan falling to 0-7 lifetime against the man who coached him at Providence, hired him as an assistant at Kentucky and felt as proud as a papa when he watched Donovan win his two national titles in 2006 and 2007.
This was no heartwarmer, though.
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Copyright 2012 by STATS LLC and The Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and The Associated Press is strictly prohibited.
Beal’s 21 lifts Fla. to 68-58 win over Marquette
PHOENIX (AP)—Exactly as his coach asked him to, Bradley Beal is bringing out his `A’ game. His latest bit of wizardry moved Florida a win away from the Final Four and set up Billy Donovan with a perfectly scripted matchup against his old coach and boss, Rick Pitino.
Beal, the freshman with NBA written all over him, scored 21 points on 8-for-10 shooting Thursday night to help the Gators to a 68-58 victory over Marquette.
Next up for No. 7 Florida (26-10) is a West Regional final Saturday against Louisville and Pitino, who taught ol’ Billy The Kid a lot of what he knows.
“Obviously, I’ve said that outside of my parents, he’s the most influential person in my life,” Donovan said.
The most influential person on Donovan’s team? On this night, it was Beal. He also had six rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocked shots, including one on Jae Crowder while the third-seeded Golden Eagles (27-8) were desperately trying to claw back after trailing by 14.
Crowder, a senior and the Big East player of the year, never found his touch. After sitting for eight minutes in the first half with foul trouble, he finished with 15 points on 5-for-15 shooting while another Marquette senior, Darius Johnson-Odom, also went 5 for 15 in a struggle to reach 14 points.
“We struggled being in rhythm most of the game,” coach Buzz Williams said. “Jae has always played more than 12 minutes in a half, but it’s dangerous for him to pick up his third, so he sat a lot the half. When you’re playing against a team as good as Florida and you’re playing without your key guys, it’s hard for that rhythm to get established.”
Erving Walker had 11 for the Gators, including a 3-pointer that came after Patric Young scrapped for an offensive rebound with 2:05 left. It snapped a 6-0 Marquette run that pulled the third-seeded Golden Eagles to within six.
But the biggest difference maker was Beal, a high school national player of the year whom Donovan has been pushing to be more assertive, especially after the Gators lost four of five heading into the tournament.
“He doesn’t want to step on toes; he’s very aware of his place on the team,” Donovan said, in explaining Beal’s slow acceptance of a leading role. “You can’t do anything but love him because of the way he handles himself.”
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Top-seeded Kentucky knocks off Indiana 102-90
ATLANTA (AP)—They ran up and down the court, two storied programs going toe to toe.
In the end, Kentucky was just too big, too quick, too good for Indiana.
The top-seeded Wildcats moved another step closer to the only goal that matters in the Bluegrass State, shaking off a rather quiet night from freshman star Anthony Davis to pull away from the Hoosiers 102-90 in the South Regional semifinals Friday.
“It was a war and Indiana played great,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “We just happened to play a little bit better.”
Kentucky (35-2) simply had too many weapons. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist scored 24 points, Doron Lamb 21 and three of their teammates—not Davis, mind you— were in double figures. With that, the Wildcats dispatched the team that beat them back in early December and are off to a regional final for the third year in a row.
They’ll face Baylor on Sunday for a trip to the Final Four.
“I feel like we did a pretty good job,” said Kentucky’s Darius Miller, who added 19 points. “So did Indiana. It was a very intense game. It was up and down for the most part. It was a fun game to be a part of, the way that both teams played.”
Davis wasn’t his usual dominating self after picking up two early fouls. He finished with nine points and 12 rebounds. So it was left to another of Kentucky’s super freshmen to take the starring role. Kidd-Gilchrist had a double-double, also snatching 10 rebounds.
“In the huddles during timeouts, Michael was the guy firing us up,” teammate Twany Beckham said. “It showed with his play.”
Marquis Teague chipped in with 14 points and Terrence Jones 12.
Christian Watford had 27 points to lead the Hoosiers (27-9), who beat Kentucky 73-72 before Christmas but ended a comeback season with a loss to their border rival. Still, there was nothing to ashamed of, coming up two victories shy of the Final Four after winning a total of 28 games the previous three seasons.
Clearly, Indiana has regained its usual place among the college basketball bluebloods under coach Tom Crean.
“There’s a lot of good things that have happened,” Crean said. “This team has a lot of tremendous character, there’s no doubt about that.”
But Big Blue is moving on.
“We scored 90 points,” Crean said. “They’re a really good team. They’ve got a lot of guys. They’ve got a guy coming off the bench (Miller) who’s going to be a first-round draft pick.”
Indiana’s freshman star, Cody Zeller, had 20 points, while Victor Oladipo provided a spark in the backcourt with 15 before fouling out. Kidd-Gilchrist just kept pounding the ball inside, drawing foul after foul on the Hoosiers, then knocking down the free throws. He went 10-for-10 at the line.
He wasn’t the only one making free throws. Kentucky was a dead-eye 35-of-37 at the line, compared to 13-of-17 for the Hoosiers.
“It’s not any big deal,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “We’re just taking our time with free throws.”
Jones, who had only four points in the December meeting, signaled this would be a different night by scoring Kentucky’s first five points in the rematch. That set the tone for a shootout, both teams running and gunning in an exhilarating display that kept fans in both blue and red on their feet most of the time.
There certainly wasn’t much to fear on the inside in the opening half, not with the two big men, Davis and Zeller, both spending much of the period on the bench, each saddled with two fouls.
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Barnes scores 5 in OT, NCarolina beats Ohio 73-65
ST. LOUIS (AP)—The last of the little guys gave North Carolina a massive scare.
Harrison Barnes scored five of his 12 points in overtime and the top-seeded Tar Heels escaped a huge upset with a 73-65 victory over No. 13 seed Ohio on Friday night in the Midwest Regional semifinals.
Ohio, trying to become the first team seeded 13th or worse to make the regional finals since the NCAA tournament expanded in 1985, had a chance to convert a three-point play that would have given the Bobcats the lead with 25 seconds left in regulation. Walter Offutt missed from the line, however, and Ohio went 0 for 6 from the field in the first overtime of this year’s tournament.
“One free throw away,” Offutt said. “As a leader on this team, I take responsibility that I’ve got to hit that free throw. … It just feels terrible to kind of let my team down in that sort of way.”
Tyler Zeller finished with 20 points and a career-high 22 rebounds for North Carolina, which sorely missed injured point guard Kendall Marshall. The Tar Heels had three players with double-doubles for the first time in an NCAA tournament game: Reggie Bullock had 17 points and 10 boards, and John Henson had 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Freshman guard Stilman White was an impressive fill-in for Marshall, dishing out six assists without a single turnover and playing 32 minutes—almost three times his previous high.
“We feel like we got away with one,” Zeller said. “Ohio played the better game, they hit a lot of shots. I think we just were able to make a lot of plays at the end that made us capable of pulling it out.”
Offutt led the Bobcats (29-8) with 26 points, including 18 from 3-point range, and Nick Kellogg added 14. But D.J. Cooper, who averaged 20 points in Ohio’s first two tournament games, finished with just 10 on 3-of-20 shooting.
“I’ve been getting those same shots all tournament,” Cooper said. “I’ve been making them, and tonight I just didn’t get the job done.”
North Carolina (32-5), which has won 11 straight in the regional semifinals, plays Kansas on Sunday afternoon for a trip to the Final Four. The Jayhawks beat North Carolina State 60-57.
“It means a heck of a lot,” coach Roy Williams said moments after his team escaped, “but we’ve got to play better than we did today.”
That’s for sure—especially since the Tar Heels are unlikely to have Marshall, perhaps their most irreplaceable player and the steadying hand behind their fast-paced attack. The left-handed guard broke his right wrist Sunday when he was fouled on a drive against Creighton. He had surgery Monday to put a screw in the wrist and got his cast off Wednesday.
Though Marshall said the wrist is improving, he didn’t even dress Friday night, sitting on the bench in a suit.
“He still hasn’t done anything,” Williams said when asked about the prospects of Marshall returning Sunday. “But North Carolina’s going to play on Sunday. We’re happy about that.”
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Ohio St makes East final, beats Cincinnati 81-66
BOSTON (AP)—Jared Sullinger and the Ohio State Buckeyes had blown a 12-point lead and fallen behind Cincinnati in the second half of the East Regional semifinals.
It was time for the “cool guys” to take a seat, and let the blue-collar team take over.
Sullinger scored 23 points with 11 rebounds and Ohio State turned back Cincinnati’s last charge with a 17-1 run to beat the Bearcats 81-66 on Thursday night and advance to the NCAA regional finals for the first time since 2007.
“We’ve got two types of basketball teams: We’ve got the cool guys and then the blue-collar guys,” Sullinger explained. “I thought to start the second half we got into the cool-guy mode and we kind of let our guard down. … I mean, we just came out and decided to be cool guys, and they came out and they stung us, and then we got ourselves back into another basketball game.”
Deshaun Thomas scored 26 points for the second-seeded Buckeyes (30-7), who will play Syracuse at the TD Garden on Saturday. Aaron Craft added 11 points— all in the second half—with five assists and six steals, taking charge during the second-half run that turned a four-point deficit into a double-digit lead.
Cashmere Wright scored 18 and Sean Kilpatrick had 15 for the No. 6 seeded Bearcats, who were attempting to match Big East rival Syracuse by beating a Big Ten opponent to advance to the East Regional finals. The top-seeded Orange advanced earlier Thursday by beating fourth-seeded Wisconsin 64-63.
It’s the first trip to the regional finals for Ohio State since it lost in the 2007 championship game to Florida. The Buckeyes lost in the round of 16 in each of the past two years.
“Coach (Thad) Matta has been through two Sweet 16s where the train kind of stopped. And we wanted to make sure that this train was going to keep rolling,” Sullinger said. “It’s tremendous to be in a situation like this, and it’s a blessing. But at the same time we can’t lose focus.”
Wearing fluorescent orange shoelaces and piping on their jerseys, Cincinnati (26-11) fell behind by 12 at the half before going on a 19-4 run early in the second. The Bearcats led 52-48 with 11:34 to play when Matta called a timeout and ripped into his team.
The Buckeyes allowed just one free throw over the next 5 1/2 minutes.
“They had 20 points in nine minutes and were shooting 80 percent, and some of that goes to them,” Craft said. “But we didn’t play defense like we did in the first half. We did a great job of sticking together and getting stops.”
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Rick Pitino’s prepared Louisville Cardinals send tuckered out top-seeded Michigan State home
PHOENIX – Draymond Green was worried. All week, the energy that had suffused Michigan State’s basketball team throughout its surprising run to the Big Ten championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament went missing. Mediocre practices. Dead film sessions. A grim feeling that the Spartans’ Sweet 16 game against Louisville might be its last of the season.
“I think everybody just knew,” Green said. “We had a feeling.”
Fight though they did, Green’s prophesy – and the Spartans’ fatigue – proved true. Louisville overcame an ugly first half to run away from Michigan State in a 57-44 West Regional semifinal victory during which the Cardinal outrebounded, outfoxed and outclassed a team rarely beaten in any of those facets and almost never in all three.
“I definitely had a sense,” said Green, a likely first-team All-American who led a Spartans team expected to suffer through a down season. “Nobody’s crazy. We know the energy level this team has had, and … our energy level just wasn’t there.”
[ Related: Breaking down Friday’s Sweet 16 matchups ]
Green wasn’t blaming any one person. Not his teammates who shot 14-of-49. Not himself, with six of the Spartans’ 15 turnovers. Not coach Tom Izzo, who added to the misery by getting outcoached by Rick Pitino. Michigan State had no answer for Louisville’s 2-3 zone, helmed by Gorgui Dieng playing goalkeeper with seven blocks, nor did Izzo adjust accordingly when the Cardinals unleashed a press designed, in Pitino’s words, “to get to the legs.”
As with a boxer, once they went, Michigan State’s will followed.
If Green sounded like a beaten man, it’s because he was. More than perhaps any coach in college basketball, Izzo emphasizes mental fortitude over talent. Sure, because he has won a national championship and made six Final Fours at Michigan State, he can wrangle McDonald’s All-Americans. He just doesn’t need them.
To compensate, Izzo pushes his players, rides them, implores them that they have to be stronger, tougher, better. He is widely recognized as the godfather of the War Drill, a gruesome rebounding exercise that has bloodied many a face. Other coaches have stolen from him the use of a plastic bubble to cover the rim, force every shot to carom away and necessitate a rebound.
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“I think everybody just knew,” Green said. “We had a feeling.”
Fight though they did, Green’s prophesy – and the Spartans’ fatigue – proved true. Louisville overcame an ugly first half to run away from Michigan State in a 57-44 West Regional semifinal victory during which the Cardinal outrebounded, outfoxed and outclassed a team rarely beaten in any of those facets and almost never in all three.
“I definitely had a sense,” said Green, a likely first-team All-American who led a Spartans team expected to suffer through a down season. “Nobody’s crazy. We know the energy level this team has had, and … our energy level just wasn’t there.”
[ Related: Breaking down Friday’s Sweet 16 matchups ]
Green wasn’t blaming any one person. Not his teammates who shot 14-of-49. Not himself, with six of the Spartans’ 15 turnovers. Not coach Tom Izzo, who added to the misery by getting outcoached by Rick Pitino. Michigan State had no answer for Louisville’s 2-3 zone, helmed by Gorgui Dieng playing goalkeeper with seven blocks, nor did Izzo adjust accordingly when the Cardinals unleashed a press designed, in Pitino’s words, “to get to the legs.”
As with a boxer, once they went, Michigan State’s will followed.
If Green sounded like a beaten man, it’s because he was. More than perhaps any coach in college basketball, Izzo emphasizes mental fortitude over talent. Sure, because he has won a national championship and made six Final Fours at Michigan State, he can wrangle McDonald’s All-Americans. He just doesn’t need them.
To compensate, Izzo pushes his players, rides them, implores them that they have to be stronger, tougher, better. He is widely recognized as the godfather of the War Drill, a gruesome rebounding exercise that has bloodied many a face. Other coaches have stolen from him the use of a plastic bubble to cover the rim, force every shot to carom away and necessitate a rebound.
To finish reading this article, click here!
Acy leads way as Baylor moves into Elite Eight
By Jay Busbee,
ATLANTA – It took exactly 55 seconds for Xavier coach Chris Mack to realize his team was in serious trouble.
Quincy Acy, the bearded heart and soul of Baylor and part of its much-maligned frontcourt, found daylight at the top of the key and buried a head-on jumper.
Quincy Acy's 20 points and 15 boards carried Baylor into the South Region final against Kentucky.
(Getty Images)
“He’s not supposed to do that!” Mack said on the sideline. “Seventeen feet? He’s not supposed to do that.”
But he did. Acy also threw down crowd-rousing jams, reeled in both offensive and defensive rebounds that kept Xavier at a (mostly) comfortable distance in the rear-view mirror, covered for yet another Perry Jones III vanishing act, and singlehandedly willed his third-seeded team into the Elite Eight with a 75-70 victory over the 10th-seeded Musketeers.
“He was a beast,” said Brady Heslip, Acy’s roommate and a starting guard. “He was telling me all week that he wanted to play better because he knew he hadn’t been carrying his weight. He sure did tonight.”
Acy finished with 20 points and 15 rebounds on 8-of-11 shooting. And even that doesn’t tell the entire story of how he dominated Xavier on both ends of the floor.
“He’s a cage-rattler,” Mack said. “I want to see his birth certificate. He’s that kid, when you’re coaching AAU and you look over and he just looks so much bigger and stronger than everybody. … I can take some of the offensive rebound putbacks, but when he starts facing up and hitting jump shots, it’s not what the doctor ordered. It’s not fair.”
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ATLANTA – It took exactly 55 seconds for Xavier coach Chris Mack to realize his team was in serious trouble.
Quincy Acy, the bearded heart and soul of Baylor and part of its much-maligned frontcourt, found daylight at the top of the key and buried a head-on jumper.
Quincy Acy's 20 points and 15 boards carried Baylor into the South Region final against Kentucky.
(Getty Images)
“He’s not supposed to do that!” Mack said on the sideline. “Seventeen feet? He’s not supposed to do that.”
But he did. Acy also threw down crowd-rousing jams, reeled in both offensive and defensive rebounds that kept Xavier at a (mostly) comfortable distance in the rear-view mirror, covered for yet another Perry Jones III vanishing act, and singlehandedly willed his third-seeded team into the Elite Eight with a 75-70 victory over the 10th-seeded Musketeers.
“He was a beast,” said Brady Heslip, Acy’s roommate and a starting guard. “He was telling me all week that he wanted to play better because he knew he hadn’t been carrying his weight. He sure did tonight.”
Acy finished with 20 points and 15 rebounds on 8-of-11 shooting. And even that doesn’t tell the entire story of how he dominated Xavier on both ends of the floor.
“He’s a cage-rattler,” Mack said. “I want to see his birth certificate. He’s that kid, when you’re coaching AAU and you look over and he just looks so much bigger and stronger than everybody. … I can take some of the offensive rebound putbacks, but when he starts facing up and hitting jump shots, it’s not what the doctor ordered. It’s not fair.”
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
Heslip’s 3s lift Baylor to 80-63 win over CU
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)—With his 3-point goggles on, the bucket never looked quite so big for Brady Heslip. Because of that, the future’s looking as bright as those uniforms for the Baylor Bears.
Heslip, the kid who grew up playing H-O-R-S-E with his dad in Canada, made a big splash in America on Saturday, going 9 for 12 from 3-point range and lifting the third-seeded Bears to a pullaway 80-63 victory over No. 11 Colorado in the NCAA tournament.
“When they set great screens and they make passes that are on target and on time, it just makes it easy for me,” Heslip said. “Especially if I’m in rhythm and feeling good shooting.”
He was, and because of it, Baylor (29-7) will bring the highlighter-yellow uniforms down to Atlanta for a South Regional semifinal against Xavier or Lehigh next Friday.
Heslip, in the meantime, will enjoy his status as Baylor’s newest star.
He celebrated a few of his makes by pinching together his thumb and forefinger on each hand, putting the circle over his eye and lifting the other three digits in the air. The 3-point goggles.
While all this was going on, he began trending on Twitter—and in the postgame Q&A, we learned that he chews Doublemint gum, has been a gym-and-driveway rat in his hometown of Burlington, Ontario since he was 3 and is the nephew of one-time Canadian hoops star and Toronto Raptors head coach Jay Triano.
“Ever since I was growing up, they never forced it on me,” Heslip said of his hoop-loving family. “It was just something that I fell in love with.”
The nine 3s and 27 points were his career highs—and in this game, Baylor needed every one of them.
He made six from behind the arc in the first half to keep his cold-shooting teammates close. Then, he helped break open a tight game late. His 3-pointer with 6:56 was on the front side of Baylor’s 19-3 run to close the game. And it was contagious. Shortly after that make, Pierre Jackson (15 points, 10 assists) jacked one up from three feet behind the arc. Swish. Anthony Jones also made one.
But Heslip, not to be outdone, sandwiched No. 9 in between those—leaving him only two short of the NCAA tournament record set by Jeff Fryer of Loyola Marymount in 1990. Those nine also matched the number put up by Purdue’s Courtney Moses in the women’s tournament a few hours earlier.
“When he came in, we knew how good of a shooter he was,” Baylor forward Quincy Acy said. “Every time I went to the gym at night, I would see him in there. Sometimes twice a day. He works for it. I know whenever he gets hot, he can outshoot anybody.”
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Crowder leads Marquette past Murray State, 62-53
By NANCY ARMOUR, AP National Writer
11 hours, 49 minutes ago
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)—Marquette has perfected the art of the comeback.
Down late yet again, Jae Crowder scored six points during a decisive 14-2 run, and the third-seeded Golden Eagles pulled away from Murray State for a 62-53 victory Saturday that sends the Golden Eagles into next weekend’s West Regional semifinals.
Crowder finished with 17 points, 12 in the second half, and also had 13 rebounds. Darius Johnson-Odom also had 17 for Marquette (27-7).
“When you’re playing a team like Murray State, they’re going to keep throwing punches and throwing punches, and you have to find a way to slow them down,” Johnson-Odom said. “We did a great job of that today.”
Isaiah Canaan had 16 points and six rebounds for the sixth-seeded Racers (31-2), who fell just short of their first trip to the regional semifinals for the second time in three years. This one is sure to sting, too, even if it wasn’t as gutwrenchingly close. Murray State lost to Butler 54-52 in 2010 when Gordon Hayward forced a Canaan turnover with about 10 seconds left.
The Racers have come a long way since. They won their first 23 games of the season, were the last team in the country to lose and showed against Marquette they can play with anyone.
“We proved today that we belong, and we belonged on a national stage,” Racers coach Steve Prohm said. “We just weren’t good enough the last seven minutes.”
Give Marquette some credit for that.
Despite a decided size advantage—Prohm joked Crowder and Johnson-Odom were missing spring practice somewhere—the Golden Eagles could never quite get in sync against the speedy, aggressive Racers. That Marquette was essentially playing a road game couldn’t have helped. Plenty of Racers fans made the three and a half hour drive for the game, and Kentucky fans jumped on the bandwagon in a show of state solidarity. When Jewuan Long made a layup to put the Racers up 46-41 with 7:43 to play, the crowd responded with the kind of roar usually reserved for that other Kentucky team.
But the Golden Eagles had plenty of practice at rallying during the regular season, when they came back to win six games after trailing by 11 or more points, and never doubted they could come back against the Racers.
“Eight minutes,” Johnson-Odom said, “is like 30 minutes.”
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Ohio State pulls away from Gonzaga for 73-66 win
By WILL GRAVES, AP Sports Writer
13 hours, 49 minutes ago
PITTSBURGH (AP)—Jared Sullinger doesn’t get mad anymore. Those days are over. The Ohio State sophomore forward knows he can’t afford to lose his temper if the Buckeyes want to reach the Final Four.
So rather than sulk after foul trouble and some solid Gonzaga defense frustrated him for 36 minutes Saturday, the quickly maturing big man relaxed, took a deep breath and hoisted the Buckeyes on his broad shoulders.
Sullinger scored 18 points, including two big baskets on soft hook shots in the final 3 minutes to lead Ohio State to a 73-66 victory and a spot in the regional semifinals for the third straight year.
“I knew that throwing my body and creating contact wasn’t going to work in this game,” he said. “So I kind of just went with a little bit of finesse and just tried to get off-the-body contact and try to go up and finish.”
And finish off the original bracket busters in the process.
DeShaun Thomas also scored 18 for the second-seeded Buckeyes (29-7), while Aaron Craft added 17 points and 10 assists. Ohio State will play Florida State or Cincinnati in Boston on Thursday.
“We didn’t shoot the ball particularly well in the second half, but we knocked the shots down. And everybody made a big shot here and there,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said.
It’s what the Buckeyes do. When Sullinger spent the last 9:12 of the first half on the bench with two fouls, the Buckeyes relied on Craft and Thomas to erase a seven-point deficit.
Then, with the Bulldogs surging after wiping out a 10-point Ohio State lead, the Buckeyes went back to basics.
They went back to Sullinger, though such measures hardly seemed necessary after a putback by Thomas gave the Buckeyes a 58-48 lead. The Bulldogs (26-7) responded with a 13-3 run capped by a 3-pointer from the corner by Harris that tied it at 61 with 4:05 to go.
Then Sullinger, who still thinks about last year’s loss to Kentucky in the regional semifinals, took over. He backed down Gonzaga center Robert Sacre and hit a soft little hook shot from the right block to put Ohio State back in front.
“Right down the stretch we wanted to get the ball in his hands,” Matta said. “He’s a winner. We’ll ride that down the stretch.”
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Share the score Share the score Teague’s 24 leads Kentucky over Iowa State 87-71
By COLIN FLY, AP Sports Writer
9 hours, 0 minutes ago
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)—Freshman Marquis Teague finally feels in step with Kentucky coach John Calipari’s offense.
Now, he’s taking the Wildcats to the South Regional semifinals in Atlanta, and maybe a lot farther than that.
Teague scored a career-high 24 points and top seed Kentucky put together another complete performance with a dominating second-half run in an 87-71 victory over Iowa State in the third round of the NCAA tournament on Saturday night.
“I didn’t really care about scoring points. I just wanted to get my teammates involved and do whatever I needed to do to help my team win,” said Teague, who added seven assists. “I was just trying to push the ball in transition and take whatever play they were going to give me. They gave me the layup a lot tonight.”
Freshman Anthony Davis had 15 points and 12 rebounds, senior Darius Miller added 19 points and Doron Lamb finished with 16. The Wildcats (34-2) used a 20-2 burst to break away from a tie and next will face fourth-seeded Indiana on Friday.
Teague’s role as point guard has been one of the hardest on a team full of NBA talent. He’s had to learn the position under Calipari and acknowledged earlier this year he worried so much about it he has had sleepless nights.
No more.
“I just was thinking too much. Trying to force shots up sometimes instead of the making the easy play,” Teague said. “Coming out of high school I scored a lot of points, and that’s what I was used to doing. But playing with guys like I’m playing with, you don’t need to do that.”
Not with a team that has this many playmakers.
Kentucky now gets another crack at the Hoosiers, who beat them on a last-second 3-pointer by Christian Watford in December when the young ‘Cats committed a defensive lapse that cost them on the final play.
“That was a rough day for us. Hate to lose any game but the way we lost, that just made it that much worse. Had to move on past that day,” Teague said. “Guess we got ‘em again. We just have to come out and play our hardest. We’re not talking revenge or anything.”
Among the players who have improved the most since then is Teague, often overshadowed and compared to Calipari’s former floor leaders at Kentucky and Memphis, including John Wall, Brandon Knight, Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans.
“I brought him here because when I watched him play, I absolutely loved his game. He is a tough—I call him a pitbull,” Calipari said. “Great athleticism, but a really smart floor game. Now, for us, he could score more, but why would you score more on this team as a point guard? But today, they really left him. I told him, look, you’ve got to keep people honest.”
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Wisconsin holds off Vanderbilt 60-57
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) The Wisconsin Badgers are riding the nation's stingiest defense - and admittedly a bit of luck - back to the round of 16.
The Badgers held the Southeastern Conference's two leading scorers in check Saturday night and Ryan Evans grabbed a crucial rebound with 2.1 seconds left to help Wisconsin fend off Vanderbilt 60-57 in the NCAA tournament.
The Badgers held John Jenkins (20.1) and Jeffery Taylor (16.3) to 13 and 9 points, respectively in advancing to face top-seeded Syracuse in the East Regional in Boston.
Jenkins got just one good look at the basket all night, and it came on a wide-open 3-pointer in the final seconds. With the Commodores trailing 59-57, Jenkins created some space between him and Jarred Berggren, but like so many of his other shots on this night, it was long.
``That was as wide open a shot as we gave up the whole game,'' Badgers coach Bo Ryan said. ``It just didn't happen to go down.''
Evans grabbed the rebound among a mash pit of bodies pushing and shoving underneath the basket, corralling the ball and drawing the foul with 2.1 seconds left.
``It was a pretty good look,'' Jenkins said. ``I felt like I got a good chance of having it going in, just like a lot of looks I had today. It just didn't drop for me.''
Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings desperately wanted a whistle on the Badgers but didn't get it.
If the Badgers didn't get away with a foul, they know they got away with a rare defensive breakdown.
``He's one of the best scorers in the country, one of the best shooters in the country,'' Badgers point guard Jordan Taylor said. ``So when you see a guy get a look like that, your heart kind of drops. I know my mom already bought tickets to Boston, so I was hoping that it didn't go in.
``But Jared did a great job of recovering there and making it as difficult as possible. Ryan did a great job of checking out down low and securing the rebound. But it was definitely heart-stopping for a second there.''
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Saturday, March 17, 2012
Georgetown moves on 74-59 over Belmont
By TOM WITHERS, AP Sports Writer
13 hours, 24 minutes ago
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)—For a whole year Georgetown had to live with its failure last March, a second straight early-round NCAA exit. It haunted the Hoyas, angered them, drove them.
On Friday, they made sure it didn’t happen a third time.
Jason Clark scored 21 points, Otto Porter added 16 and Georgetown’s ruthless defense bottled up Belmont’s shooters all over the floor in a 74-59 win Friday, advancing the Hoyas in the NCAA tournament after first-game knockouts the past two years.
“It was so good to get that first game,” said Hoyas center Henry Sims. “But we didn’t come here just to win one game.”
No, the Hoyas plan to hang around this March.
Sims had 15 points, and the third-seeded Hoyas (24-8) shot 61 percent from the floor—70 percent in second half—to advance to Sunday’s third round of the Midwest Regional and a matchup with No. 11 seed North Carolina State, which beat San Diego State in the day’s opener at Nationwide Arena.
Georgetown’s previous two seasons ended with embarrassing opening-round losses to Virginia Commonwealth and Ohio, scrappy mid-majors who made the big, bad Hoyas look silly. This time around, Georgetown played like the Georgetown of old, using inside muscle and a swarming defense that choked the life out of the Bruins.
“They’re well taught, and they’ve got great athletes,” Belmont coach Rick Byrd said of the Hoyas, who went 12-6 in the Big East. “If Syracuse is better than that, I’m glad we didn’t play Syracuse.”
Georgetown was enough. More than enough.
The Bruins had their 14-game winning streak stopped and fell to 0-5 in NCAA appearances. Belmont had to shoot well to pull off the upset. The Bruins had a few good looks but went just 10 of 27 on 3-pointers.
Blake Jenkins scored 17 to lead Belmont, but senior Kerron Johnson, the Bruins’ leading scorer, had just 4—10 below his average.
“We forced a couple of shots inside instead of kicking it out to shooters like we’re normally pretty good at,” guard Drew Hanlen said. “Sometimes we tried to make the hero play instead of just a smart play.”
Leading by nine at half, Georgetown never let Belmont get closer than six in the second half.
Sims controlled the inside and Clark handled things outside for the Hoyas, who look like a team capable of making a deep tourney run.
After Belmont got within 58-49 on Hanlen’s 3-pointer with just under six minutes left, Georgetown went on a 13-2 run to end any doubt—along with Belmont’s season.
When the final horn sounded, the Hoyas looked relieved. And with good reason. Their season was still alive.
“Finally got the monkey off our back,” guard Markel Starks said.
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Purdue holds off Saint Mary’s 72-69 on Jackson FTs
By ERIC OLSON, AP Sports Writer
8 hours, 50 minutes ago
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)—Having watched his team hang on against Saint Mary’s after blowing a late double-digit lead, Purdue coach Matt Painter didn’t point to a specific play that made the difference.
Painter simply said luck was on the Boilermakers’ side after they moved on in the NCAA tournament with a 72-69 victory Friday night in the Midwest Regional.
“We’re very grateful to get this victory,” Painter said. “Any time you play a great team like Saint Mary’s and you get a 13-point lead, you’ve got to put them away. We weren’t able to do that. When you get a big lead like that and somebody takes the lead back from you, it’s normally difficult to win the game.”
But the 10th-seeded Boilermakers did, thanks to Lewis Jackson’s two free throws with 22.8 seconds left, a couple more from Robbie Hummel and Rob Jones’ missed 3-pointer for Saint Mary’s at the buzzer.
Jackson, Purdue’s senior point guard, said it would have been awful to end his career after blowing an 11-point lead in the last 4 minutes.
That’s why he was glad to be the one to step to the free throw line with the game hanging in the balance.
“As a little kid, you live in the moment, you count down, and I knew my fate and my career were lying in my hands,” Jackson said.
Jorden Page hit a 3-pointer with 44.2 seconds left to finish a 14-2 run that brought the Gaels back from a 66-55 deficit with 4:24 to play.
Purdue’s Terone Johnson was called for traveling while under heavy pressure from Clint Steindl, and then Steindl was called for traveling as he tried to inbound the ball on the baseline.
Page, just 1 for 8 from the field in the game, badly missed what would have been a go-ahead 3 with 10 seconds left, and Hummel’s free throws made it a three-point game.
Jones, who scored 17 of his 23 points in the second half, couldn’t connect on a good look at a 3 from the wing just ahead of the buzzer for the seventh-seeded Gaels (27-6).
“It’s a program win,” Purdue’s Ryne Smith said. “We were a bubble team for a long time and we got in. We’re allowed two hours to enjoy this and then we have to move on to the next game.”
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No. 15 seed Norfolk St stuns No. 2 Missouri 86-84
By DAVE SKRETTA, AP Sports Writer
11 hours, 44 minutes ago
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)—Kyle O’Quinn’s booming voice echoed through the halls, the jovial center for Norfolk State riding the euphoria of a monumental upset of Missouri as the words spilled out of his mouth faster than he could think.
“We messed up some brackets! We messed up some brackets!” he bellowed, before turning a corner and seeing a pack of reporters.
“We even messed up my bracket,” he said sheepishly.
O’Quinn put together the finest game of his career at the biggest moment in the history of Norfolk State basketball. The senior finished with 26 points and 14 rebounds, helping the No. 15 seed Spartans to an 86-84 victory over the second-seeded Tigers on Friday.
All those brackets that had the Big 12 tournament champs advancing to face Florida in the West Regional—perhaps even all the way to the Final Four—can be torn up. It’s the MEAC champions who are moving on.
Pendarvis Williams and Chris McEachin each added 20 points for the Spartans (26-9), who have already made their first trip to the NCAA tournament a memorable one. They became the fifth No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2 and the first since fellow conference member Hampton in 2001.
“You always go into the game with a sense of confidence,” O’Quinn said, “but I never thought it was an upset-alert until that buzzer went off.
“At the end of the game,” he said, “that’s when I thought it would happen.”
O’Quinn had a chance to take some drama out of the final possession, but the 70-percent foul shooter missed two free throws with 3.8 seconds left. Missouri coach Frank Haith called timeout to set up a final play, and Phil Pressey got a pretty good look at a 3-pointer just before the buzzer sounded.
It clanked off the back iron as O’Quinn leaped for joy.
Pressey fell to the court in disbelief.
“We just shocked everybody,” Spartans swingman Brandon Wheeless said.
Michael Dixon led Missouri (30-5) with 22 points, and Pressey and fellow guard Marcus Denmon finished with 20 points each. Pressey also contributed eight assists, though senior guard Kim English was held to two points on 1-for-7 shooting.
“I’m very disappointed, as everyone in that locker room was,” Haith said. “I hurt for those seniors because they put so much into this. They had high expectations.”
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Mitchell leads Saint Louis past Memphis 61-54
By RUSTY MILLER, AP Sports Writer
9 hours, 9 minutes ago
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)—During his years away from coaching as an ESPN commentator, Rick Majerus figured he’d have the perfect forum to discuss how much fun defense is.
Then he learned otherwise.
He said he was told, “We’re not going to show some guy in a defensive stance on SportsCenter.”
No problem. His team got to put on a show for a national audience watching the NCAA tournament.
Kwamain Mitchell supplied the offense with 22 points, including three big 3-pointers, and Saint Louis rode its gritty defense to a 61-54 victory over Memphis on Friday night in a West Regional second-round game.
The result was vintage Majerus, the colorful coach who led Utah to the 1998 national championship game. The Tigers wanted to run, Saint Louis wouldn’t let them. A team averaging more than 75 points per game was stymied, saddled and shut down.
“We wanted to make sure we limited their fast-break baskets and make defense a priority,” said Majerus, who has won more than 500 games as a coach at Marquette, Ball State, Utah and Saint Louis.
Mitchell closed the first half by banking in a 3, then nailed two others to help the ninth-seeded Billikens (26-7) overturn an eight-point deficit in the second half. They advanced to play the winner of LIU Brooklyn and top-seeded Michigan State on Sunday.
“I came in with the attitude that we had something to fight for,” Mitchell said. “Win, or lose and go home.”
Brian Conklin added 16 points, including five free throws in the final minute to salt the game away.
Some observers thought the Billikens were overmatched. Memphis was bigger, stronger, deeper, more athletic and had more NCAA experience. As Majerus had said a day earlier, Saint Louis didn’t have any future pros on its roster.
“It’s fun to come out and prove people wrong,” Conklin said.
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Michigan State handles LIU 89-67
By TOM WITHERS, AP Sports Writer
6 hours, 49 minutes ago
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)—Draymond Green got on the phone earlier this week with a former Michigan State star.
Magic Johnson must have told Green to play just like him.
Green recorded his second career NCAA tournament triple-double—the first player to do it since Johnson—and Derrick Nix added 18 points as top-seeded Michigan State fought off the upset bug that took down two No. 2 seeds, advancing in the West Regional with an 89-67 win over LIU Brooklyn on Friday night.
On a freaky Friday of upsets, Michigan State wasn’t going down.
Green wouldn’t stand for it.
“The kid’s a great player,” LIU coach Jim Ferry said. “I thought he was a great player going in on tape. He’s a great player live. He’s going to have a very long career in front of him. He’s just a fantastic basketball player.”
The Spartans (28-7) finally put away the bothersome No. 16 Blackbirds (25-9) with a 14-4 run midway through the second half. Michigan State outscored LIU 47-30 after halftime to set up a third-round game with Saint Louis on Sunday.
Green had 24 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists and no turnovers in 35 minutes. He joined Johnson and Oscar Robertson as the only players in history to have more than one triple-double in the tournament.
Afterward, Green showed typical humility in downplaying his accomplishment. His previous triple-double came in last year’s tournament loss to UCLA.
“At the end of the day I’d much rather have a win than a triple double, because when you look at those record books it’s going to say Draymond Green stats triple double and then it’s going to say the score of the game,” he said. “And the last one was a loss and this one was a win. So it don’t really matter.
“It’s just about getting wins this time of year, and I’m just happy we’re able to do that.”
Green didn’t get into any specifics about his conversation with Johnson. The Hall of Famer was talking with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who put Green on the phone.
“I don’t know what he said to him, but it might have been something good,” Izzo said. “I might have to call him back. I’m proud of Day Day (Green’s nickmane). I’m pleased for him. Happy for him. And yet he’s got a lot of basketball to go. “
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Beal, Prather lead Gators to 71-45 win over Cavs
By ERIC OLSON, AP Sports Writer
13 hours, 0 minutes ago
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)—With his 1.5-point scoring average, Casey Prather surely wasn’t a big part of Virginia’s scouting report on Florida.
You can bet any team that plays Florida the rest of the NCAA tournament will know who he is.
Prather scored a career-high 14 points on a rare day Florida’s 3-point shooters went cold, and the Gators had no trouble beating the Cavaliers 71-45 Friday in the NCAA West Regional.
“On a big stage like this, he was probably a very unlikely candidate to step up and do what he did for us tonight,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “I’m happy for him, because he’s a great kid.”
Prather made 6 of 7 shots in a season-high 22 minutes, using a cool spin move to get to the basket for a baseline layup in the middle of the second half. But his best shot came late when he dunked off Erving Walker’s alley-oop pass.
“I woke up trying to be focused on the game and what I could do to help the team,” the sophomore reserve said.
Prather had played more than 10 minutes in a game just twice since mid-December and hadn’t scored more than six points in any previous game this season. In his last 16 games he had scored a total of 15 points.
“He gave them a great lift,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “When you look at someone off the bench to give you a spark—I don’t want to say you weren’t counting on him—but that is a pleasant surprise, and he was that for them.”
Bradley Beal also had 14 points and 11 rebounds and Patric Young had 13 points on 6-for-6 shooting with three dunks.
Those efforts were enough to offset the Gators’ 4-for-23 shooting on 3-pointers. They entered the game averaging a nation-leading 9.9 a game but missed their first 13 attempts.
No. 7 seed Florida (24-10) pierced Virginia’s vaunted defense—the Cavaliers were giving up just 53.7 points a game—to get to the boards for second-chance baskets. The press also generated some easy buckets for the Gators, helping them go 24 of 30 from inside the arc.
“We were struggling to score in the beginning,” Walker said. “The press had a huge effect on the game. It got us in our offensive rhythm.”
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McCollum leads Lehigh to 75-70 upset win over Duke
By STEVE REED, AP Sports Writer
7 hours, 46 minutes ago
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP)—The Lehigh Mountain Hawks said they weren’t afraid of mighty Duke.
Maybe no one believed them at the time, but the Patriot League champions proved they were serious.
C.J. McCollum scored 30 points and Lehigh upset Duke 75-70 to become the second No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2 during a wild Friday in the NCAA tournament.
“It means a lot as a team, a family and as the Patriot League in general,” McCollum said. “We wanted to come out here and protect this team and this family, get the win and we did that tonight.”
Lehigh forward John Adams said it was a matter of believing in each other.
“We saw on the selection show we had Duke and we thought we could match up very well against them,” Adams said. “We all believed it and we showed it on the floor. Everybody bought into that idea that we could beat them. The rest is history.”
History indeed.
The Mountain Hawks are the sixth 15 seed overall to pull off the trick. Norfolk State edged Missouri 86-84 in the West Regional earlier in the day, and No. 13 seed Ohio knocked off Michigan to add to the madness.
Duke dropped its first tournament game for only the second time in the past 16 years, and this one occurred just 55 miles from its campus. The Blue Devils also lost their opener against 11th-seeded Virginia Commonwealth in 2007.
The Blue Devils had no answer for the speedy McCollum, the two-time Patriot League player of the year and the nation’s fifth-leading scorer.
“They had the best player on the court tonight in McCollum,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “He’s been their player of the year, and he’s really one of the outstanding players in the country. You could see why tonight.”
It didn’t help that the Blue Devils hit just 6 of 26 shots from 3-point range.
Lehigh (27-7) led most of the game, drawing support from North Carolina fans who borrowed brown signs from Mountain Hawks supporters that read “Go Lehigh” to root against their rivals.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” forward Justin Maneri said with a deep laugh. “We came to the practice the other day and as soon as you walked in they were going crazy for us and we’re like, `What’s going on?’ They were like, `Go Lehigh, beat Duke!’ They were screaming. It was nice to have fans here that weren’t Duke. I’ve never seen two schools that hate each other so much.”
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Baylor knocks off South Dakota State 68-60
By ARNIE STAPLETON, AP Sports Writer
Mar 15, 11:39 pm EDT
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)—The Baylor Bears started out looking like they were the NCAA tournament novices, not South Dakota State.
Baylor came out jittery and fell behind 19-7 in the first 7 minutes, had to ditch its zone defense and finally started to use its superior strength and size to wear down the 14th-seeded Jackrabbits in a 68-60 win at The Pit on Thursday night.
“I know our guys were prepared for a very good game,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “South Dakota State coming in, we had a lot of respect. We knew they were a great team and we’re pleased to get the win. I think in the beginning of the game we showed our jitters a little bit, then after that, I was very pleased with how we calmed down and got back to playing basketball.”
Although the Jackrabbits were in it until the end, they never regained the lead after Pierre Jackson, who led the Bears with 18 points, sank a 3-pointer that put Baylor ahead 24-22 with 5:45 left in the first half.
“They came out there swinging, knocking down open shots, knocking down contested 3s. Coach called a timeout, and we had to re-gather ourselves, and we switched to man,” Jackson said. “A.J. (Walton) came in and brought the defensive punch that we needed, and we got stops and got the lead.”
And never relinquished it.
Both teams nearly made Seth Davis look like a sage, however. The TV analyst proclaimed on the CBS Selection Show that the Jackrabbits would knock off third-seeded Baylor in their inaugural NCAA tournament appearance—much to the dismay of both squads.
Sure enough, the Jackrabbits jumped out to a 12-point lead early and then fought back from a double-digit deficit themselves in the closing minutes before finally falling.
Baylor guard Brady Heslip said the Bears never started to worry that maybe Davis would be taking a bow by night’s end.
“No, not at all. We’ve started games sloppy before this year, and we found the resolve to come back,” Heslip said. “Today was no different. We knew that was a great team, and we didn’t think they were going to come out there and just give the game to us. We were ready for a 40-minute fight.”
They got one.
“They really came out swinging and knocking down shots and making some great plays and playing unselfish,” Heslip said. “So none of that (upset talk) crossed our minds. We knew we were going to re-gather ourselves and rebound from it.”
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CU holds off UNLV for 68-64 victory
By EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer
Mar 16, 2:01 am EDT
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)—For anyone familiar with Colorado basketball, the scene was hard to believe.
The Buffs leading UNLV, of all teams, by 20. Their fans standing in The Pit, of all places, chanting “This is our house.”
Well, CU’s first appearance in the NCAA tournament in nine years didn’t turn out to be a breeze, but yes, maybe the Buffs could get used to this college basketball thing.
Freshman Askia Booker came off the bench for 16 points and Andre Roberson had 12 points and 16 rebounds, as Colorado fought off a furious UNLV comeback for a 68-64 victory Thursday night at The Pit.
“It’s been great,” Roberson said. “I feel like our guys are playing well, playing with a lot of confidence, and we’re just going to try to keep it rolling.”
The 11th-seeded Buffs (24-11), who bullied their way into March Madness for the first time in nine years by winning the Pac-12 tournament as a No. 6 seed, suddenly can’t seem to do anything wrong. The team that got snubbed by the selection committee last year and used that as fuel for this season has won five straight games with its season essentially on the line.
CU’s next test is Saturday against No. 3 seed Baylor, a 68-60 winner over South Dakota State earlier and a former Big 12 rival of the Buffs.
For the first 27 minutes of this South Regional game, Tad Boyle’s team played with a freedom and looseness that made the game look easy. Never as easy as early in the second half, when Austin Dufault (14 points) made back-to-back 3-pointers and Carlon Brown (12) followed with another to push CU’s lead to 49-29. A few minutes later, it was 53-33.
CU leading UNLV by 20?
That’s the kind of thing that just didn’t seem possible—and not just decades back, but as recently as a few weeks ago.
Maybe it was too good to be true.
UNLV went on a 22-4 run and cut the lead to two on Justin Hawkins’ 3-pointer with 4:20 left. From there, though, sixth-seeded UNLV (26-9) missed its next seven shots. Brown made a windmill dunk—reminiscent of those he slammed home late in Pac-12 wins over Arizona and Cal—to help CU regain its bearings, then the Buffs made 4 of 8 free throws in the last minute to hold on for the win.
“Our guys were not handling it well, that was obvious,” Boyle said. “We talked about playing with poise, playing with composure and continuing to attack. When we got stops, we wanted to run. That’s one of the things that had gotten us that lead to begin with.”
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Indiana impressive in 79-66 win over NM State
By TIM BOOTH, AP Sports Writer
Mar 16, 1:31 am EDT
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)—After a four-year absence, Indiana is making its NCAA tournament return last longer than just one brief appearance.
And even though it’s one victory, it’s still a moment worthy of reflection for Indiana coach Tom Crean after rebuilding a gutted program and leading the Hoosiers to a 79-66 win over New Mexico State—their first in the NCAA tournament in five years.
“I think when I look up at the crowd and catch a glimpse of my family … it hits you for a brief moment that this is really, really special,” Crean said. “We’ve been through so much to get to this point. We’ve all learned a great deal. Everybody is better. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but everybody is better for what we had to endure.”
Now if the Hoosiers want to keep this tournament return going for another week, they’ll just need to take out Shaka Smart and those bracket-busting upstarts from VCU.
Jordan Hulls went on a second-half shooting spree and finished with 22 points, and the fourth-seeded Hoosiers rolled Thursday night in the second round of the South Regional.
Indiana picked up its first tournament win since beating Gonzaga in 2007 on a night its main stars—Cody Zeller and Christian Watford—did the heavy lifting in the opening minutes then watched Hulls and others take over.
Hulls shot 8 of 12, and 7 of 8 in the second half including his own personal 11-point run as the Hoosiers (26-8) blew the game open. Zeller, Watford and Will Sheehey all finished with 14 points for Indiana as part of a 59 percent shooting display that propelled the Hoosiers to the weekend.
Next up for the Hoosiers are the 12th-seeded Rams in the third-round Saturday afternoon and the chance for Indiana to find its way back to the regional semifinals for the first time since going to the Final Four in 2002.
“In a situation like this, there’s some physical to it, but it’s much more mental and retention, and seeing how it applies to you,” Crean said. “I’m looking forward to being up late.”
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Cyclones take out defending champ UConn 77-64
By NANCY ARMOUR, AP National Writer
Mar 16, 2:19 am EDT
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)—Jim Calhoun and Connecticut didn’t expect their season to end this way.
Their future is equally unpredictable.
“We’re talking about tonight’s game. We’re not talking about me,” Calhoun said after Iowa State stunned the defending national champions 77-64 in the NCAA tournament Thursday night. “I’m going to get on the plane tomorrow, go home and do what I usually do and meet up with the team on Monday. My own personal thing, I don’t think it has any relevance, to be honest with you.”
Chris Allen led four Cyclones in double figures with 20 points, and Iowa State scored its last 14 at the free-throw line to beat UConn, the first time since UCLA in 1996 that the defending champs have lost in the opening game. Calhoun didn’t even wait for the final buzzer, heading for halfcourt with about four seconds left to congratulate Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg.
It is only the second loss in the opening game of the NCAA tournament for UConn under Calhoun.
“I’m surprised as anybody, clearly,” Calhoun said. “I imagine our players are, too.”
For the eighth-seeded Cyclones, meanwhile, it’s their biggest victory in a season of them, having knocked off Kansas and Baylor during Big 12 play.
Royce White had a double-double with 15 points and 13 rebounds, and Scott Christopherson also had 15 for the Cyclones. Iowa State shot 48 percent from the floor and had a whopping 41-24 edge in rebounds.
“I feel like just we wanted it more,” Allen said. “I felt like we was doing everything we needed to and played hard.”
Next up for Iowa State: Overall No. 1 seed Kentucky in the third round of the South Regional on Saturday. The Wildcats routed Western Kentucky earlier Thursday.
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No. 2 seed Kansas rolls through Detroit 65-50
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)—Kansas coach Bill Self hardly broached the topic of fellow No. 2 seed Missouri’s upset loss to Norfolk State on Friday. He figured there was no need—his players already knew.
He made sure to mention another No. 2 seed, Duke, also went down.
“The Duke game was going on and there was 5 seconds left or 20 seconds left when I finished doing my pregame,” Self said. “I told them then, `Hey, Duke’s getting ready to get beat, too.”’
It served as a warning to the Jayhawks.
They most certainly heeded it.
Thomas Robinson bullied his way for 16 points and 13 rebounds, and the second-seeded Jayhawks rolled to a 65-50 victory over Detroit in the second round of the Midwest Regional.
“I didn’t make a point of it because sometimes you make a point, it could add pressure, saying it’s possible. But I did say, `Hey, the one thing is we have to make sure Detroit doesn’t play well,” Self said of the earlier upsets. “When teams get comfortable anything can happen.”
After the first 15 minutes, Detroit never looked comfortable.
Doug Anderson led the Horizon League-champion Titans with 15 points before fouling out with 11:06 left. Ray McCallum, the son of the Detroit coach, added eight points on 4-for-15 shooting.
“I’m really proud of my guys,” said Detroit coach Ray McCallum. “We played one of the truly great teams in the country tonight, and that really, pretty much tells the story.”
Elijah Johnson added 15 points and Tyshawn Taylor had 10 for the Jayhawks (28-6), despite spending much of the second half in the locker room with cramps. Self said that Taylor received IV fluids during the game and should be 100 percent for Sunday night’s game against Purdue.
Kansas toyed with the Titans (22-14) early on before ramping up the defense, eventually holding them to 32 percent shooting and 3 for 17 from beyond the arc.
“They do a good job of not letting you get in the paint. That’s one of the strengths of my game,” the younger McCallum said. “I felt like I got good looks. It was just one of those games.”
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Friday, March 16, 2012
Xavier edges Notre Dame 67-63 in NCAA
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) Tu Holloway kept attacking the paint and knocking down tough shots for Xavier throughout the second half. It's no surprise the senior guard came through with the basket to help the Musketeers advance in the NCAA tournament.
Holloway banked in the go-ahead shot over Jack Cooley with 21.3 seconds left, helping Xavier rally to beat Notre Dame 67-63 on Friday night in the second round of the South Regional.
Holloway finished with 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting, including a flurry that helped the 10th-seeded Musketeers (22-12) rally from 10 down in the second half against the seventh-seeded Fighting Irish (22-12).
``He's made such big plays through the course of his career,'' Xavier coach Chris Mack said. ``The moment's never too big for him.''
Holloway had 17 points in the second half, the last coming when he rounded a screen from Kenny Frease and sent a high-arcing shot over Cooley's outstretched arm for the 64-63 lead.
``Coach Mack called my number, and it's a shot I practiced over the summer,'' Holloway said. ``I work hard for moments like this, and fortunately through the graces of God the ball went in. I knew it was big.''
After a free throw from Dezmine Wells pushed the lead to two, Notre Dame's Eric Atkins drew a blocking foul to get to the line with 2.8 seconds left. He swished the first free throw, but official Michael Stuart ruled that Jerian Grant left his position behind the 3-point arc too early as he ran in for a rebound, giving the ball back to Xavier.
The same unusual call was made at a critical moment of top-seeded Syracuse's 72-65 victory over UNC Asheville during the second round of the East Regional on Thursday.
On the ensuing inbounds pass, Pat Connaughton was whistled for an intentional foul when he grabbed Wells' jersey trying to deny him the ball. Wells knocked down both free throws to push the lead to four with 2.8 seconds still on the clock to ensure the victory.
``It's too bad that happens, but there was a lot of plays,'' Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said of the lane-violation call. ``We missed some free throws. There were a lot of plays that culminated in not being able to escape with a win.''
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Wednesday, March 14, 2012
South Fla works over Cal 65-54 in NCAA tourney
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) Ugly, ugly, ugly. Just the way South Florida likes it.
The Bulls introduced the NCAA tournament to the Big East's nastiest defense Wednesday night, putting more than just a chill into a California team that had never seen anything like it. The Bulls allowed only 13 points in the first half and brushed their way to a 65-54 victory.
South Florida (21-13) will play No. 5 seed Temple in Nashville on Friday, a matchup of teams known for gritty defense. Few have been better than this one for the first 20 minutes on the NCAA stage.
The Bulls swarmed `em, bumped em' and swatted their shots away - those that weren't air balls, that is.
California (24-10) didn't score over the last 8:55 of the first half, missing 10 shots and turning it over twice while South Florida pulled ahead 36-13.
Guard Jorge Gutierrez, the Pac-12 player of the year, was held to 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting.
It wasn't all defense that got it done for South Florida. Freshman point guard Anthony Collins, a thin-built player with a youthful face that reminds coach Stan Heath of a 12-year-old kid, played like a star in his first NCAA tournament game, scoring 12 points. Victor Rudd had 15 points
The Golden Bears won't soon forget the way they got worked over. They must have felt as if there were six Bulls on the floor at times playing defense.
No, only five. The refs counted.
The Bulls set a Big East record by giving up only 56.9 points per game this season. Their problem: They score about as many points as they give up. South Florida didn't have a player average in double figures for the season.
Realizing he didn't have many scoring options, Heath instituted the defense-first, defense-last philosophy that got them to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 20 years and, now, their first win. The Bulls came in 0-2 in the tournament.
Other teams exult when one of their players hits a big basket. The Bulls cheer from the bench as the other team passes the ball around helplessly and hopelessly.
They were cheering their defense from the opening tip.
The first time down the court, Gutierrez forced a running shot that was too hard, a taste of the misery ahead. California missed its first five shots and eight of its first nine, helping South Florida pull ahead 15-3.
Collins made a driving layup, a floater, a 15-foot pull-up jumper and a layup off his steal during the opening run, getting South Florida's unpredictable offense moving.
The Golden Bears readily acknowledged that they hadn't played anything quite like the Bulls' defense. With four players averaging in double figures, their best chance was to spread the ball around and be patient.
They ran out of patience real fast, prompting coach Mike Montgomery to call a timeout to get his team settled down. Instead, things quickly got worse.
A lot worse.
Gutierrez hit a fade-away 15-foot jumper with 8:56 left in the first half. The Golden Bears wouldn't score again before halftime, with South Florida pulling off a 14-0 run. It ended with a telling moment: California guard Justin Cobbs dribbling toward the basket and failing to even attempt a shot before the buzzer sounded.
Totally discombobulated.
The Golden Bears shuffled toward the locker room with blanks expressions. Their 13 points matched the seventh-fewest in an opening half since the NCAA tournament expanded in 1985, according to STATS LLC.
The Bulls pulled ahead 57-25 with 8:49 left. The only question was how low they could keep the sore. California fouled repeatedly in the final minute, giving itself enough chances to hit the 50-point mark.DAYTON, Ohio (AP) Ugly, ugly, ugly. Just the way South Florida likes it.
The Bulls introduced the NCAA tournament to the Big East's nastiest defense Wednesday night, putting more than just a chill into a California team that had never seen anything like it. The Bulls allowed only 13 points in the first half and brushed their way to a 65-54 victory.
South Florida (21-13) will play No. 5 seed Temple in Nashville on Friday, a matchup of teams known for gritty defense. Few have been better than this one for the first 20 minutes on the NCAA stage.
The Bulls swarmed `em, bumped em' and swatted their shots away - those that weren't air balls, that is.
California (24-10) didn't score over the last 8:55 of the first half, missing 10 shots and turning it over twice while South Florida pulled ahead 36-13.
Guard Jorge Gutierrez, the Pac-12 player of the year, was held to 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting.
It wasn't all defense that got it done for South Florida. Freshman point guard Anthony Collins, a thin-built player with a youthful face that reminds coach Stan Heath of a 12-year-old kid, played like a star in his first NCAA tournament game, scoring 12 points. Victor Rudd had 15 points
The Golden Bears won't soon forget the way they got worked over. They must have felt as if there were six Bulls on the floor at times playing defense.
No, only five. The refs counted.
The Bulls set a Big East record by giving up only 56.9 points per game this season. Their problem: They score about as many points as they give up. South Florida didn't have a player average in double figures for the season.
Realizing he didn't have many scoring options, Heath instituted the defense-first, defense-last philosophy that got them to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 20 years and, now, their first win. The Bulls came in 0-2 in the tournament.
Other teams exult when one of their players hits a big basket. The Bulls cheer from the bench as the other team passes the ball around helplessly and hopelessly.
They were cheering their defense from the opening tip.
The first time down the court, Gutierrez forced a running shot that was too hard, a taste of the misery ahead. California missed its first five shots and eight of its first nine, helping South Florida pull ahead 15-3.
Collins made a driving layup, a floater, a 15-foot pull-up jumper and a layup off his steal during the opening run, getting South Florida's unpredictable offense moving.
The Golden Bears readily acknowledged that they hadn't played anything quite like the Bulls' defense. With four players averaging in double figures, their best chance was to spread the ball around and be patient.
They ran out of patience real fast, prompting coach Mike Montgomery to call a timeout to get his team settled down. Instead, things quickly got worse.
A lot worse.
Gutierrez hit a fade-away 15-foot jumper with 8:56 left in the first half. The Golden Bears wouldn't score again before halftime, with South Florida pulling off a 14-0 run. It ended with a telling moment: California guard Justin Cobbs dribbling toward the basket and failing to even attempt a shot before the buzzer sounded.
Totally discombobulated.
The Golden Bears shuffled toward the locker room with blanks expressions. Their 13 points matched the seventh-fewest in an opening half since the NCAA tournament expanded in 1985, according to STATS LLC.
The Bulls pulled ahead 57-25 with 8:49 left. The only question was how low they could keep the sore. California fouled repeatedly in the final minute, giving itself enough chances to hit the 50-point mark.
McGlynn scores 18 points, Vermont beat Lamar 71-59
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) It's been seven years since Vermont's signature win in school history.
The Catamounts think it's about time for another.
North Carolina, are you paying attention?
Freshman Four McGlynn came off the bench to score 18 points and Vermont grabbed an early lead and hung on to beat Lamar 71-59 on Wednesday night in a first-round NCAA tournament game.
Matt Glass added 11 points, Sandro Carissimo 10 and Brian Voelkel had 12 rebounds to help the Catamounts earn a spot against the top-seeded Tar Heels on Friday in Greensboro, N.C.
Their only previous NCAA tournament win was a stunning 60-57 upset of fourth-seeded Syracuse by the 13th-seeded Catamounts in the first round of the 2005 tournament.
``The Syracuse game was a huge win for Vermont and the community,'' Voelkel said. ``Obviously, we're going to come into North Carolina with a lot of confidence and hopefully we can pull off another upset and give the people of Burlington something to cheer about.''
The Catamounts (24-11) shot 50 percent from the field, blending an inside presence with McGlynn's touch from the perimeter.
But the America East tournament champions will be severely tested down where the skies are Carolina Blue.
``Obviously, North Carolina is one of the best teams in the country,'' first-year Catamounts coach John Becker said. ``They've got a roster of future NBA stars. We're just going to do what we do - continue to play our brand of basketball.''
McGlynn, the only player in all of Division I to lead his team in scoring (12.0) without starting a game and yet playing in every contest, provided punch to Vermont's offense.
He entered in the first half and immediately ignited a 13-0 rally that gave the Catamounts a lead that they never relinquished.
``It was my first NCAA tournament game. I thought I played pretty well,'' McGlynn said after hitting 5 of 9 shots from the field including 3 of 5 3-pointers and adding 5 of 6 free throws. ``I got in a good flow. I give all the credit to my teammates.''
Vermont's ability to hang on to a lead has been a rarity at University of Dayton Arena. Both Mississippi Valley State and Iona built big leads and then blew them in first-night losses to Western Kentucky and BYU, respectively.
Devon Lamb and Mike James each had 16 points for Lamar (23-12), which had won six in a row since first-year coach Pat Knight ripped his seniors after a loss in late February. He said they were ``stealing money being on scholarship'' and that his players had problems ``off the court, on the court, classroom, drugs.''
But after the NCAA loss, an emotional Knight fought back tears as he spoke about players who he said would turn the Lamar program around.
``It's obvious. ... I think these guys have done a heck of a job. If people disagree, they're morons,'' he said, sounding a lot like his father, Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight. ``They're down right now. Losing hurts. But what a ride. I'll be talking about them until the day I die, these guys.''
Down by as many as 16 points early in the second half, Lamar kept hanging around. It drew to seven points when Anthony Miles, who added 14 points, drove and hit a layup while falling, then completed the three-point play. On the next possession, he hit a 3.
But Vermont always seemed to keep the Cardinals at arm's length.
Brandon Davis followed by driving the lane and banking in a shot. After a Cardinals miss, Glass popped in a jumper and the lead was back to double figures.
Moments later, after a nifty scoop shot in traffic for a bucket by Lamar's James, McGlynn came in and promptly drilled a 3 from the right wing to make it 59-47 with just over 6 minutes left.
The Cardinals, making their sixth NCAA appearance and first since 2000, never got closer than nine points again.
Knight was disappointed but not down.
``I can't wait until next year. But I'm going to miss these guys,'' he said before choking up. ``It's been a special year. To go from getting fired a year ago (at Texas Tech) and make the NCAA tournament - and it's nothing I did. It's the six seniors.''
McGlynn, who was playing high-school ball in York, Pa., a year ago, was already looking forward to the titanic challenge coming up against the Tar Heels.
``It's going to be awesome to go out there and play with arguably some of the best players in the country,'' he said.
---
Follow Rusty Miller on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rustymillerap .
The Catamounts think it's about time for another.
North Carolina, are you paying attention?
Freshman Four McGlynn came off the bench to score 18 points and Vermont grabbed an early lead and hung on to beat Lamar 71-59 on Wednesday night in a first-round NCAA tournament game.
Matt Glass added 11 points, Sandro Carissimo 10 and Brian Voelkel had 12 rebounds to help the Catamounts earn a spot against the top-seeded Tar Heels on Friday in Greensboro, N.C.
Their only previous NCAA tournament win was a stunning 60-57 upset of fourth-seeded Syracuse by the 13th-seeded Catamounts in the first round of the 2005 tournament.
``The Syracuse game was a huge win for Vermont and the community,'' Voelkel said. ``Obviously, we're going to come into North Carolina with a lot of confidence and hopefully we can pull off another upset and give the people of Burlington something to cheer about.''
The Catamounts (24-11) shot 50 percent from the field, blending an inside presence with McGlynn's touch from the perimeter.
But the America East tournament champions will be severely tested down where the skies are Carolina Blue.
``Obviously, North Carolina is one of the best teams in the country,'' first-year Catamounts coach John Becker said. ``They've got a roster of future NBA stars. We're just going to do what we do - continue to play our brand of basketball.''
McGlynn, the only player in all of Division I to lead his team in scoring (12.0) without starting a game and yet playing in every contest, provided punch to Vermont's offense.
He entered in the first half and immediately ignited a 13-0 rally that gave the Catamounts a lead that they never relinquished.
``It was my first NCAA tournament game. I thought I played pretty well,'' McGlynn said after hitting 5 of 9 shots from the field including 3 of 5 3-pointers and adding 5 of 6 free throws. ``I got in a good flow. I give all the credit to my teammates.''
Vermont's ability to hang on to a lead has been a rarity at University of Dayton Arena. Both Mississippi Valley State and Iona built big leads and then blew them in first-night losses to Western Kentucky and BYU, respectively.
Devon Lamb and Mike James each had 16 points for Lamar (23-12), which had won six in a row since first-year coach Pat Knight ripped his seniors after a loss in late February. He said they were ``stealing money being on scholarship'' and that his players had problems ``off the court, on the court, classroom, drugs.''
But after the NCAA loss, an emotional Knight fought back tears as he spoke about players who he said would turn the Lamar program around.
``It's obvious. ... I think these guys have done a heck of a job. If people disagree, they're morons,'' he said, sounding a lot like his father, Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight. ``They're down right now. Losing hurts. But what a ride. I'll be talking about them until the day I die, these guys.''
Down by as many as 16 points early in the second half, Lamar kept hanging around. It drew to seven points when Anthony Miles, who added 14 points, drove and hit a layup while falling, then completed the three-point play. On the next possession, he hit a 3.
But Vermont always seemed to keep the Cardinals at arm's length.
Brandon Davis followed by driving the lane and banking in a shot. After a Cardinals miss, Glass popped in a jumper and the lead was back to double figures.
Moments later, after a nifty scoop shot in traffic for a bucket by Lamar's James, McGlynn came in and promptly drilled a 3 from the right wing to make it 59-47 with just over 6 minutes left.
The Cardinals, making their sixth NCAA appearance and first since 2000, never got closer than nine points again.
Knight was disappointed but not down.
``I can't wait until next year. But I'm going to miss these guys,'' he said before choking up. ``It's been a special year. To go from getting fired a year ago (at Texas Tech) and make the NCAA tournament - and it's nothing I did. It's the six seniors.''
McGlynn, who was playing high-school ball in York, Pa., a year ago, was already looking forward to the titanic challenge coming up against the Tar Heels.
``It's going to be awesome to go out there and play with arguably some of the best players in the country,'' he said.
---
Follow Rusty Miller on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rustymillerap .
WKU sets NCAA record with 59-58 win over MVSU
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) The team with the losing record pulled off the most fantastic 5-minute finish in NCAA tournament history.
The most surprising thing? Western Kentucky didn't even think it was all that extraordinary.
It was, in every way.
With a president and a prime minister sitting in the front row behind the basket, the Hilltoppers turned up their full-court press and overcame a 16-point deficit in the last 5 minutes on Tuesday night. Their 59-58 victory over Mississippi Valley State christened it as the tournament of comebacks.
Who better to do it than the longest of long shots?
``Wow,'' coach Ray Harper said, his face still flush with March emotion. ``I don't know where to begin.''
With the comeback, of course. There's never been one quite like it.
T.J. Price's three-point play with 33 seconds to go completed the Hilltoppers' unprecedented rally in front of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who headed out at the buzzer.
The NCAA called it the biggest deficit overcome in the final 5 minutes of a tournament game. The previous best: Illinois overcame a 15-point deficit in the last 5 minutes to beat Arizona 90-89 in overtime in a regional final in 2005.
Madness indeed.
``It's a crazy feeling,'' said Derrick Gordon, who had 11 points. ``That's the president of the United States coming to watch our game. We wanted to put on a show. Things didn't work our way for the first 35 minutes, but we came away with the W.
``I'm sure he liked what he saw.''
He saw the only squad with a losing record in the 68-team field get out of its own way long enough to do something special. The Hilltoppers (16-18) shot only 30 percent from the field, turned the ball over an incredible 28 times and won.
The Hilltoppers have rallied from double-digit deficits in each of their last three games, including two in the Sun Belt Conference tournament. Their latest comeback was the biggest of them all.
``We're used to doing it,'' Gordon said. ``We did it all throughout the Sun Belt tournament. No matter how much we were losing by, we were just going to keep on fighting until the buzzer went off. That's something that teams don't know about us.''
Western Kentucky moves on to play Kentucky - the top seed in the South Regional - on Thursday in Louisville, an all-Bluegrass game for the second round.
MVSU (21-13) caught the president's eye while pulling ahead, but couldn't close it out. Kevin Burwell scored 20 points and locked eyes with the president after swishing a 3-pointer while the Delta Devils built their big lead. Obama smiled back.
``Like I said yesterday, we were just trying to put on a show for him,'' Burwell said. ``In the heat of the moment, I just pointed at him a couple of times. That was it.''
Obama - an avid basketball fan who fills out an NCAA bracket each year - spent a lot of time explaining the nuances of the game to Cameron. Obama has picked Kentucky as one of his Final Four teams.
A smaller school from a corner of the commonwealth became the star of the First Four.
The Hilltoppers were the losers' favorite in the bracket - the first team since Coppin State in 2009 to make it to the tournament with a losing record.
And that didn't even begin to tell their story.
A team featuring seven freshmen lost 11 of its first 16 games. The low point came on Jan. 5, when Louisiana-Lafayette somehow managed to get six players on the floor for the winning shot in overtime. And that wasn't the worst indignity that day. Only 2,137 fans took advantage of a $1 ticket promotion, showing that very few considered the Hilltoppers worth a buck.
The next day, coach Ken McDonald was fired, replaced by Harper, an assistant. The Hilltoppers responded by losing their next three games.
Slowly, they grew form a young, bad team into one that found its stride at tournament time. They won four games in four days for the Sun Belt's automatic berth.
And here they were on Tuesday, making an even bigger comeback in the NCAA tournament before an audience that seemed to add to both teams' jitters at the outset.
There was no avoiding the guest list. During the first timeout, photographers from the White House press corps went on the court to snap photos. The two referees on that side of the court shook the president's hand.
MVSU led most of the way and seemed to have everything in control until Western Kentucky went to a full-court press.
``I thought it was just our guys got rattled, got excited, and got a little bit beside themselves,'' coach Sean Woods said. ``Normally in a situation like that, maybe it's one guy or two. But when it's all five, it was like a snowball effect.''
Burwell had a chance to tie the game with a 3 in the closing seconds. Cor-J Cox had a putback at the buzzer that left the Delta Devils a point short.
The most surprising thing? Western Kentucky didn't even think it was all that extraordinary.
It was, in every way.
With a president and a prime minister sitting in the front row behind the basket, the Hilltoppers turned up their full-court press and overcame a 16-point deficit in the last 5 minutes on Tuesday night. Their 59-58 victory over Mississippi Valley State christened it as the tournament of comebacks.
Who better to do it than the longest of long shots?
``Wow,'' coach Ray Harper said, his face still flush with March emotion. ``I don't know where to begin.''
With the comeback, of course. There's never been one quite like it.
T.J. Price's three-point play with 33 seconds to go completed the Hilltoppers' unprecedented rally in front of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who headed out at the buzzer.
The NCAA called it the biggest deficit overcome in the final 5 minutes of a tournament game. The previous best: Illinois overcame a 15-point deficit in the last 5 minutes to beat Arizona 90-89 in overtime in a regional final in 2005.
Madness indeed.
``It's a crazy feeling,'' said Derrick Gordon, who had 11 points. ``That's the president of the United States coming to watch our game. We wanted to put on a show. Things didn't work our way for the first 35 minutes, but we came away with the W.
``I'm sure he liked what he saw.''
He saw the only squad with a losing record in the 68-team field get out of its own way long enough to do something special. The Hilltoppers (16-18) shot only 30 percent from the field, turned the ball over an incredible 28 times and won.
The Hilltoppers have rallied from double-digit deficits in each of their last three games, including two in the Sun Belt Conference tournament. Their latest comeback was the biggest of them all.
``We're used to doing it,'' Gordon said. ``We did it all throughout the Sun Belt tournament. No matter how much we were losing by, we were just going to keep on fighting until the buzzer went off. That's something that teams don't know about us.''
Western Kentucky moves on to play Kentucky - the top seed in the South Regional - on Thursday in Louisville, an all-Bluegrass game for the second round.
MVSU (21-13) caught the president's eye while pulling ahead, but couldn't close it out. Kevin Burwell scored 20 points and locked eyes with the president after swishing a 3-pointer while the Delta Devils built their big lead. Obama smiled back.
``Like I said yesterday, we were just trying to put on a show for him,'' Burwell said. ``In the heat of the moment, I just pointed at him a couple of times. That was it.''
Obama - an avid basketball fan who fills out an NCAA bracket each year - spent a lot of time explaining the nuances of the game to Cameron. Obama has picked Kentucky as one of his Final Four teams.
A smaller school from a corner of the commonwealth became the star of the First Four.
The Hilltoppers were the losers' favorite in the bracket - the first team since Coppin State in 2009 to make it to the tournament with a losing record.
And that didn't even begin to tell their story.
A team featuring seven freshmen lost 11 of its first 16 games. The low point came on Jan. 5, when Louisiana-Lafayette somehow managed to get six players on the floor for the winning shot in overtime. And that wasn't the worst indignity that day. Only 2,137 fans took advantage of a $1 ticket promotion, showing that very few considered the Hilltoppers worth a buck.
The next day, coach Ken McDonald was fired, replaced by Harper, an assistant. The Hilltoppers responded by losing their next three games.
Slowly, they grew form a young, bad team into one that found its stride at tournament time. They won four games in four days for the Sun Belt's automatic berth.
And here they were on Tuesday, making an even bigger comeback in the NCAA tournament before an audience that seemed to add to both teams' jitters at the outset.
There was no avoiding the guest list. During the first timeout, photographers from the White House press corps went on the court to snap photos. The two referees on that side of the court shook the president's hand.
MVSU led most of the way and seemed to have everything in control until Western Kentucky went to a full-court press.
``I thought it was just our guys got rattled, got excited, and got a little bit beside themselves,'' coach Sean Woods said. ``Normally in a situation like that, maybe it's one guy or two. But when it's all five, it was like a snowball effect.''
Burwell had a chance to tie the game with a 3 in the closing seconds. Cor-J Cox had a putback at the buzzer that left the Delta Devils a point short.
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