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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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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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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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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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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