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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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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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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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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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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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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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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