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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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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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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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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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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