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N.C.A.A. Tournament Day 3: Kentucky and L.S.U. Head to Round of 16
By David Waldstein and Ben Shpigel
One of the oldest axioms about college basketball is that guard play is the key to tournament success. Action in Jacksonville, Fla., bore that out on Saturday, to the downfall, in part, of little Wofford College and to the benefit of Louisiana State.
Fletcher Magee, the brilliant long-range shooter for No. 7 Wofford, had set an N.C.A.A. record for career 3-pointers made (509) on Thursday during the Terriers’ first-round win over Seton Hall. But he never made another one.
One game after his recording-setting performance, Magee went 0 for 12 from long range as No. 2 Kentucky held on to beat Wofford, 62-56.
Wofford kept the game close throughout and was within 58-56 after Keve Aluma tipped in a shot with a little less than 40 seconds left. But after Kentucky’s Reid Travis hit two free throws, Magee missed his 12th long-range with 5.0 seconds left.
“It’s incredibly disappointing,” Magee said. “I feel like if I make three of those shots, we win the game. You know, a lot of them were good shots, and just, they didn’t go in.”
Kentucky will next play the winner of the game Sunday between No. 3 Houston and No. 11 Ohio State.
Wofford led by as many as 6 points late in the first half, but Kentucky extended its defense to smother Magee, mostly with Tyler Herro and Ashton Hagans working in tandem to power over screens and help out when necessary.
“The game plan was just make him make a basketball play, put it on the floor,” Hagans said. “That’s what we were trying to do. Tyler did a great job of talking to me when he wanted to switch, but you know, for us to be at our best, we’ve just got to talk and be for one another.”
Magee said other teams in the Southern Conference had made similar moves to defend him, without Kentucky’s success.
“I think some of it definitely was their good defense,” he said, “and mainly a lot of it was just me being off my shot.”
Earlier in Jacksonville, Tremont Waters of L.S.U., one of the most dynamic point guards in the country, pushed his team to victory against No. 6 Maryland — not from long range — but with a driving, scooping layup that helped the No. 3 Tigers avoid an upset.
Like Magee, Waters missed all of his 3-point attempts (he took four), but his layup with 1.6 seconds remaining in the game gave the Tigers a 69-67 win.
Waters ran that final possession to perfection, punctuating an intrepid dribble drive with the winning scoop shot. Early in the season, L.S.U. Coach Will Wade impressed upon Waters the importance of ball security by telling him the basketball was like the state of Louisiana.
“If I turn the ball over,” Waters said Friday, “then it’s not good for the state and obviously for our basketball program as a whole.”
Wade, who is suspended indefinitely after being linked to a recruiting scandal, did not accompany the Tigers to Jacksonville. But his advice still resonated for Waters, whose late-game ballhandling helped the Tigers avoid what would have been a dreadful collapse against Maryland. L.S.U. advances to play a second consecutive Big Ten team, Michigan State or Minnesota, on Friday night in Washington in what will be its first trip to the round of 16 since 2006, when it reached the Final Four.
This year’s team, loaded with talented players, came into March almost expecting a deep run into the tournament, at least until Wade was suspended. But the assistant Tony Benford took over, and the athletically gifted Tigers advanced to another week of basketball.
“They’re big-time athletes,” Maryland Coach Mark Turgeon said. “Crazy athletes, and the point guard is terrific.”
To slip past Maryland, L.S.U. overcame a miserable stretch in the second half, when the Terrapins’ 3-2 zone forced the Tigers into taking deep outside shots. Maryland erased a 15-point deficit, and the teams traded leads until the Terrapins tied the score one final time, on Jalen Smith’s 3-pointer with 25.8 seconds left.
Playing for the final shot, L.S.U. put the ball in the hands of Waters, who started moving toward the basket with about 6 seconds to go. He dribbled toward the 6-foot-10 Smith, hesitated, and then ducked around him before flipping an underhand shot off the glass.
When a desperation shot by Maryland clanged off the top of the backboard at the buzzer, the Tigers piled on Waters to celebrate the nerve-racking victory.
“I was in the bottom of the dog pile,” Waters said, “and just the feeling, it feels amazing.”
Michigan, the No. 2 seed in the West, advanced past No. 10 seed Florida, 64-49, in Des Moines to reach the round of 16 for the third consecutive season and fourth time since 2014.
Michigan led by 4 points at halftime and then used a stifling defense in the second half to limit Florida to 28.6 percent shooting as the Wolverines pulled away. Michigan Coach John Beilein pulled his starters as a unit with 24.6 seconds to play to a standing ovation from Wolverines fans seated behind their bench.
Sunday’s Games
All three No. 1 seeds in action reached this point by following a similar, if undesired, formula: They struggled early, stabilized around halftime, and then dominated in the second half. Of the three, Duke has the most intriguing matchup — and not only because Central Florida Coach Johnny Dawkins once assisted, and played for, Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski. The most delicious subplot involves the Blue Devils’ dunker extraordinaire, Zion Williamson, and whether he will attempt to slam on the Knights’ Tacko Fall, who at 7-6 is nearly a foot taller.
“It’s very hard,” Fall told NCAA.com. “I mean, I won’t allow it. I won’t allow it. I won’t allow him putting me on one of his highlight tapes.”
Central Florida is one of the four No. 9 seeds that moved on in the first round’s games Thursday and Friday, joining Washington, Baylor and Oklahoma in sweeping the No. 8 teams for the first time since 2001. Oklahoma faces No. 1 Virginia, which, with a victory, would draw what could be the least daunting matchup in the round of 16.
It is the Cavaliers’ good fortune — and, really, no team needed some good fortune more than Virginia after its unceremonious early departure from last year’s N.C.A.A. tournament — that upsets abounded in their quarter of the bracket. Either No. 12 Oregon or No. 13 University of California, Irvine, awaits in the South Region semifinals. The Ducks have won their last nine, and the Anteaters have won their last 17 — so, umm, never mind about that least daunting matchup thing.
“I told our guys don’t look at numbers,” Oregon Coach Dana Altman said. “That’s one thing about seeds: People look at numbers, and, man, you can’t do that. They’ve won, what, 31 games. Haven’t lost forever. I don’t care.”
Oregon and U.C. Irvine each won in San Jose, Calif., where another low-seeded team, Liberty, No. 12 in the East, toppled No. 5 Mississippi State. Liberty trailed by 10 points with about seven minutes left when Coach Ritchie McKay called a timeout.
“I said if we come back, we’ll go to In-N-Out Burger,” McKay said when asked what he told the team in the huddle that could have ignited the Flames’ 27-13 closing run.
More burgers could be in the offing if the Flames, who have won 11 of their last 12 games, can defeat their neighbor in the Old Dominion State, No. 4 Virginia Tech, whose campus is just 90 miles from Liberty’s.
Until this college basketball season, perhaps the lone link between Houston and Buffalo was their role in the largest comeback in N.F.L. history, when the Bills overcame a 32-point deficit to oust the Oilers from the playoffs in 1993. The cities’ namesake colleges have won the most games, 32, and, with three losses each, are tied with Gonzaga and Virginia for the fewest defeats.
Pat Borzi contributed reporting from Des Moines.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/sports/ncaa-tournament-day-3.html
2019-03-23 23:48:45Z
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