How much can one day say? Saturday was a crescendo for the non-conference portion of the college basketball season, and statements were made coast to coast. Where to begin? How about the beginning (all times Eastern)…
11 a.m., Clemson, S.C.
Memphis has atoned for that ugly 13-point loss at home to Arkansas State. The 87-82 overtime win at No. 16 Clemson said so after coach Penny Hardaway had been so disturbed by the Arkansas State game he never watched the film.
“I didn’t want to see anything. I didn’t even look at ESPN. I look at ESPN all day,” he said. “I just washed it out. I didn’t say anything to the team about it. I just knew what we needed to do moving forward because I knew that wasn’t my team that played against Arkansas State.
“We play like we played today there’s no way we lose that game. Now I think they get the point why that needs to happen every game.”
Noon, Indianapolis.
Yes, Texas A&M has gobs of toughness, even enough to subdue Purdue when most of the building is loudly pro-Boilermaker. The No. 17 Aggies held No. 11 Purdue scoreless for more than seven minutes in the second half of a 70-66 victory, limited Trey Kaufman-Renn to three baskets in the post, and forced glue guard Braden Smith into six turnovers. This same defense has been called upon against an arduous schedule that had already seen Ohio State, Oregon, Creighton, Rutgers, Wake Forest, and Texas Tech. Texas A&M is another star in the SEC galaxy of powerhouses.
Afterward, coach Buzz Williams mentioned the development his 9-2 team has accomplished through its non-conference trek and the risks taken.
“The more you can understand the value of each possession and the more you can be comfortable in being uncomfortable, at least it gives you a chance,” he said. “Our guys, through the schedule we’ve played, through their maturity, through their experience, I think they’re beginning to have maybe a little bit of peace in being uncomfortable. When you have these results it makes it seem like `wow, that was smart.’ But this is a two-possession game Texas Tech was a two-possession game, Rutgers was a two-possession game, Creighton was a two-possession game, It can also go the other way.”
1 p.m. Atlanta.
Yes, the day couldn’t have been more perfect for No. 2 Auburn. At 5 a.m., coach Bruce Pearl became a grandfather. “Got me a beautiful Ball Girl,” he tweeted out. Then his No. 2 Tigers dismantled Ohio State 91-53. Auburn dominated in rebounding 49-28, blocked only five fewer shots than the Buckeyes made (13 to 18), and committed but five turnovers. Johni Broome hit the Buckeyes with 17 points and 14 rebounds in the first half. He finished with 21 and 20, the first 20-20 game for Auburn in 35 years, and managed it in 26 minutes. He also had six assists and no turnovers. Then he rushed back to Auburn to graduate Saturday night. What a day.
Johni Broome DOMINATED against Ohio State 😳
21 PTS
20 REBS
6 AST
3 BLKSAll in ONLY 26 mins 😱 @AuburnMBB pic.twitter.com/qR9fnzN0S8
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) December 14, 2024
“They may be the best team in the country right now,” Ohio State coach Jake Diebler said.
2 p.m. Cincinnati.
Yes, Cincinnati coach Wes Miller was so relieved he thanked his No. 22 Bearcats in the locker room after a 68-65 win over Xavier in the Crosstown Shootout, the fierce rivalry between uneasy neighbors four miles apart. Cincinnati had lost five in a row going back to 2018. It only seemed like forever. “I love it here,” Miller said. “I thanked them because I’ve found a home and I don’t want to get kicked out of my home. If we never figured out a way to win this damn Crosstown Shootout, I was worried everybody was going to run my ass out of town.”
3 p.m. Phoenix.
Yes, it’s harder to score against UCLA’s defense than find light traffic on the Golden State freeway. Arizona went the last 8:45 without a field goal, missing its final seven shots, and that’s how a 13-point Wildcats lead turned into a 57-54 Bruins victory. No. 22 UCLA, with the nation’s top-scoring defense, has won eight in a row, and only two of the eight opponents got to 60. So, the Bruins’ wins might not always be scenic. The two teams combined on Saturday for 36 turnovers and only six three-pointers, but they will be plentiful.
“Real teams, they don’t talk about it, they just do it,” coach Mick Cronin said of his defense. “I think there are times, and this is for all teams, you forget who you are, forget what it’s about, forget how to win games.”
Soon, we’ll see how that defense stands in the fiery Big Ten arenas of the Midwest.
5:15 p.m. Lexington
Yes, there were two new coaches and two new rosters, but it took one day for Kentucky and Louisville to fully understand what the Bluegrass rivalry is all about. No. 5 Kentucky won this time 93-85.
Louisville’s coach Pat Kelsey: “Every single day, every time I get gas, every time I go get something to eat in the community, (it’s) `Hey coach, how you doing? You going to beat Kentucky this year?’ So I get it, I get it.
“I try to stay present every single day, keep blinders on and work on helping our team become the best they can be. But I’m going to be honest with you, when I walked out of there today, the pageantry of the Louisville and Kentucky rivalry hit me. I looked around, and I saw the atmosphere, and this is before the jump ball went up. I did take a minute to truly appreciate how special it was.”
New Kentucky coach Mark Pope already knew about it since he played in two of these games as Wildcat. An upset loss in 1995 still rattles around his brain. “I was in a full-on teary-eyed sweat last night,” he said after Saturday’s victory. “I blocked (1996) out of my memory. And all of a sudden, it all came rushing back. I’m starting to sweat right now. You get locked in the bus with Coach P (Rick Pitino) for an hour and a half after a two-point loss against Louisville; I don’t wish that on any of you, actually. I bet only half of you guys would come out alive; I kid you not.”
Louisville is only 80 miles from Lexington, but was done in on Saturday by a guy who came from 2,000 miles away. San Diego State transfer Lamont Butler made all 10 of his shots for the Wildcats and scored 33 points, the most for a Kentucky player against the Cardinals in 35 years.
5:30 p.m. Champaign, Ill.
Yes, Tennessee not only has the power to stay No. 1 but the grit. The Vols had trailed 6:38 all season with only 12 lead changes in nine games, but the world was different on Illinois’ home floor. Tennessee trailed for nearly 24 minutes, and there were 13 lead changes before Jordan Gainey’s layup at the buzzer won it for the Vols 66-64. They found a way even with top scorer Chaz Lanier and team leader Zakai Zeigler fouled out. There is an odd stat to go with all this: It was the first Tennessee game with a one-possession gap at the end since March of 2023, a span of 47 contests.
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“I thought it was great that when we came to shoot around, people were already lined up around the building,” coach Rick Barnes said about Tennessee taking that No. 1 ranking out for a spin in a hostile place. “They came out of the restaurant last night, there were some people, a group of students, waiting on us. So I think our guys knew that the atmosphere was going to be what we expected to be, but they got a taste of it 24 hours before it even started happening.”
Barnes had a story about that game-winning play.
NO. 1 TENNESSEE SURVIVES IN CHAMPAIGN WITH A BUZZER-BEATER 😳
YOUR 10-0 TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS ‼️ pic.twitter.com/QAElQr0uZi
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) December 15, 2024
“I was an assistant coach in 1980 at George Mason University. We didn’t have a big recruiting budget, so we decided — Joe Harrington, the head coach — we need to put out a monthly newsletter to all the coaches within a 250-mile radius and try to get George Mason on the map. And so I worked with our SID, and we came up with a segment of it where we were going to call it ‘Coach’s Corner,’ where we want to ask different coaches around the D.C. area to put together their favorite play. And so my first time, I drove over to DeMatha High School and asked Morgan Wootten — legendary coach at DeMatha — I said, ‘Coach, you’ve been doing this a long time. I need you to give me your favorite play.’ And he said, ‘okay,’ and he gave it to me. That’s the play we ran today.”
7 p.m. Dayton, Ohio.
Yes, Dayton’s resume should glow in the dark when the NCAA tournament selection committee gets a look at it in March. The same Flyers who knocked off then No. 2 Connecticut, pushed North Carolina and Iowa State to the wire in Maui stormed past Marquette 71-63. Since the Golden Eagles were No. 4 in the coaches’ poll, this gave Dayton two wins over top-five teams. The last time the Flyers did that was in 1967, and they ended up in the national championship game.
8 p.m. Madison Square Garden.
Yes, the Maui Flu seems ancient history for Connecticut, now that the Huskies have won four in a row, including 77-71 over Gonzaga. From freshman Liam McNeeley’s 26 points (and no turnovers) to a defense that limited the No. 8 Zags to 38.7 percent shooting the second half and no field goals the last 3:25, No. 18 Connecticut seemed ready for prime time again in midtown Manhattan. The impressive victory came with star Alex Karaban having a stormy shooting night, missing all seven 3-point attempts. This was only 17 days after an 18-point shellacking by Dayton, which resulted in three losses in three days in Maui. The focus was on Dan Hurley’s constant broadside on the officials. UConn came home to a widespread panning, especially its coach.
“The narratives and the external noise, people not of our character and caliber it might have really gotten to them,” Hurley said. “Maui was a very complex trip. There were a lot of things going on. The three games felt like one long game.”
But now he says the experience was “very valuable to me… I coached the guys mad out there in Maui. Mad that they weren’t playing the kind of basketball that I wanted them to play. I learned a lot from that experience. Some of the criticism I took I deserved. Not all of it.”
8:30 p.m. Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Yes, No. 7 Alabama continues to be pain relief for the shaken Tide fans. It’s been a hard fall in Tuscaloosa. No College Football Playoff and New Year’s Eve will be particularly unsettling when they’ll try to get excited about the ReliaQuest Bowl in the afternoon and then watch Boise State play in a CFP quarterfinal at night. But at least the basketballers are still a top-10 threat and showed it by beating Creighton 83-75.
The Tide are 8-2 despite playing seven consecutive opponents who are or have been ranked this season. “I think this will be a win that goes a long way come March,” coach Nate Oats said.
He wasn’t alone in that idea. Saturday might linger in lots of places.
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