First Posted: 3/27/2015
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Montrezl Harrell is not ready for the end of his college career at Louisville just yet. Anton Gill helped make sure it continues at least one more game.
Harrell scored 24 points, Gill keyed a late-game surge with seven points off the bench, and Louisville beat North Carolina State 75-65 on Friday night in the East Regional semifinals of the NCAA Tournament.
“We don’t want to go home,” said Harrell, a junior who plans to enter the NBA Draft. “We took our bumps and bruises throughout the season, but we came together at the right time. Everything just gelled at the right time.”
Louisville (27-8), the fourth seed in the East and seeking to make its third Final Four in four years, will play seventh-seeded Michigan State in the East final on Sunday. The Spartans beat third-seeded Oklahoma 62-58.
After toppling top-seeded Villanova, North Carolina State (22-14), the eighth seed, saw its postseason run end against a team that refused to quit.
“Late in the game they made some plays there that were the difference,” N.C. state coach Mark Gottfried said. “He (Gill) made a couple of tough shots there. I thought it was that little stretch that gave them the cushion, and it was the difference in the game.”
Louisville wasn’t given much chance of playing in late March after it lost two of three entering the NCAA Tournament, but gritty wins over UC Irvine and Northern Iowa had the Cardinals brimming with confidence.
Guard Terry Rozier had 17 points and a career-high 14 rebounds and freshman guard Quentin Snider added 14 points for the Cardinals.
Louisville coach Rick Pitino has a 12-1 record in Sweet 16 games, 6-1 with the Cardinals.
Trevor Lacey led the Wolfpack with 18 points, while Ralston Turner had 12 and Kyle Washington 11.
Speedy guard Anthony “Cat” Barber, the spark of the Wolfpack’s attack, finished with eight points on 3-of-14 shooting, only briefly getting untracked early in the second half.
Before the game, Pitino promised a surprise and Gill delivered. Gill, who averaged 9.5 minutes and 2.4 points during the season, hit a runner and a 3 from the right corner in a span of a minute as Louisville regained the lead late in a seesaw game. He followed with a tough baseline drive through traffic for a 62-57 lead with 3:33 left.
“Anton and I had an interesting conversation the other day,” Pitino said. “I said, ‘You’re going to get your opportunity, son.’ He went in and basically won the game for us.”
And he did it against his hometown team.
“It’s kind of weird. I didn’t really realize we were playing N.C. State,” Gill said. “We’ve been so focused on what we need to do as a team. It’s funny how things work.”
After Gill’s drive, Lacey missed and Rozier stormed back on a fast break, his off-balance shot caroming in off the back of the iron as Turner committed a foul. Rozier calmly made the free throw to complete a three-point play for a 65-57 lead with 3:05 left.
Harrell’s driving layup with 1:41 to go boosted the lead to 67-57 and that effectively put an end to the Wolfpack’s postseason run.
“That stretch right there, they had some separation right at that point of the game,” Gottfried said. “That’s what the game’s about.”
The Wolfpack’s bigs faltered repeatedly inside as Louisville outscored N.C. State 40-24 in the paint and finished 27 of 54 from the field. State’s BeeJay Anya, Abdul-Malik Abu and Lennard Freeman combined to shoot 4 of 14 and registered just two blocks, two fewer than the Cardinals.
Before the start of the second half, Gottfried pulled Barber aside at the bench, put his arm around his neck and gave him a pep talk before tapping him on the rear end. Held scoreless in the first half, Barber responded by draining two 3-pointers to boost the Wolfpack’s lead to 39-31.
Unfazed, Louisville responded with a 16-2 run to regain the lead. Snider hit a 3 from the right wing just seconds after Mangok Mathiang had stuffed Abu at the rim and two free throws by Wayne Blackshear put the Cardinals up 47-41 with 12:58 left.
Determined to keep its storybook run going, the Wolfpack rallied again. Lacey’s 3 from the top of the key gave them a 54-53 lead with 7:15 left.
N.C. State rallied from 16 points down in the second half against LSU and won by a point on Anya’s basket with 0.1 on the clock, then imposed its will on Villanova.
They were unable to duplicate that performance against the Cardinals, who limited N.C. State to 38.3 percent shooting (23 of 60).
TIP-INS
N.C. State: The Wolfpack were wildly inconsistent all season. They handed Duke its first loss of the season, but also lost by double digits to Clemson. They went from not winning consecutive games for more than two months — State went 6-10 from mid-December to mid-February — to closing the season with five wins in six games, something they hadn’t done in 27 years.
Louisville: The Cardinals have won seven of their last eight regional semifinal games. … Pitino moved to 53-17 in the tournament, tying Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim among active coaches in tournament wins. … It was the 21st Sweet 16 appearance and a school-record fourth straight for Louisville, which has made two of the past three Final Fours, winning the title in 2013.
UP NEXT
N.C. State: Season over.
Louisville: Michigan State on Sunday in East Regional final.
Michigan State 62, Oklahoma 58
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Denzel Valentine scored 13 of his 18 points in the second half to lead Michigan State to a 62-58 win over Oklahoma in an NCAA Tournament East Regional semifinal on Friday night.
Counted out in February, the Tom Izzo-coached Spartans (26-11) are instead headed to the Elite Eight for the second straight year and fourth time since 2009. And they’re going as a seventh-seeded team that knocked off the third-seeded Sooners (24-11), a week after knocking off No. 2 Virginia.
Travis Trice led the Spartans with 24 points, while Branden Dawson had 11 rebounds.
Buddy Hield led the Sooners with 21 points.
Michigan State is the lowest-seeded team still in the tournament, and advances to face fourth-seeded Louisville on Sunday.
The game turned once Michigan State took its first lead, going up 44-42 on Dawson’s 8-foot turnaround jumper with 9:26 left. The teams traded the lead four times before the Spartans went ahead for good with 6:42 left, when Matt Costello put back his own miss with an emphatic dunk.
After Hield missed a 3-point attempt at the other end, Valentine responded by hitting a pull-up 3-pointer in transition to make it 51-47.
And Michigan State maintained the lead by finally hitting shots from the free-throw line. After missing seven of their first 10, the Spartans were perfect on their final six free throws.
Trice hit two to put Michigan State up 62-58 with 13.2 seconds left. Hield missed a 3-point attempt on what became the Sooners’ final possession in a game that stretched into Saturday morning.
The Sooners got off to a blistering start on offense by hitting eight of their first 11 attempts, and built a 18-8 lead on Khadeem Lattin’s putback of a Jordan Woodard miss 5 1/2 minutes in. It was an impressive start against a stingy Spartans’ defense that had limited Virginia to hitting just 17 field goals in a 60-54 win last weekend.
Oklahoma, however, couldn’t maintain the pace and allowed the Spartans back into the game. Valentine missed six of his first seven attempts before hitting a 3-point basket with 2:36 left to cut the Sooners lead to 31-27.
TIP-INS
Michigan State: The Spartans improved their NCAA tournament record to 62-27, and moved into seventh place on the victory list — one ahead of Syracuse. … The Spartans were a No. 7 seed when they reached the Elite 8 in 2003.
Oklahoma: Coach Lon Kruger stayed true to form by starting the same five he’s had all season. The Sooners are just one of six teams in the nation to start the same five this year. Kruger did the same last year. … The Sooners bench, which had combined for 30 points in its last two games, managed just 3 points against the Spartans.
UP NEXT:
Michigan State: Faces No. 4 seed Louisville in the East final on Sunday. The Spartans trail the all-time series 5-3, and meet the Cardinals the tournament for the fourth time — and third in seven years.
Oklahoma: Season is over with the Sooners losing just one starter, senior forward TaShawn Thomas, to graduation
Gonzaga 74, UCLA 62
HOUSTON — Growing up in Poland, Przemek Karnowski had to stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. to watch the NCAA Tournament.
Gonzaga’s big man got to star in the show in prime time on Friday night, scoring 18 points with nine rebounds to lead the second-seeded Bulldogs to a 74-62 win over No. 11 seed UCLA in the Houston Regional semifinals.
The victory puts Gonzaga (35-2) in the Elite Eight for the second time, its first regional final since 1999. The Bulldogs will play top-seeded Duke on Sunday.
UCLA (22-14) opened the second half with a 6-0 run to get within 35-34. Gonzaga got going after that, scoring the next 12 points, thanks to the powerful inside game of the 7-foot-1, 288-pound Karnowski to make it 47-34.
“For me it was always a dream to be here and to play deep into the NCAA Tournament,” Karnowski said. “And right now I’m here and I’m trying to enjoy every second of it.”
Karnowski helped the Bulldogs grab six more offensive rebounds than UCLA, which Bruins coach Steve Alford believes was the key to the game.
“We didn’t rebound the basketball,” Alford said. “They got too many second shots.”
Gonzaga’s Kyle Wiltjer raved about Karnowski’s work.
“He was a beast down there, just gobbling up offensive boards,” Wiltjer said. “It’s so easy for us, especially when we’re on the perimeter, to just throw it down to him and he gets a bucket.”
The Bruins, who lost in the Sweet 16 for the second straight year, were done in by a tough shooting night that included long stretches without scoring. They were led by Norman Powell’s 16 points.
They quieted doubters who questioned whether they should be in the tournament by winning their first two games, but couldn’t stay with the Bulldogs on a night when their shots weren’t falling. Powell made just 8 of 19 shots and Bryce Alford was 3 of 11.
It’s Gonzaga’s second win over UCLA this season after also beating the Bruins in December. Gonzaga’s only loss to UCLA in the four-game history of the series came in a 73-71 defeat in the regional semifinal in 2006.
It will be the first trip to the round of eight for Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who took over the season after they last made it.
“The one accomplishment that we haven’t done is reach the Final Four and we finally have an opportunity to do that,” Few said.
The Bruins couldn’t find any offense as Gonzaga built its lead early in the second half.
Domantas Sabonis drew ooh’s and ahh’s from the crowd when the 6-10 Lithuanian grabbed a bounce pass from Karnowski and sailed over Isaac Hamilton for a one-handed dunk that made it 51-37 with 11 minutes remaining.
Karnowski found Sabonis again a few minutes later, when he passed it behind his back and Sabonis finished with a layup to push the lead to 14 points.
Gonzaga was up 13-10 less than six minutes into the game when both offenses went cold, combining to miss the next 19 shots.
There were missed layups, shots from the outside that clanged off the rim and even a couple of air balls. No matter what either team tried, they simply couldn’t make a shot for about 6 1/2 minutes. Gonzaga extended the lead a bit with three free throws.
Powell finally ended the field goal drought when he drove into the lane and his layup mercifully fell through the net to cut the lead to 16-12 about eight minutes before halftime. The Bulldogs scored a few seconds later on a jump shot by Karnowski.
Gonzaga led 35-28 at halftime.
VENUE TO BLAME FOR POOR SHOOTING?
With both teams struggling to shoot, many questions were asked about whether the venue caused problems. The games are being played in NRG Stadium, which is home to the Houston Texans, and the setup, with no walls behind either basket, challenges players’ depth perception.
Entering Friday’s game, teams have shot a combined 39.8 percent in nine NCAA Tournament games at NRG. UCLA shot 38.8 percent on Friday and Gonzaga shot 40.3 percent.
But no one on either team would use that as an excuse.
“We just missed shots,” Wiltjer said. “You either make them or you don’t. We don’t really blame it on the arena or anything like that.”
TIP-INS
UCLA: Alford had eight points. … Looney had nine points and eight rebounds.
Gonzaga: Wiltjer had eight points and 10 rebounds after leading the team in their first two tournament games with 23 and 24 points. … Sabonis scored 12 points before fouling out late.
UP NEXT:
UCLA: As their season ends they wait to see if Looney will stay or declare for the NBA.
Gonzaga: Faces Duke on Sunday in the regional final.
Duke 63, Utah 57
HOUSTON — Mike Krzyzewski and Duke are one win away from getting back to the NCAA Final Four, this time with a talented group of freshmen.
Justise Winslow, the freshman from Houston playing at home the day after his 19th birthday, had 21 points and 10 rebounds for the South Regional’s top-seeded Blue Devils in their 63-57 Sweet 16 victory over revived Utah on Friday night.
Duke (32-4) is going to its 20th regional final, the 14th under Coach K for the most by any active coach. The last Final Four appearance was in 2010, when the Blue Devils also went through Houston on way to their fourth national title.
Winslow is one of three freshman starters for Duke, a trio that includes standout big man Jahlil Okafor and guard Tyus Jones, who had 15 points. Okafor has six points and eight rebounds.
Brandon Taylor had 15 points for the Utes (26-9), the No. 5 seed with an at-large berth out of the Pac-12.
The Blue Devils play No. 2 seed Gonzaga (35-2) on Sunday in the South Regional final, with the winner going to Indianapolis for the Final Four. The Bulldogs beat 11th-seeded UCLA 74-62 in the earlier game Friday night at NRG Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Houston Texans.
Utah and its Coach K, Larry Krystkowiak, got to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2005, and only three years after winning six games in Krystkowiak’s first season.
Leading scorer Delon Wright was the Utes’ only senior starter, and Bachynski the only other graduating player who played regularly.
Wright, who got his third foul on a questionable call with about 5 minutes left in the first half, finished with 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting. Dallin Bachynski added 11 points for the Utes, and 7-foot freshman Jakob Poeltl had 10 points and eight rebounds.
Even after Utah didn’t score until nearly 5 minutes into the game, Duke was down 8-5 before going ahead to stay with an 8-0 run in just over 2 1/2 minutes when all the Blue Devils freshman starters scored.
Winslow’s 3-pointer at 12:36 tied the game 8-8 before Amile Jefferson’s tiebreaking layup. Okafor had a jumper before Jones’ layup made it 14-8 with 9:54 left.
Another 8-0 run after halftime pushed the Blue Devils to a 49-34 lead with 8:41 left.
That spurt was included four free throws by Quinn Cook, the senior guard who also made it to a Sweet 16 in 2013 — but was also part of the Blue Devils squads upset in their NCAA openers last year (Mercer) and in 2012 (Lehigh).
Wright got his third foul with 4:57 left in the first half in a scramble for the ball — under the Duke basket and in front of the Utah bench. Wright and Winslow were both on the floor, the Duke freshman on his back, when the foul was called.
Duke was up 27-17 on a layup by Okafor with 3:04 left, but didn’t score again until after halftime.
Utah cut the deficit in half after Bachynski had a three-point play — after Okafor’s second foul with 1:22 left — and then added two more free throws with 33 seconds left.
Wright got back in the game after halftime, making a jumper on the first shot for a 27-24 score. The Utes never got closer.
TIP-INS
Utah: The Utes missed their first nine shots before Poeltl scored inside with 15:19 left in the first half. And they trailed only 3-2, before Bachynski scored six points in a row for an 8-5 lead.
Duke: Krzyzewski has a record 85 NCAA Tournament wins, 20 more than Dean Smith and Roy Williams.
UP NEXT
Utah: Season Over.
Duke: Play Gonzaga in South Regional final Sunday.
