Huskies Fall to Syracuse Finish Amazing Season at (26-11)

 

 

Syracuse just followed the normal plan Sunday night and the Orange are one win from a national championship.

With its strong 3-point shooting barrage challenging Washington’s defense and full-court pressure forcing miscue after miscue, the Huskies finally cracked.

Alexis Patterson scored 18 points, and Brittney Sykes added 17 to help the Orange roll past the surprising Huskies 80-59 and right into their first women’s national title game.

“When you get those type of steals and come out in the second half and you become hungrier and start to turn them over and start to get the ball and you want them more and you understand what’s at stake is you can go home, and that puts fear in you,” Sykes said. “You want to go out and you want to give your all for 40 minutes because you don’t want those to be the last 40 minutes.”

Not a chance now.

The next goal is to end UConn’s historic run on Tuesday night. The three-time defending champs rolled to their 74th consecutive win with a 29-point blowout over Pac-12 champion Oregon State, the largest margin ever in the national semifinals. One more would give UConn a record fourth straight title and another perfect season.

With Syracuse’s blowout, it marked the first time since 1995 — and only the third time in Final Four history — that each of the two games were decided by 20 or more points.

How did Syracuse (30-7) get here?

“They brought us out of our zone early by making (3-point) shots, ran us out of our zone, which is our bread-and-butter,” Washington coach Mike Neighbors said. “They were hot down the stretch. Not doing anything they haven’t been doing for the last month.”

The outmanned Huskies (26-11) couldn’t keep up.

Talia Walton led Washington with 29 points and made her first eight 3-pointers to break the single-game record at a Final Four. The previous mark of six was set by Katie Steding in the 1990 title game and matched in 2013 by Antonita Slaughter.

Third-team All-American Kelsey Plum, the nation’s No. 3 scorer, had a rough night. She scored 17 points, was 5 of 18 from the field and wound up with six turnovers in 40 minutes.

“I felt like the thing that they did best was they really, really made it hard on her for 40 minutes,” Neighbors said. “I wasn’t much help to her tonight, because we kept putting it in her hands and I knew she was tired and I knew she had been stressed like she hadn’t been stressed all year. So a lot of the shooting was because I couldn’t give her a break.”

In their first meeting this season, Syracuse took a 21-point lead before Washington rallied to within one. The Orange held on for a 66-62 victory in November.

This time, Syracuse never let it get close.

Husky Women Reach Final Four

 

 

Chantel Osahor and Kelsey Plum always believed they could help make Washington a championship-caliber program.

They signed with the Huskies as out-of-state recruits even though Washington had never reached the Final Four and hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2006. Their faith was rewarded Sunday when the junior tandem led the seventh-seeded Huskies to an 85-76 victory over No. 4 seed Stanford in the NCAA Lexington Regional women’s basketball final.

“I don’t think it’s really hit us,” said Osahor, wearing a piece of the Rupp Arena net tied to her Final Four hat. “I mean, we’re in the Final Four. That’s a huge accomplishment. I think we’ve got to look back and appreciate it and soak it in because it’s an opportunity a lot of people don’t get.”

Osahor, selected the 4regional’s most valuable player, matched a career high with 24 points and had 18 rebounds. Plum, who began the day as the third-leading scorer in Division I, had 26 points and eight assists.

Their efforts made Washington the first team seeded seventh or lower to reach a Final Four since Minnesota got there in 2004. Washington (26-10) will face Syracuse or Tennessee in a semifinal April 3 in Indianapolis.

“We’re not done yet,” Washington coach Mike Neighbors said. “What’s Next?’ has been our motto. It’s going to continue to be all the way through Indy.”

This marked the first regional final between two Pac-12 schools since Stanford beat Southern California 82-62 on its way to winning the national championship in 1992, when the conference was still known as the Pac-10.

Washington scored the game’s first 12 points, had a 22-7 lead at the end of the first quarter and stayed ahead the rest of the way.

Stanford (27-8) pulled to 78-73 on Lili Thompson’s 3-pointer with 1:07 left. An offensive foul on Plum allowed Stanford to get the ball back, but Thompson missed a 3-pointer with a minute remaining.

Washington went 7 of 8 on free throws in the final minute.

“We dug ourselves too big a hole in the first quarter,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. “We just for some reason did not come out with the intensity and aggressiveness that we needed to. But I’m proud of our team. We had a great season.”

Thompson scored 19 points for Stanford (27-8), which was seeking its 13th Final Four appearance overall and seventh in the last nine seasons. Erica McCall added 17 points — all in the second half — and 15 rebounds.

This was the third meeting of the season between these two conference foes. Stanford won 69-53 at home on Jan. 29. Washington beat the Cardinal 73-65 on March 4 in the Pac-12 Tournament at Seattle.

Osahor, who had shot a combined 3 of 13 and had averaged just 4.5 points in those two previous games, was a model of efficiency Sunday.

Osahor’s physical presence early in the game also helped Washington hold McCall scoreless in the first half.

“Osahor was really the difference,” VanDerveer said.

Stanford cut Washington’s lead to 67-63 with 7:19 left after Karlie Samuelson, Thompson, Marta Sniezek and McCall hit 3-pointers on consecutive possessions.

The Cardinal had the ball with a chance to cut further into the lead when Plum made a steal and drove to the basket. Although Plum missed her layup, Talia Walton delivered a putback that made it 69-63 with 6:23 remaining.

Stanford made one more charge in the closing minutes, but Plum wouldn’t allow Washington to fold. She scored 19 points in the second half to help Washington earn that Final Four bid she always believed was a realistic goal.

“I definitely thought it was possible,” Plum said. “I think with the right pieces and the right circumstance, anything is possible. We say that today, but credit our team for really believing it. I don’t think anyone else outside our locker room believed that this could happen. And that’s OK, because inside the locker room, that’s what counts.”

Final Four Storylines

 

 

We have a classic Final Four, in a sense: One clear blue-blood favorite (North Carolina), one heavy underdog (Syracuse) and two top-10 teams that could win the whole thing (Villanova and the Oklahoma Buddies).

We have two possibilities, however remote, of a Hall-of-Famer winning a championship and retiring immediately. (That would be Boeheim and UNC’s Roy Williams.)

We have a Villanova team with the most impressive win of the tournament, over No. 1 overall seed Kansas in the South regional final. Oklahoma has the best player. North Carolina has the best team.

And Syracuse? Well, Syracuse doesn’t care about any of that. To a man, the Orange said after they came back from a 15-point deficit with less than 10 minutes remaining to beat Virginia that they always thought they could do it.

There is a lesson there, cheesy as it sounds: Sometimes belief matters more than talent. (And Syracuse has more talent than its seed indicates—freshman guard Malachi Richardson, who lit up Virginia for 21 second-half points, was a McDonald’s All-American.)

There is another lesson here, too: Hire a great coach. And if you have a great coach, keep him—and keep him happy, even if some fans complain about him.

Yes, this is easier written than done, but you would be amazed at how many athletic directors don’t make this the priority in the hiring process. They hire somebody who appeals to the fan base, or plays an “exciting style” or has established a reputation as a “great recruiter,” perhaps on dubious grounds.

When Oklahoma hired Lon Kruger five years ago, he was not the hot young coach who would get fans dreaming of a 30-year run of dominance. He was 59. He did not have ties to one of the country’s top recruits the next year, and he was not coming off a surprising NCAA tournament run that made him the talk of the nation.

But coaches knew Kruger was a great one. His teams at Kansas State, Florida, Illinois and UNLV were all well-schooled and successful. A three-year detour to coach the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA knocked him off his career trajectory for a while, and Kruger is not the kind of salesman who can keep himself in the national conversation even when he is unemployed. But as Oklahoma fans will attest, and the rest of the Big 12 knows too well now, he can build a team as well as just about anybody.

And then there is Villanova’s Jay Wright, whose teams have mostly disappointed in the NCAA tournament. That can earn a coach a bad reputation among people who pay attention to college hoops for one month a year, and it can frustrate a fan base by ratcheting up expectations from October to March, then failing to meet them.

But Villanova stayed steady with Wright. He has never had overwhelming talent—that just doesn’t happen so easily at Villanova. He recruits very well and molds terrific teams. Stay with a coach like that, and you keep getting chances, and eventually you do something like beat Kansas in the Elite Eight and everybody is happy.

The anti-Villanova is Pittsburgh, which just let Jamie Dixon go and replaced him with now ex-Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings. Dixon certainly wasn’t pushed out, but he seemed to realize that Pittsburgh was taking him for granted. He was right. Stallings is not a better coach or a better fit. He is just a different name.

The other two coaches in this Final Four, Williams and Boeheim, are Hall-of-Famers who supposedly couldn’t win the big one, then did.

Game Time Bracket Challenge!!!!

 

Game Time Bracket Challenge!!!!

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Printable Brackets 2016

 

Printable Bracket

Denzel Valentine Big 10 Player of the Year

Denzel Valentine has done it all for Michigan State, and the senior is The Associated Press Player of the Year in the Big Ten.

Valentine was among three unanimous picks on the AP All-Big Ten first team announced Monday along with Indiana guard Kevin ”Yogi” Ferrell and Iowa forward Jarrod Uthoff.

The other first-team selections, determined by a vote of media members who cover the league, were Wisconsin forward Nigel Hayes and Purdue center A.J. Hammons.

Valentine overcame a knee injury that cost him four games early in the season to stamp himself as perhaps the nation’s most versatile player. The senior from Lansing, Michigan, finished the regular season first in the conference in scoring (19.6 ppg) and assists (7.5) and as the top rebounding guard (7.5). Since assists became an official NCAA statistic in 1983-84, no player has averaged as many points, rebounds and assists in the same season.

Indiana’s Tom Crean was voted coach of the year after leading the Hoosiers to their second Big Ten regular-season title in four years. Maryland freshman center Diamond Stone was newcomer of the year, and Hammons edged out teammate Raphael Davis for defensive player of the year.

Valentine ended the regular season with his ninth double-double of the season with 27 points and a career-high tying 13 assists against Ohio State on Saturday.

”I don’t know many guys that have improved in every aspect of the game like he has,” Spartans coach Tom Izzo said. ”I reiterate what I’ve said a bazillion times in the last two weeks. I love another candidate or two out there, but I prejudicially say that he’s the (national) player of the year.”

 

Louisville Banned

 

The University of Louisville plans to announce on Friday a self-imposed postseason ban on its men’s basketball team for the 2015-16 campaign.

The school informed the team’s players in a meeting early Friday afternoon, a source close to the program told The Courier-Journal.

“It’s reasonable to conclude that violations have occurred in men’s basketball program in the past,” school President James Ramsey said during a news conference Friday to announce the sanctions.

The coaches told the players they only had nine games left, another source said, which is the remainder of the regular season.

The decision comes as the NCAA continues to investigate a woman’s claims that she and other escorts were paid thousands of dollars and given game tickets in exchange for dancing for and having sex with Louisville basketball players and recruits from 2010-14.

It is a significant blow to coach Rick Pitino and his current team, which has an 18-4 record and is in second place in the competitive Atlantic Coast Conference.

Louisville, ranked 18th in the USA TODAY Sports, had high hopes for deep runs in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, and has a team built around two graduate transfers, Damion Lee and Trey Lewis, who came to Louisville to play their final college season and pursue their first NCAA tournament bid.

Reached Friday, Lee’s mother, Michelle Riddick, declined to comment. She said in December that there’s “nothing we can do about” the ongoing investigations.

“We’d like to see my son play in the tournament,” she said. “We can’t stress ourselves over what ifs or what might happen.”

 

Men’s Poll

 

 

NCAA Mens Basketball Polls

Questions about Playoff Rankings

 

 

Four questions raised by the current Playoff rankings:

Alabama has one loss, by six points at home to the team ranked No. 18 in the Playoff rankings. Florida has one loss, by seven points on the road to the team ranked No. 2 in the Playoff rankings. Alabama lost 43-37 at home to Ole Miss on Sept. 19. Florida beat Ole Miss 38-10 at home on Oct. 3.

Alabama beat a struggling Georgia team 38-10 in Athens, a victory that Playoff selection committee chair Jeff Long cited as coming against a “quality team”. Florida beat that same Georgia team 27-3 at a neutral site.

Is there really enough difference between the Crimson Tide and Gators that six spots should separate them in the top 25? And if they are separated, should Alabama really be the one that is higher ranked?

Long cited Alabama having three such wins compared to Florida’s two as the reason for Alabama’s better ranking. If wins against teams with a record above .500 are so valuable, why is Utah, whose only loss came at USC, sitting in 12th behind five other one-loss teams?

Of the top dozen teams in the initial rankings, only No. 7 Michigan State can match Utah in terms of wins (5) vs. teams with winning records. Here’s the breakdown of the other 10: Clemson and Stanford 4; LSU, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame and Iowa 3; Florida 2; and Baylor and TCU 1.

As much as the committee, led by its treatment of Alabama, seemed to hold the SEC in high esteem by ranking six of its teams in the top 20, the opposite could be said of the Pac-12. The Pac-12 landed three teams in the top 25 but none in the top 10. And this is not a wait-and-see situation like the back-loaded Big 12. Stanford has dominated No. 23 UCLA and USC with its only loss coming vs. another team ranked in the Playoff committee top 25, and Utah has devastated 5-3 Oregon and beaten No. 17 Michigan.

It appears the failure of some of the Cardinal and Utes’ conference mates to meet high preseason expectations is being held against the Pac-12’s two one-loss teams.

Before Tuesday, Stanford was the clear candidate to be the team that overcomes a bad early loss to make a Playoff run, and it still has a shot with games vs. No. 6 Notre Dame, winning teams at Cal and Oregon and a likely Pac-12 title matchup still to come. But there may be two other better fits in the eyes of the committee.

Eventual champion Ohio State occupied the No. 16 spot in the initial 2014 rankings, and one-loss Florida State has that claim this season. Winning out and beating No. 1 Clemson this week, then beating Florida and the ACC Coastal champion could be enough to propel the Seminoles to their second consecutive Playoff berth.

No. 15 Oklahoma has a similar opportunity. The Sooners winning out would give them the Big 12 championship by virtue of head-to-head wins against Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State while severely thinning the field of Playoff contenders one at a time. There could be an opening that fits the Sooners just right.

Ducks Win a Wild One

 

Bralon Addison got his foot down just in time, barely missing the back line of the end zone. Arrion Springs timed his move just right, snagging an interception in the same end zone.

Two big plays on a night filled with them may have saved Oregon’s season.

Addison scored on a 20-yard pass in the third overtime on a play upheld by review and Springs intercepted Mike Bercovici’s pass in the end zone, lifting Oregon to a wild 61-55 win over Arizona State Thursday night.

“We knew this we going to be a back and forth type of thing,” Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said. “We didn’t know it was going to be 61-55 back and forth.”

Two teams clinging to hopes in their respective divisions, the Sun Devils and Ducks traded explosive plays in a game that featured 1,243 total yards and 177 combined plays.

It came down to a pair of plays in the third overtime.

Addison appeared to touch the back line on his TD catch, but one view of the play was blocked by a camera and the officials upheld the original call upon review.

After Oregon (5-3, 3-2 Pac-12) failed on the mandatory 2-point conversion, Springs sealed it with an interception, sending the Ducks racing onto the field.

“I knew it was coming the whole way — the whole way,” Springs said.

Oregon had 501 total yards and needed another big play just to get into overtime. Dwayne Stanford pulled it off, grabbing Vernon Adams’ fourth-down, desperation pass for an 8-yard touchdown despite being run into by teammate Johnny Mundt.

Charles Nelson had a 100-yard kick return touchdown, and Adams threw for 315 yards and four touchdowns. Royce Freeman added 112 yards rushing and two touchdowns — one in the second overtime — in Oregon’s ninth straight win over Arizona State.

Despite their struggles — No. 7 in the preseason poll to unranked — the Ducks still have a shot at the Pac-12 North title should they keep winning and No. 8 Stanford falters.

The Sun Devils (4-4, 2-3) had 742 total yards — one short of the school record — and scored touchdowns in the first two overtimes, yet still couldn’t stop the Ducks when they needed to.

Bercovici threw for 398 yards and five touchdowns, and added an 18-yard scoring run in the second overtime. Demario Richard ran for 136 yards and scored two touchdowns.

The difference for the Sun Devils was the mistakes: numerous defensive breakdowns, three missed field goals, key penalties and Bercovici’s two interceptions.

“That one hurt about as bad as any one since I’ve been here,” Sun Devils coach Todd Graham said.

Using white sheets to protect their offensive signals — after Utah accused the Sun Devils of stealing signs on Oct. 17 — the Ducks hit big plays right out of the gate.

Adams hit Darren Carrington for a 46-yard completion on the game’s second play, setting up Aidan Schneider’s 24-yard field goal. Later in the quarter, Freeman raced for a 64-yard touchdown. Carrington later broke free after a defensive breakdown, scoring easily on a 39-yard touchdown pass to put the Ducks up 17-7.

Arizona State wasn’t bad, either.

Bercovici drilled a 3-yard touchdown pass to Devin Lucien against tight coverage, and then found Gary Chambers down the sideline for a 39-yard score before halftime.

It turned into a game of “can you top this?” in the second half.

Zane Gonzalez hit a 28-yard field goal and Richard scored on a 22-yard run after an interception by Kareem Orr. Bercovici followed with a 1-yard TD pass from Richard, but the Ducks snatched momentum right back.

Nelson raced for his 100-yard kick return TD and Kani Benoit scored on a 62-yard touchdown to put Oregon up 34-31.