Gonzaga to face Tar Heels in NCAA final
TOP seeds Gonzaga advanced to the final of the US national college basketball championship after downing South Carolina 77-73 in Arizona on Saturday.
The Bulldogs survived a second-half collapse which saw them blow a 14-point lead before they regathered their composure to hold on with two late free-throws in a seesaw Final Four duel.
The v ictor y at t he Universit y of Phoeni x Stad iu m i n Glendale means Gonzaga will face North Carolina in today’s f inal (at 8:20am on Tuesday morning Cambodian time).
The Tar Heels advanced to the final after squeezing past the University of Oregon 77-76 in Saturday’s other semifinal.
“It’s an amazing thing,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams told the New York Times after the game. “Three-hundred and fifty-one teams start playing, and this is the second year in a row we were one of two left.”
Gonzaga point guard Nigel Willia ms-Goss led t he scoring for t he Bulldogs wit h 23 points, f ive rebounds and si x assists, while towering freshma n Zach Col l i ns had 14 points and 13 rebounds from the bench.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few lavished praise on his team after a pulsating win.
“I’ve had some really, really tough teams. I’ve had some really close teams,” Few said.
“I’ve had some teams that have been crazy efficient on the offensive end and ones that have been pretty darned good on the defensive end that probably didn’t get credit for it. These guys are all of that – all of it.”
However, Gonzaga were almost left rueing what would have been an upset defeat when a 65-51 lead with 11 minutes to play turned into a 67-65 advantage for South Carolina after 16 unanswered points.
Collins, however, came to the Bulldogs’ rescue, sinking a 3-pointer to give his team the lead once more and launch a 7-0 run.
South Carolina almost levelled the score at 74-74 but Rakym Felder’s attempted layup was blocked by the imposing figure of Collins.
Williams-Goss, meanwhile, said Gonzaga had been motivated by pre-match talk from South Carolina that they might be paralysed by nerves.
“The journey we’ve been on has just been unreal. And we just never stopped believing and we’ve had the utmost confidence in ourselves the entire season long,” WilliamsGoss said.
“I guess they were making comments that we were the most nervous team in the tournament.
“A nd, you k now, we just heard ever y t hing this year – we’ve heard the conference, we’ve heard [that] we haven’t played t ight ga mes, t hat we are not tough. We have heard ever y t hing.”
UConn streak ends
Meanwhile, the historic 111game winning streak of the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team ended on Friday as the Huskies fell 66-64 in overtime to Mississippi State University in the NCAA tournament semifinals.
Guard Morgan William hit a 10-foot jump shot at the buzzer in overtime to lift the Bulldogs to the stunning victory in Dallas, Texas.
Mississippi State led 64-62 before a flagrant foul call on Bulldogs guard Dominique Dillingham allowed Connecticut’s Katie Lou Samuelson to knot the score from the free throw line with 26.6 seconds left in overtime.
But the Huskies couldn’t score on the ensuing possession as Mississippi State created a turnover to set up William’s decisive shot.
Four-time defending champions Connecticut, in their 10th straight women’s Final Four, hadn’t lost a game since November 17, 2014. Their streak of 111 straight wins eclipsed the previous record of 90 straight set by UConn teams between 2008 and 2010.
Mississippi State will play for the women’s national championship (4am this morning Cambodian time) against South Carolina, who defeated beat Stanford 62-53 in the other semifinal.