Loyola’s prayer answered again
Loyola-Chicago’s Sweet 16 dreams bounced on the front of the rim, lightly touched the backboard, and rattled a couple times before slipping through the net.
Another prayer answered in the waning seconds, and now Sister Jean’s Ramblers are heading to Atlanta.
Clayton Custer’s jumper got that friendly bounce with 3.6 seconds left, and 11th-seeded Loyola beat Tennessee, 63-62, in a South Region second-round game last night in Dallas.
Custer’s winner came two days after Donte Ingram’s buzzerbeating 3 from the March Madness logo against Miami, surely to the delight of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the team chaplain and occasional coach, watching from her wheelchair on a platform near the main TV cameras.
“The only thing I can say, glory to God for that one,” Custer said. “The ball bounced on the rim and I got a good bounce.”
The Ramblers were the longshot story of the first round — until 16th-seed UMBC beat No. 1 Virginia to pull off the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history. That’ll be hard for the Ramblers (30-5) to top, but they’re working on it.
The Missouri Valley champions broke the school record for wins set by the 1963 NCAA championship team. The small Catholic college in the heart of Chicago will play the Cincinnati-Nevada winner in the regional semifinals Thursday in Atlanta.
“Of course,” Schmidt said when asked if she’ll be with the team.
No. 3 seed Tennessee (26-7) took its only lead of the second half on a three-point play by Grant Williams with 20 seconds remaining.
After Loyola almost lost the ball on an out-of-bounds call confirmed on replay, Custer took the inbounds pass with 10 seconds left, dribbled left and then right, pulled up and let go of the winner.
The Vols’ Jordan Bone got a decent look at last-gasp 3, but it bounced away, and Custer threw the ball off the scoreboard high above the court as he was mobbed by teammates in the same spot that the Ramblers celebrated Ingram’s dramatic winner.
“I’ve seen him make one, two dribble, one-two pull-up probably a million times,” said Ben Richardson, who won two high school state championships with Custer in Kansas and has been his teammate since third grade. “He makes it like a 98 percent clip.”
The Ramblers fell behind 15-6 in less than 5 minutes before the Volunteers missed their next nine shots and fell behind for the first time on Custer’s 3-pointer with 6 minutes left in the first half.
Admiral Schofield scored 11 of those first 15 Tennessee points but didn’t score again until a 3 nearly 32 minutes later that started a rally from a 10-point deficit in the final 4 minutes by the SEC regular-season co-champions.
Gonzaga 90, Ohio St. 84 — In Boise, Idaho, Zach Norvell Jr. had 28 points, Rui Hachimura added 25 and the Bulldogs are headed back into the Sweet 16 after a win over the Buckeyes in the West Region.
Norvell hit the late tiebreaking 3-pointer against UNC-Greensboro in the opening round to help the Zags advance. The confident freshman made 6-of-11 from the arc against Ohio State to lead Gonzaga (32-4) into the Sweet 16 for the fourth straight season — two wins from a return trip to the Final Four.
The Bulldogs jumped out to a big early lead, withstood a second-half Ohio State charge and made the big plays down the stretch to earn a spot in the Wet Region semifinals against the Xavier-Florida State winner in Los Angeles.
The resilient-all-season Buckeyes (25-9) rallied from an abysmal start and an 11-point halftime deficit to take a brief second-half lead before Gonzaga went on an 11-0 run to snatch it back.
Keita Bates-Diop had 28 points and Kam Williams 19 for Ohio State.
Kansas 83, Seton Hall 79 — Malik Newman scored 28 points, Udoka Azubuike stood toe-to-toe with the Pirates’ Angel Delgado, and the top-seeded Jayhawks survived in Wichita, Kan., and now head to their third consecutive Sweet 16.
Svi Mykhailiuk added 16 points and Lagerald Vick had 13 for the Jayhawks (29-7), who converted on every crucial play down the stretch to advance to the semifinals of the Midwest Region.
They’ll take on the winner of today’s game between Auburn and Clemson in Omaha, Nebraska.
Delgado finished with 24 points and 23 rebounds in a virtuoso effort for the No. 8 seed Pirates (22-11).
Khadeen Carrington finished with 28 points, many of them on 3-pointers in the closing minutes, and Myles Powell added 14 as the pair of guards tried in vain to keep Seton Hall alive.