Bama bounces Auburn in quarters
ST. LOUIS — The Auburn men’s basketball team’s offense was flowing at the end of the first half Friday afternoon. Desean Murray hit his third 3-pointer and ripped off five straight points to put the Tigers up 41-31 over Alabama at halftime of their Southeastern Conference tournament quarterfinal.
Then the Collin Sexton show started.
Sexton scored 31 points, and the Crimson Tide used a strong second half to defeat 16th-ranked and top-seeded Auburn 81-63.
Alabama (19-14) started the second half on a 28-3 run keyed by three consecutive 3s by Sexton. The surge put the Tigers (25-7) away early in the half, and the Tide outscored their top rivals 50-22 after the break.
“I didn’t raise my voice,” Alabama coach Avery Johnson said. “I used understandable English, no bad words, and we just talked about how we needed to improve in the second half, and they did it.”
Mustapha Heron led Auburn with 18 points, 11 of which came in the first half. Desean Murray scored 15 points, all during a first half in which the Tigers moved the ball well and drilled seven 3s.
After that, it was all Sexton. The freshman scored 21 second-half points a day after scoring 27 points and making the winning shot against Texas A&M.
Auburn’s Jared Harper finished 2-for-11 with seven points, Bryce Brown was 1-for-8 from beyond the arc and the Tigers shot just 24 percent in the second half, including 1-for-14 from 3-point range.
“It was a tale of two halves,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “We did what we wanted to do in the first half. At the start of the second half, they came down and flipped the table on us really quickly.”
The Tigers are a shell of their midseason selves right now. They have lost four of their past six games, and their potential NCAA tournament seeding continues to drop.
Alabama came into the tournament on a five-game losing streak and in danger of falling out of NCAA contention. But after dominating Auburn, the Tide are on the brink of 20 wins and have won six games against ranked opponents this season.
› Kentucky 62, Georgia 49
ST. LOUIS — P.J. Washington scored 18 points to send the Wildcats on to the SEC tourney semifinals and end the Bulldogs’ bid for a league title and sure NCAA tournament bid.
Fourth-seeded Kentucky (2210), which has won three straight league tournament titles and 30 SEC championships overall, will play Alabama today.
Washington scored 11 of his points in the second half and finished 8-for-12 from the field. Former Hamilton Heights standout Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Kevin Knox each added 15 points as Kentucky won for the fifth time in six games.
Tyree Crump led the 12th-seeded Bulldogs (18-15) with 17 points, while senior Yante Maten was held to nine points on 2-of-10 shooting.
The Bulldogs led 23-22 lead late in the first half after a pair of free throws by Maten. But the Wildcats responded with an 8-0 run to take a 30-23 halftime lead and surged ahead by 17 points during the second half.
› No. 1 Virginia 64, Clemson 58
NEW YORK — Kyle Guy scored 15 points and the top-seeded Cavaliers (30-2) got several crucial plays from role player Jack Salt down the stretch to win their Atlantic Coast Conference tournament semifinal.
Virginia is trying to win the league’s tourney title for just the third time. The Cavaliers’ championships came in 1976 and 2014.
Shelton Mitchell had 18 points and Elijah Thomas added 15 for fourth-seeded Clemson (23-9), which is the lone original member of the ACC that hasn’t won the conference tournament.
› No. 9 Kansas 83, Kansas State 67
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Malik Newman poured in 22 points, and Silvio De Sousa filled in admirably for ailing big man Udoka Azubuike as the Jayhawks beat short-handed Kansas State to reach the Big 12 tournament’s title game.
Devonte Graham added 15 points and Svi Mykhailiuk had 12 for the top-seeded Jayhawks (26-7).
The fourth-seeded Wildcats (23-10) learned Friday morning they’d be without All-Big 12 forward Dean Wade, who hurt his foot in their quarterfinal win over TCU. Then they lost starting guard Barry Brown early against the Jayhawks when he was accidentally poked in the eye.
They still put up a fight, thanks primarily to Makol Mawien, the unheralded forward who scored a career-high 29 points.
› Providence 75,
No. 3 Xavier 72, OT
NEW YORK — Alpha Diallo hit a go-ahead jumper with 2:22 left in overtime and fifth-seeded Providence rallied from a 17-point second-half deficit to stunned top-seeded Xavier in a Big East tournament semifinal.
Kyron Cartwright hit a clutch jumper with 55 seconds to go and took an offensive foul on a layup attempt by J.P. Macura with eight seconds to play as the Friars (21-12) beat the Musketeers (28-5) for the second time in three games this season.
This one was totally unexpected after the opening 25 minutes at Madison Square Garden.
› Memphis 67, Tulsa 64
ORLANDO, Fla. — Kareem Brewton Jr. beat the final buzzer with a leaping, one-handed 3-pointer as fifth-seeded Memphis outlasted No. 4 seed Tulsa in a hard-fought quarterfinal at the American Athletic Conference tournament.
Brewton and Kyvon Davenport scored 15 points each for Memphis (21-12), which faces No. 8-ranked and top-seeded Cincinnati today.
Friday’s matchup was a battle down the stretch after Tulsa (19-12) erased an 11-point lead for Memphis (21-12), reducing it to 50-49 after a 12-2 run with just less than eight minutes left. At one point Tulsa made seven field goals without a miss.
Corey Henderson Jr. scored the last seven points in Tulsa’s catch-up run and finished with 20. Neither team led by more than four after that, and in the last six minutes the lead was swapped four times, with four ties.