Tech stifles No. 13 Tennessee
NEW YORK — Texas Tech might want to petition to play in the Jimmy V Classic every season. The unranked Red Raiders make a habit of rankling the ranked teams in New York.
Terrence Shannon, Jr. had 18 points and 12 rebounds, and Texas Tech continued its run of Jimmy V Classic shockers in an offensively anemic 57-52 overtime win over No. 13 Tennessee on Tuesday night.
“In OT, we knew the tougher team was going to win,” Shannon said.
The Red Raiders (7-1) were also unranked when they knocked off No. 1 Louisville in 2019 at Madison Square Garden.
Tuesday’s game was classic in title only. Want offense? You wouldn’t find it at MSG, where the Vols (6-2) missed a whopping 34 of 40 3-pointers overall and shot only 27 percent overall from the floor. John Fulkerson led the Vols with 10 points. The Vols went 8 for 16 from the free-throw line.
“I don’t know if we can be any worse on offense than we were in the game,” Vols coach Rick Barnes said. “One or two more and maybe we would have got the lid off of it.”
Those one or two makes never became the three or four needed for a run to hold off the Red Raiders.
Tennessee missed 14 straight shots over a 10minute stretch in the second half and had missed 27 3-pointers until Santiago Vescovi buried the tying 3 with 1:55 left to make it 41-41. Josiah-Jordan James hit another 3 with 31 seconds left to send the game into overtime tied at 44.
NO. 6 VILLANOVA 67 SYRACUSE 53
Justin Moore scored 18 points, Collin Gillespie had 14 and the Wildcats beat the Orange in the Jimmy V Classic.
Jermaine Samuels added 13 for Villanova (7-2) in its 22nd win at Madison Square Garden since 2014.
Gillespie made the play of the game when he picked off a late Syracuse pass and hit a bounce pass to a streaking Samuels for the one-handed jam down the lane and a 10-point lead that sent the crowd into a frenzy.
Jimmy Boeheim led the Orange (5-4) with 21 points.
Gillespie and Moore hit back-to-back 3s late that pushed Villanova to a four-point lead and gave it some needed breathing room. Samuels found room at the top of the arc for a 3 that capped a 12-2 run and helped the Wildcats break loose in their first meeting with the Orange since 2014.
NO. 8 KANSAS 78, UTEP 52
Ochai Agbaji scored 23 points, Christian Braun added 20 and the Jayhawks tuned up for this weekend’s return of the Border War with a blowout of the Miners at Kansas City, Mo.
David McCormack and Mitch Lightfoot added eight points apiece for Kansas (7-1), which led by 21 at halftime at T-Mobile Center and wasn’t threatened the rest of the way.
Now, the Jayhawks turn their attention to Saturday’s showdown with Missouri. The bitter rivals have not played since the Tigers bolted for the SEC nearly a decade ago.
Souley Boom had 18 points and Keonte Kennedy 11 for UTEP (4-4), which famously beat the Jayhawks during their 1966 national title run immortalized in the film “Glory Road.” The Miners also beat Kansas to reach the Sweet 16 in 1992.
NO. 10 KENTUCKY 76 SOUTHERN 64
Oscar Tshiebwe scored 18 of his 23 points after halftime despite being in foul trouble, TyTy Washington Jr. added 14 points in the host Wildcats’ seventh consecutive victory.
Kentucky (7-1) was playing for the first time in eight days. Tshiebwe ended up with 11 rebounds for his seventh double-double — the most in the nation this season.
NO. 12 ARKANSAS 86 CHARLOTTE 66
J.D. Notae recorded his first career double-double and the Razorbacks rolled past the 49ers at Fayetteville, Ark.
Notae finished with 23 points and 10 rebounds as Arkansas (9-0) took control of the game in the first half and never let up. Sophomore Jaylin Williams scored a career-high 15 points and added eight rebounds for Arkansas.
NO. 16 SOUTHERN CAL 80 EASTERN KENTUCKY 68
Isaiah Mobley had a career-high 23 points and 13 rebounds as the host Trojans improved to 9-0 for their best start since opening 14-0 in 2016-17.
Women BUECKERS OUT 6-8 WEEKS
Paige Bueckers, the Connecticut sophomore who is the reigning national player of the year in women’s college basketball, is expected to miss the next six to eight weeks with a tibial plateau fracture, a left knee injury she suffered Sunday.
Bueckers went down with a noncontact injury with 38 seconds left in the Huskies’ 73-54 victory over Notre Dame, silencing the crowd at Gampel Pavilion as she grabbed her knee.