Radford earns first NCAA win
DAYTON, Ohio — Travis Fields Jr. and Ed Polite Jr. each scored 13 points to lift Radford to its first NCAA Tournament win, 71-61 over LIU Brooklyn in the First Four on Tuesday night.
Carlik Jones added 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Highlanders, who move on to face No. 1 seed Villanova on Thursday in Pittsburgh. Radford, the Big South champion, is making its third tournament appearance and first since 2009.
LIU Brooklyn stayed within striking distance for much of the game and got to within a point with five minutes left, but a 9-1 surge by the Highlanders allowed them to close it out.
The Blackbirds went without a field goal in the last seven minutes of the game and shot 30.4 percent in the second half. Both teams were plagued by turnovers.
Jashaun Agosto scored 16 points and Raiquan Clark added 14 for LIU Brooklyn, which is winless in seven trips to the tournament.
Radford led 30-28 at the end of a sloppy first half after leading by as many as nine. The Blackbirds scored 11 of their points on nine turnovers by Radford but were just 3 for 13 from beyond the 3-point line in the half. without forward De’Andre Hunter, the ACC’s sixth man of the year, for the NCAA Tournament because of a broken left wrist.
The school announced Tuesday that Hunter, a 6-foot-7 swingman who can also play guard, suffered the injury during the ACC Tournament, but did not say how.
He will have surgery Monday and miss 10 to 12 weeks.
Hunter, a redshirt freshman, sat out last season, but made an immediate impact once he joined coach Tony Bennett’s lineup. He averaged 9.2 points and 3.5 rebounds in 33 games, reached double figures 16 times and led the Cavaliers in scoring on six occasions. His scoring high was 23 points in his fourth game, a 73-53 victory over Monmouth on Nov. 19.
He recorded 14 points and 10 rebounds in a 66-37 victory at Pittsburgh on Feb. 24.
Hunter also had several big moments for Virginia (31-2) late in the year. He banked in a buzzer-beating 3-pointer at Louisville on March 1 to cap an improbable comeback in a 67-66 victory, and then made several critical free throws in the final minutes of the ACC title game as Virginia held off North Carolina, 71-63.
The Cavaliers, the top seed in the South Region, open NCAA Tournament play Friday night against UMBC in Charlotte, N.C.