Wildcats sink Texas Tech
Edwin leads Seton Hall over Villanova 66-65
MANHATTAN, Kan, Feb 26, (AP): With three games remaining in the regular season, Kansas State continued to close in on an elusive conference title.
The 13th-ranked Wildcats last won a regular season league title in 1977, but thanks to unprecedented success under first-year coach Bruce Weber and an uncharacteristic three-game losing streak by rival Kansas, Kansas State is tied with the sixth-ranked Jayhawks for first place in the Big 12.
Monday night’s 75-55 victory over Texas Tech kept the Wildcats’ hopes alive.
Now Kansas State has to keep its foot on the gas pedal.
Thomas Gipson scored 20 points, Angel Rodriguez added 16, and the Wildcats (23-5, 12-3 Big 12) got their 12th conference win for the first time in 40 years.
Dusty Hannahs scored 14 points for the Red Raiders (9-17, 2-13) and Jaye Crockett added 13.
The Wildcats did not take control until the second half, when reserve Nino Williams jump-started the offense with 11 straight points.
With Texas Tech leading 44-42, Williams got the lead with a three-point play. He scored again after the Wildcats forced a shot-clock violation. He cashed in under the basket after a turnover. The Red Raiders tried to cool off Williams by using a 30-second timeout, but he promptly drained a jumper, giving Kansas State a 51-44 lead - the Wildcats’ largest of the half to that point - with 11:50 to play.
Moments later, he snagged an offensive rebound, scored again, and then grabbed a defensive rebound.
Williams’ scoring burst started the rest of his team, which continued the one-sidedness with a scalding 24-6 run. Kansas State led 66-50 with less than 4 minutes
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to play.
Kansas State opened the game with a 12-4 run that was capped by consecutive dunks by Rodney McGruder.
After that solid start, the Wildcats got sloppy, and the Red Raiders took advantage.
The Red Raiders climbed within 15-12 as four Kansas State players committed a turnover each in a 4-minute spurt.
A 3-pointer by Ty Nurse gave the Red Raiders their first lead of the game with 1:53 to play in the half but a buzzer-beater from the baseline by McGruder gave the Wildcats a 31-30 lead.
Kansas State forward Jordan Henriquez, usually a starter, did not attend the game because he was traveling to New York for his grandmother’s funeral. Gipson started in his place.
Seton Hall 66, Villanova 65 In Newark, Fuquan Edwin scored 18 points, including a 3-pointer with 8.9 seconds left, to give Seton Hall a 66-65 vic- tory over Villanova Monday night.
The victory snapped the Pirates’ (1415, 3-13 Big East) nine-game losing streak and was just the second win in their last 15 tries. The loss snapped a three-game winning streak for Villanova (18-11, 9-7), as the Wildcats suffered a crushing blow as they try to secure an NCAA tournament bid.
With 13 seconds left, Edwin hit two free throws to draw the Pirates to within 65-63, then Tom Maayan made a steal and fed Edwin, who drained a 3-pointer that gave the Pirates the lead at 66-65 with 8.9 seconds left.
Villanova tried to get off a final shot, but Ryan Arcidiacono’s fade away at the buzzer fell short, giving the Pirates the unlikely victory.
Aaron Cosby scored a game-high 21 points for the Pirates. He also had six assists and five rebounds. Kyle Smyth had 12 points, all from long range. Brian Oliver added 11 off the bench.
JayVaughn Pinkston fouled out with 15 points. Mouphtaou Yarou had 14 points, including a clutch baseline jumper with 22 seconds left, and grabbed 15 rebounds. Darrun Hilliard fouled out with 11 points, but hit a huge 3-pointer that gave the Wildcats a 63-58 lead with under a minute to play.
Marquette 74, Syracuse 71 In Milwaukee, On Saturday, Davante Gardner was in Buzz Williams’ doghouse with the Marquette coach benching his junior center after 11 minutes against Villanova for poor play.
What a difference two days make. Gardner scored a career-high 26 points and No. 22 Marquette beat No. 12 Syracuse 74-71 on Monday night in a game that tightened things at the top of the Big East.
After Marquette’s 60-56 loss at Villanova on Saturday, Williams said he benched Gardner center because “he played really bad.” Against Syracuse, Gardner made all seven of his shots and hit 12 of 13 free throws.
Marquette missed nine consecutive shots in the first half, falling behind 2514. Gardner started to make his presence felt late in the half, scoring on a rebound with 3:45 left in the first half for his first field goal, and dominated from there.
Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one North Korean in Pyongyang recoiled and said: “He looks like a monster!”
But Rodman is also a Hall of Fame basketball player and one of the best defenders and rebounders to ever play the game. During a storied, often controversial career, he won five NBA championships - a feat that quickly overshadowed his antics for at least one small North Korean group of basketball fans.
High-profile
Rodman’s is the second high-profile American visit this year to North Korea, a country that remains in a state of war with the US It also comes two weeks after North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in defiance of UN bans against atomic and missile activity.
Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, made a surprise four-day trip to Pyongyang, where he met with officials and toured computer labs in January, just weeks after North Korea launched a satellite into space on the back of a longrange rocket.
Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and others consider both the rocket launch and the nuclear test provocative acts that threaten regional security.
North Korea characterizes the satellite launch as a peaceful bid to explore space, but says the nuclear test was meant as a deliberate warning to Washington. Pyongyang says it needs to build nuclear weapons to defend itself against the US, and is believed to be trying to build an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a missile capable of reaching the mainland US.
Vice, known for its sometimes irreverent journalism, has made two previous visits to North Korea, coming out with the “VICE Guide to North Korea.” The HBO series, which will air weekly start- ing April 5, features documentary-style news reports from around the world.
The Americans also will visit North Korea’s national monuments, the SEK animation studio and a new skate park in Pyongyang.
The US State Department hasn’t been contacted about travel to North Korea by this group, a senior administration official said, requesting anonymity to comment before any trip had been made public. The official said the department does not vet US citizens’ private travel to North Korea and urges US citizens contemplating travel there to review a travel warning on its website.
In a now-defunct US-North Korean agreement in which Washington had planned last year to give food aid to Pyongyang in exchange for nuclear concessions, Washington had said it was prepared to increase people-to-people exchanges with the North, including in the areas of culture, education and sports.
Promoting technology and sports are two major policy priorities of Kim Jong Un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
Along with soccer, basketball is enormously popular in North Korea, where it’s not uncommon to see basketball hoops set up in hotel parking lots or in schoolyards. It’s a game that doesn’t require much equipment or upkeep.
The US remains Enemy No. 1 in North Korea, and North Koreans have limited exposure to American pop culture. But they know Michael Jordan, a former teammate of Rodman’s when they both played for the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.
During a historic visit to North Korea in 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Kim Jong Il, famously an NBA fan, with a basketball signed by Jordan that later went on display in the huge cave at Mount Myohyang that holds gifts to the leaders.
North Korea even had its own Jordan wannabe: Ri Myong Hun, a 7-foot-9 star player who is said to have renamed himself “Michael” after his favorite player and moved to Canada for a few years in the 1990s in hopes of making it into the NBA.
Even today, Jordan remains well-loved here. At the Mansudae Art Studio, which produces the country’s top art, a portrait of Jordan spotted last week, complete with a replica of his signature and “NBA” painted in one corner, seemed an odd inclusion among the propaganda posters and celadon vases on display.