Smart ball: Eagles soar to Big East title
Tyler Kolek and No. 6 Marquette raced out to a hefty lead and never looked back, beating No. 15 Xavier 65-51 on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York to win the Big East tournament for the first time.
Kolek, the Big East Player of the Year, had 20 points and eight rebounds as the top-seeded Golden Eagles (28-6) dominated.
Marquette’s only previous league tournament title was as a member of Conference USA in 1997.
Coach Shaka Smart’s team will head into the NCAA Tournament with a nine-game winning streak. Kolek’s steal and layup made it 51-27 with 14:12 left. Less than a minute later, after two offensive rebounds by the Golden Eagles, David Joplin made a corner threepointer to double up second-seeded Xavier.
“Marquette is a special place that has had a special basketball program for a long, long time,” Smart said. “We’re so proud to bring a championship back to Milwaukee.”
Joplin finished with 12 points. Kolek was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. Adam Kunkel scored 12 points to lead the Musketeers (25-9), who had a five-game winning streak snapped.
Duke 59, Virginia 49
Jeremy Roach scored 23 points and the Blue Devils locked down defensively to win the ACC tournament championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, securing a title in former Glenbrook North star Jon Scheyer’s debut season as the successor to Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Freshman Kyle Filipowski added 20 points and 10 rebounds as the tournament’s MVP for the fourth-seeded Blue Devils (26-8), who completed a final-month surge to the top of the ACC to claim a league-record 22nd championship. It also marked the ninth consecutive win for Duke.
Reece Beekman scored 12 points for Virginia (25-7).
Texas 76, Kansas 56
Dylan Disu overcame early foul trouble to score 18 points, Marcus Carr and Sir’Jabari Rice added 17 apiece and the No. 7 Longhorns silenced a heavily pro-Kansas crowd with a romp against the No. 3 Jayhawks for the Big 12 tournament title in Kansas City, Missouri.
After going more than two decades without a Big 12 tourney championship, the Longhorns (26-8) have won two of the last three.
Jalen Wilson scored 24 points, and Joseph Yesufu, pressed into the starting lineup because of injuries, finished with 11 for the Jayhawks (27-7), who had won 13 of their previous 16 trips to the Big 12 final.
Kent State 93, Toledo 78
Sincere Carry scored 26 points and Malique Jacobs 18 to lead the Golden Flashes (28-6) in the MAC championship in Cleveland. For Toledo (27-7), local prep stars RayJ Dennis (Oswego East) totaled 25 points and six rebounds and Dante Maddox Jr. (Bloom) scored eight points.
This and that
Houston advanced to its fifth consecutive American Athletic Conference championship game with a 69-48 victory against Cincinnati, but star guard Marcus Sasser left the game because of a groin injury.
Sasser, the AAC player of the year who scored 30 points in a quarterfinal win Friday, crumpled with the injury with about 6½ minutes left in the first half. He never returned after the non-contact injury, finishing with four points in nine minutes.
Jelani Williams scored 20 points, including two free throws with 6.1 seconds left, to lead Howard to a 65-64 victory against Norfolk State in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament championship to earn its first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 31 years. The Bison’s stay in 1992 was a short one, losing to No. 1 seed Kansas 100-67.
Buffalo fired coach Jim Whitesell. He went 70-49 in four seasons. Whitesell’s first head-coach job was at Division III Elmhurst (1987-92), before moving on to Division II Lewis (1992-2004) and then to Loyola (2004-11).
Wichita State fired coach Isaac Brown. He went 48-34 in three seasons.
Rick Stansbury resigned after seven seasons as coach of Western Kentucky.