Goaltending call gives UCLA win over SMU
Bryce Alford’s final jumper appeared offline when he let it fly from behind the 3-point arc, and all the UCLA guard could do was helplessly watch the battle for the rebound.
SMU center Yanick Moreira was in position and seemed to time his leap as he went up to touch it. The officials, however, thought he was a bit too quick and called goaltending and awarded Alford the gamewinning basket with 13 seconds left — one that’s sure to be this NCAA tournament’s most debated.
Alford had no doubt there was interference. “I had a pretty good look at it because I shot it,” Alford said after the 11th-seeded Bruins’ 60-59 South Regional victory over sixth-seeded SMU on Thursday. “From my angle, I saw Kevon (Looney) and another player going after it, and I was confused because he went up and grabbed it on its way to the rim.”
Officials went to the monitor to determine it was a 3 and were resolute in their call, telling a pool reporter that it wasn’t reviewable. SMU coach Larry Brown couldn’t believe it. Said Moreira, “I think I hit the rim first. I hit the net or the rim. That’s how it kind of goes.”
SMU (27-7) still had two shots to win, but Nic Moore missed a 3-pointer and then a 2-point attempt that sent the Bruins (2113) into a wild celebration.
The Bruins, a team many felt didn’t belong in the field of 68, advanced to Saturday’s round of 32 against No. 14 UAB, an upset winner over third-seeded Iowa State.
Baylor collapses: The third-seeded Bears were unable to handle Georgia State’s fullcourt defensive pressure down the stretch and lost 57-56 on R.J. Hunter’s long 3pointer in the closing seconds of their West Regional game.
Two foul shots with 2:54 left put Baylor up by 12, but the Bears (24-10) didn’t score again. They finished with 21 turnovers.
Hunter’s 3 with 2.7 seconds remaining capped the comeback for the 14th-seeded Panthers and knocked his proud father, coach Ron Hunter, right off his seat. Ron Hunter worked the sideline in a rolling chair less than a week after tearing his left Achilles tendon while celebrating the Sun Belt Conference championship.
Cyclones shocked: Ninth-ranked Iowa State came into the South Regional looking for a much longer run than a year ago when it reached the Sweet 16 without injured top scorer Georges Niang. The thirdseeded Cyclones, however, just couldn’t Georgia State coach Ron Hunter, who tore his Achilles in a postgame celebration last week, reacts after his team’s upset of Baylor. match 14th-seeded UAB on the boards in the second half and lost 60-59.
Iowa State came in having won five straight, rallying from double-digit deficits in each on its way to the Big 12 tournament title.
The Blazers, who are coached by former Cal star Jerod Haase, came in with the third-youngest team in the NCAA tournament. They wound up winning the program’s first NCAA game since 2005.
Said Haase: “Our thoughts have been, when we play well, we think we can compete with anybody, and those thoughts have been expressed to our team, and our team has made the choice to believe in that.”
Brackets busted: The losses by Iowa State and Baylor decimated millions of brackets across the country in a matter of minutes. Just six games into the tournament, only 14,797 of the 11.57 million filled out on ESPN.com were perfect, according to ESPN’s metrics. That just 0.12 percent.
Big winners: The start of the NCAA tournament has been good for the underdogs and lucrative for Las Vegas sportsbooks. Led by upsets from teams such as Georgia State and Alabama-Birmingham, underdogs won or covered the point spread in 16 of the first 20 games in the tournament. That included a 12- 4 record on Thursday, the first full day of play.
“Extremely positive day for the books,” Jeff Sherman, assistant manager at the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, told Bloomberg, noting that public bettors tend to side more with favorites.
The American Gaming Association estimated that the total amount bet on the NCAA tournament will surpass $9 billion thisyear. Of that, about $240 million will be wagered legally at Nevada’s sports books, according to the gaming association.
Mamadou Ndiaye, at 7-foot- 6 the tallest player in the nation, is leading UC Irvine to its first trip into March Madness. “This has been my dream, to make it to the Big Dance,” Ndiaye said, as he and the 13th-seeded Anteaters prepared for Friday’s East Regional game against fourth-seeded Louisville.
The Senegal-to-America basketball connection isn’t unheard of. Ndiaye’s story veered off course, however, when a concerned mentor looked at his massive size and wondered if something might be amiss. An MRI revealed a golf ball-sized tumor on his pituitary gland, which regulates growth.
With the prep school that sponsored his move to America unable to cover the operations, Ndiaye turned to charity. Donations funded the surgeries, and a family that lived close to the UC Irvine campus assumed guardianship of Ndiaye. When decision time came about where he should go to college, UC Irvine felt like home.