With about 3 minutes left in the game, Texas’ Chendall Weaver hit a free throw to give the Longhorns what looked like a comfortable 9 point lead against the NC State Wolfpack. But remember, no lead is safe in March.
With under 2 minutes to play, Tre Holloman drives to the basket, gets fouled, and makes both the layup and free throw to cut the lead to 6 points. An immediate foul sent Dailyn Swain to the line – where he calmly made both of them. But the Wolfpack’s Paul McNeil Jr would come back and hit a three-pointer, and suddenly that comfortable lead is down to 5 points with 90 seconds to play.
Texas struggles to break the press, and eventually turn it over. Quadir Copeland picks up the ball and drives to the hoop but gets his layup blocked by Tramon Mark. Unfortunately for the Longhorns, the ball would go to NC State, and they would find Paul McNeil Jr for another three-pointer. We have a 2 point game with a minute to play!!!!
Texas almost turns the ball over again but they finally get the ball in successfully, and run down the clock. The ball ends up into Tramon Mark, and he starts to try to get free at the top of the key but he is guarded tightly. But big players make shots – Mark gets almost to the foul line, takes a dribble to his right as if he is going to drive to the lane, pivots and hits a ridiculous fade-away shot to extend the lead back to 4 points at 66-62.
But the Wolfpack were not done, they got the ball out to Darrion Williams on the wing and with a defender in his face, he drills the three-pointer to make it a one point game.
Texas’ struggles against the press continue as they get trapped in the corner and have to call their final timeout. But this time, when they get it in, Dailyn Swain loses control of the ball and it goes out-of-bounds – the Wolfpack have a chance to take the lead! They get the ball into Tre Holloman and he drives straight to the hoop, where he gets fouled. So, the 80+% free throw shooter goes to the line and misses the first free throw long. But he hits the second to tie the game.
Texas brings the ball down and runs down the clock. They get the ball into Tramon Mark on the wing. Mark drives to the basket, and with very little time on the clock launches a high arching shot over his defender, and the ball rattles in the basket with 1 second to play.
After Texas got lucky that the refs didn’t call a technical foul for their bench sprinting onto the court thinking the game is over, NC State got one more desperation chance – but the shot gets blocked by Swain and the game ends with a 68-66 victory by the Longhorns.
First of all, I need to thank Charlie. Because with the lead being close to double digits, I started to nod off before he called me about trying to logon to the webpage. Once I helped him navigate the site, I got to see the final 3 minutes of chaos in Dayton.
Second of all, I have to mention Karma again. Remember how the Lunatic said in his Handicapping post that many of his Locks end up failing. He locked the over at 158.5 points because when these teams played last time, they combined for 199 points. So, it makes sense that the Lunatic’s lock was wrong by 24.5 points. If Mark had missed his shot and the game went to overtime, the Lunatic probably still loses the over bet. Don’t mess with Karma!!!!
Finally, what a fantastic couple of games. March is known for wild comebacks, and in about a minute, both UMBC and NC State took 9 point leads that looked unsurmountable, and completely erased them. Sure, both their comebacks ended up falling just a basket short, but in both cases it was thanks to some last second heroics by the Howard Bison and Texas Longhorns.
I guess I need to go to sleep since I almost fell asleep earlier. Hope you all enjoyed the games – and that the rest of the tournament is as good as the games were tonight.