With about 15 minutes left, there was a foul on Aztec’s Micah Parrish.\u00a0 Everyone started complaining and as that happened, Parrish elbowed Brandon Weatherspoon in the chest, and the Owls’ guard flopped to the ground to get the refs attention.\u00a0 And while it was a little weak, it certainly deserved a technical foul.\u00a0 Alijah Martin would hit the two free throws, and then get fouled shooting a three pointer to drain three more free throws.\u00a0 Florida Atlantic was up 54-40.<\/p>\n
But the technical foul seemed to also fire up the Aztecs.\u00a0 San Diego State continued to cut the lead.\u00a0 Every time the Aztecs would miss a shot, they would get the rebound, drive to the basket, and seem to get fouled.\u00a0 It was crazy – really good shooters kept missing free throws and then the Aztecs would get another rebound and cut the lead 1-2 points at a time.\u00a0 With four and a half minutes, Aguek Arop got a jumper along the baseline and tied the game at 65.<\/p>\n
Giancarlo Rosardo would give the Owls back the lead with a fadeaway from the post at four minutes.\u00a0 Both teams kept playing tough, physical defense, but the Owls would maintain a three point lead off some free throws from Johnell Davis.<\/p>\n
But the Aztecs would not go away.\u00a0 Jaedon LeDee drove to the hoop and laid it in with a minute to cut the lead to 1.\u00a0 But Owls’ Alijah Martin made a pretty drive down the baseline for a reverse layup with 50 seconds to take a 71-68 lead.\u00a0 LeDee rushed the ball down the court again, and with 36 seconds hit a jumper to once again cut the lead to 1.<\/p>\n
As timeout was called, everyone wondered if the Aztecs would foul and extend the game.\u00a0 But instead, not only did the Aztecs decide to play defense, they went big, removing both their leading scores in Matt Bradley and Darrion Trammell.\u00a0 With the shot clock running down, the Owls’ season leading scorer, Johnell Davis drove the lane but had his layup blocked by Aguek Arop and Nathan Mensah comes down with the ball with under 10 seconds to play.<\/p>\n
Mensah outlets the ball to Lamont Butler, he takes it to the corner but gets cut-off from going down the baseline to the basket.\u00a0 With under 2 seconds, Butler reverses back away from the basket and realizing time is running out, puts up a jumper with 0.5 seconds left.\u00a0 And it hits nothing but net as the clock strikes 0.\u00a0 San Diego State had not led since 10:34 in the first half.\u00a0 But as the clock struck zero, the scoreboard showed Aztecs 72, Owls 71.<\/p>\n
The Mountain West champions from San Diego State came from 14 points down to win at the buzzer and earn their trip to the championship game on Monday.<\/p>\n
What an exciting game – we can only hope that we see something as exciting between the Miami Hurricanes and Connecticut Huskies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With about 15 minutes left, there was a foul on Aztec’s Micah Parrish.\u00a0 Everyone started complaining and as that happened, Parrish elbowed Brandon Weatherspoon in the chest, and the Owls’ guard flopped to the ground to get the refs attention.\u00a0 And while it was a little weak, it certainly deserved a technical foul.\u00a0 Alijah Martin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2624,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions\/2624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}