Cinderella has a name – and while everyone might have thought that name was Florida Gulf Coast (which was a wonderful story), her real name is WICHITA STATE!!!!!!<\/p>\n
With 11 minutes left in the game, the Shockers had a 20 point lead and looked like it would just be watching the seconds count down until the coronation party would begin.\u00a0 And then a strange thing happened in Los Angeles.\u00a0 The Buckeyes started to cut into the lead.\u00a0 By the 8 minute mark, the lead was down to 13.\u00a0 By the 4 minute timeout, it was down to 8.\u00a0 The Shockers hit 2 FTs to extend the lead to 10, just to watch the Buckeyes to score 7 points in the next minute.\u00a0 And suddenly, with 2:49 left in the game, it was suddenly 62-59.\u00a0 All the momentum was looking like another classic collapse where a large run happens and the clock strikes midnight for Cinderella.<\/p>\n
But Tekele Cotton had other plans.\u00a0 With the shot clock running down and Fred Vanvleet driving to get an open shot, he kicked it out to a wide-open Cotton – who calmly nailed the three-point jumper.\u00a0 Ohio State quickly cut the lead back to 4 and the Shockers took things all the way down again.\u00a0 Vanvleet missed the three-pointer before the shock clock expired – but there was Cotton – who fought to get the offensive rebound.\u00a0\u00a0 After taking the shot clock down to the end again, this time Vanvleet’s wild drive to the basket ended up in an amazing lay-up to give the Shockers a 6 point lead with 1 minute left.<\/p>\n
Aaron Craft tried to hit a 3 pointer to cut the lead – but this time, Craft was unable to create some heroics.\u00a0 The Shockers hit their FTs at the end of the game, and Wichita State has advanced to the Final Four in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
The Shockers win was the first time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams that a 9 seed has made the Final Four.\u00a0 And it was the first time since 1979 that a team from the Missouri Valley has made it to the Final Four – that was the year Larry Bird led Indiana State to the championship game.\u00a0 Ironically, 1979 – the first year the committee seeded the teams – also was the only other time a 9 seed (Penn) made the Final Four.<\/p>\n
Congratulations to the Wichita State Shockers – Atlanta will be happy to welcome Cinderella to the dance.\u00a0 We’ll see if Prince Charming matches the other glass slipper to the Shockers’ feet…..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cinderella has a name – and while everyone might have thought that name was Florida Gulf Coast (which was a wonderful story), her real name is WICHITA STATE!!!!!! With 11 minutes left in the game, the Shockers had a 20 point lead and looked like it would just be watching the seconds count down until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2013-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","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=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}