College Men's Basketball Capsules: No. 11 Michigan State squeaks by Penn State
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State still has a shot at sharing the Big Ten title. Barely.
The 11th-ranked Spartans survived an upset scare from Penn State on Thursday night, pulling out a 67-65 victory in front of a nervous crowd at Breslin Center. The Spartans let a 10-point, second-half lead slip away before holding off the Nittany Lions.
"Somehow, thanks to a couple of guys, we found a way to win the game," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "But I’m not happy with the way we played."
Raymar Morgan, who finished with 16 points, hit two free throws with 12 seconds left to give Michigan State (23-7, 13-4) a 66-62 lead.
Chris Babb hit a 3-pointer for Penn State (11-18, 3-14) to cut the lead to 66-65. Michigan State’s Kalin Lucas made one of two foul shots for a 67-65 lead with 5 seconds remaining.
Penn State’s Talor Battle couldn’t get a shot off before the buzzer. The loss, in many ways, summed up the season for the Nittany Lions.
"It’s been a very tough year for us, and this is kind of how the games have gone, what you saw this evening," Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. "But our kids have fought and played hard and continued to execute."
Battle and Babb led Penn State with 16 points each.
Michigan State can earn a share of the Big Ten title for the second consecutive season with a victory against Michigan on Sunday. No. 6 Ohio State already has clinched a share of the championship, and No. 7 Purdue can share it with a victory over Penn State on Saturday.
Penn State refused to fold despite trailing by 10 points midway through the second half. The Nittany Lions took a 62-60 lead with 2:32 remaining on two free throws by Babb.
"We just let that 10-point lead dissolve in a matter of ... it seemed like seconds," Izzo said. "Maybe it was minutes."
A dunk by Michigan State’s Draymond Green, who finished with 14 points and nine rebounds on his 20th birthday, tied the game at 62. Morgan hit two free throws with 1:24 left to give Michigan State a 64-62 lead.
David Jackson missed a 3-pointer that could have given Penn State the lead with 52 seconds remaining.
"We score on that play and it’s a different game," DeChellis said.
A mad scramble and a Penn State foul put Morgan back on the line to secure the victory.
"It’s that time of year when you have to step up," Morgan said. "But they (Penn State) wouldn’t quit. They made some big shots."
Michigan State had lost its previous two home games to Purdue and Ohio State, in large part because of sluggish starts. The Spartans avoided a rare three-game skid at home.
Entering Thursday’s game, Penn State had won three of its last four Big Ten games after losing 12 straight to start the conference season. The Nittany Lions have improved with Battle helping to get other players involved in the scoring.
Depth was a huge advantage for Michigan State with the Spartans’ bench outscoring Penn State’s 26-1.
Michigan State outrebounded Penn State 39-26.
Gibbs’ deep 3 rallies Pitt to 73-71 win
PITTSBURGH — Pitt didn’t need a miracle to beat Providence, a team that has won once since mid-January. The Panthers did need a game-winning play that was way beyond ordinary.
Ashton Gibbs found a way to make it.
The sophomore guard hit a 3-pointer several strides inside the midcourt line just ahead of the final buzzer and No. 17 Pittsburgh avoided being upset by Providence for the second successive season, rallying to win 73-71 on Thursday night.
"He’s one of the best shooters in the country," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "He can make shots. It was just a big-time shot. It was a play we worked on ... they knew how long 3.5 seconds were. He knew how much he could go (before shooting), how far he could go."
The Panthers (23-7, 12-5) secured a double bye in next week’s Big East tournament, overcoming sluggish stretches in each half as Gibbs scored 25 points and Jermaine Dixon had a career-high 24. Pitt still has a chance to be seeded No. 2 in the conference tournament.
Three weeks ago, Gibbs made two free throws with less than 12 seconds remaining to secure Pitt’s 98-95 upset of then-No. 5 West Virginia after sending the game to overtime by making a 3-pointer.
"I’m always going to be confident with my shot," Gibbs said. "I just wanted to keep it (and take the shot). I’ve been in enough pressure-packed games to keep my composure in any type situation."
Providence coach Keno Davis said the plan was to keep two defenders close to Gibbs but not to foul one of the nation’s best free throw shooters.
"You don’t want any body contact," Davis said. "The last thing you want is him going to the free throw line. You need to make him make a tough shot and we did — and he made it."
Jamine Peterson had 24 points and 18 rebounds, but Providence (12-17, 4-13) lost its ninth straight and 11th in 12 games, failing to hold a 61-56 lead with nearly 7 minutes remaining.
The Panthers have won nine of 10 against the Friars, but lost 81-73 at Providence last season while ranked No. 1.
As the lead changed hands five times in the final 4½ minutes, Pitt led 70-68 on Dixon’s two free throws with 40.3 seconds to play, but Sharaud Curry answered with two foul shots 5 seconds later. Brian McKenzie put the Friars ahead 71-70 by making one of two at the line with 3.5 seconds to play, but that only set up a closely guarded Gibbs’ long game-winner.
Curry added 16 points and Marshon Brooks had 13 for Providence, which played a ranked team for the seventh time in 10 games. The Friars haven’t won in six road games since beating DePaul 79-62 on Jan. 14.
"We’re not as good as Pittsburgh, they’re definitely a top 20 team, but we’re not too far away even though our record (isn’t good)," Davis said.
The Panthers won their sixth in seven games since dropping four of five. Gibbs made 6 of 9 from 3-point range, where Pitt was 8 of 19 to Providence’s 6 of 16.
Pitt went on a 15-1 run that included three baskets by Dixon and was finished off by a 3-pointer by Brad Wanamaker to lead 32-23 late in the first half after trailing by six points.
Dixon’s previous career high was 21 points in Pitt’s 82-72 upset of now-No. 1 Syracuse on Jan. 2.
"They want me to drive more to the basket — that’s something I’m good at but I haven’t been doing much of," Jermaine Dixon said. "I’ll either get a layup or pass it to somebody else."
The Panthers led 44-37 with 16:11 left, but Providence — the loser of 18 of 21 at Pitt — scored the next seven points to tie it.
The Friars — who came in 15th in the 16-team Big East — went ahead 61-56 as Vincent Council scored inside with 6:56 remaining, and seemed ready to pull off the upset mostly because Pitt could not contain the 6-foot-9 Peterson inside.
The game was especially low-scoring by Providence’s standards. The Friars allowed 99 points in each of their previous two games and came in 332nd in scoring defense among the nation’s 334 Division I schools, allowing an average of 81.2 points — 85.7 against Big East opponents.
Pitt, however, came in averaging 68.2 points and didn’t get many more than that against a team that hadn’t permitted fewer than 88 points in its previous four games — despite shooting 53.4 percent to the Friars’ 41.3 percent.
Pitt needs a win over Rutgers and a Villanova loss to West Virginia on Saturday to be seeded No. 2 in the Big East tournament.
"I haven’t thought about that," Jamie Dixon said. "I’m thinking about Rutgers."
-- Alan Robinson
Elsewhere
Look who’s first? Maryland pulls off ACC surprise
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — It’s been a banner season for No. 22 Maryland, the hottest — and easily most surprising — team in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The Terrapins moved into position to earn at least a share of the league regular-season title with their sixth straight victory, a rousing 79-72 conquest of hated Duke on Wednesday night. Maryland hasn’t finished in first place since 2002, when it parlayed that feat into a national championship.
In avenging an earlier 21-point defeat at Duke, the Terrapins blew a 14-point lead before breaking open a tight game with a closing 10-3 run that included a gutsy, highlight-reel basket by Greivis Vasquez.
"I’m really proud of this team. Everyone stayed tough," coach Gary Williams said. "We wouldn’t let them get away from us. It was stuck there for a while because things weren’t going real well for us, but we fought through it."
Sort of like the way Maryland bounced back from earlier losses to Wisconsin, William & Mary and, of course, the Blue Devils.
Led by seniors Vasquez, Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne, the Terrapins (22-7, 12-3) are 8-0 in the ACC at home and a league-best 7-3 overall on the road. With a victory over Virginia on Saturday, Maryland can finish no worse than tied atop the standings with No. 4 Duke, which closes at home against North Carolina.
"We just have to make sure we go out there and get another win," Milbourne said. "That’s one of the things Coach was talking about for this group right here — to get another banner put up. That’s a big goal, and that’s something we can get."
Not bad for a team picked to finish fifth in a preseason poll of the ACC media.
"Preseason rankings don’t mean much," Hayes said after scoring 13 points on 6-for-8 shooting. "If you work hard and believe in the guys on your team, you can do anything. So, it’s one of those things where we’re working hard and it’s been paying off."
Freshman Jordan Williams contributed 15 points and 13 rebounds, but Vasquez is the driving force behind Maryland’s success. The spirited guard scored 20 points, and his final field goal at Comcast Center was typical of his body of work over the past four years.
With Maryland nursing a 71-69 lead, Vasquez drove toward the basket, stopped his dribble before the foul line, took two (maybe three) steps to his right and tossed up an off-balance shot with his right arm that bounced off the rim three times before falling through the net with 37 seconds left.
Vasquez watched the end result while stumbling backward off the court.
"I work on that shot, but God wanted me to score the way that I did," he said. "I was on the floor, I was looking and going, ‘Please go in."’
It wasn’t the most prudent shot to try with the outcome hanging in the balance, but that’s what distinguishes Vasquez from everyone else in the ACC. That, and the fact that ball went in the basket.
"I was going to take the shot and the credit if I made it, and the hit if I missed it," Vasquez said. "I was going to go for it. I was going to take that risk, and I got it and we won the game."
The shot went over the outstretched arm of Jon Scheyer, who, along with Vasquez, is in the running for ACC Player of the Year honors.
"He plays with a lot of emotion and makes their team go," Scheyer said. "He’s the guy for their team."
On both ends of the court. After his clutch shot, Vasquez sprinted 90 feet the other way and forced Scheyer into missing a shot from underneath the Duke basket.
With their gritty performance, the Terrapins earned the respect of a team that only 18 days earlier defeated Maryland for a sixth straight time.
"They are a great team," Duke guard Nolan Smith said. "If we had to share the title with anybody in this league, I wouldn’t mind sharing it with them. They have been playing their tails off all year."
-- David Ginsburg
Zags’ 10 straight WCC titles a milestone
SPOKANE, Wash. — Gonzaga’s dominance of the West Coast Conference is so taken for granted that news of the No. 18 Bulldogs’ 10th consecutive league title didn’t cause much of a stir.
But the streak merits some attention. It’s tied for the second longest in history, behind the 13 Pac-10 titles won by UCLA from 1967-79. And if not for a late stumble in 2000, the Zags would have won their 13th straight title, having also won in 1998 and 1999.
Coach Mark Few has been on board for all of those, first as an assistant and since 2000 as head coach. He never tires of telling listeners that — for all the attention Gonzaga’s 11 straight trips to the NCAA tournament get — the program’s singular achievement may be the run of league titles.
This year was particularly gratifying for Few, as the Zags overcame the loss of four starters to post a 12-2 record in the WCC. They were 25-5 overall.
"It’s a long, hard haul," Few said this week, after being named coach of the year for a record eighth time. "This is far and away the youngest, most inexperienced team we have ever taken into league."
By winning the conference, Gonzaga earned a bye into Sunday’s semifinals of the WCC tournament in Las Vegas.
There are critics who dismiss Gonzaga’s success as primarily the result of playing in a weak league. But that begs the question of why other teams, in other weak leagues, have not strung together such runs.
Gonzaga’s streak is tied with UNLV, which won 10 Big West titles from 1983-1992, and Connecticut, which won 10 Yankee titles from 1951-60.
Few said there is a lot more parity in college basketball than there used to be, and lots of traditional powers get upset by upstarts these days. Conference play is especially tough because each team plays twice, giving opponents a chance to make adjustments.
The parity was clear in Gonzaga’s two WCC losses, at San Francisco and Loyola Marymount, both middle-of-the-pack teams.
"There’s pretty good talent in this league," Few said after the loss at Loyola. "If we are not playing at our highest level, we are as susceptible as anybody to get beat."
As the marquee program in the WCC, Gonzaga is often the only game their opponents sell out, and opposing fans are jacked up. "You’re going to get everybody’s best shot," Few said.
The streak has changed Gonzaga from a mid-major backwater, best known for producing John Stockton, into a Top 25 juggernaut.
Gonzaga’s run also changed the West Coast Conference, but in more subtle ways. Long a one-and-out league in the NCAA tournament, the WCC has been able to cash in on Gonzaga’s success. Money flows to the league from each round of the tournament, and Gonzaga has gone to the Sweet 16 five times and to the second round three more times.
Other teams have also improved in an effort to catch up with Gonzaga, and programs like Saint Mary’s and San Diego have found their way to the NCAAs in recent years.
But no WCC team has found a way to challenge the Zags consistently. They are 128-12 in WCC play since the streak began.
Gonzaga’s success helped prompt the league to move its tournament from member sites, often San Diego or Santa Clara, to Las Vegas last year. The tournament sold out, largely because so many Gonzaga fans escaped the cold of Spokane, and is sold out at the Orleans casino again this year.
Rival coaches have noticed that the Orleans was not exactly a neutral site last year.
"I saw a lot more blue and red than I wanted to," San Francisco coach Rex Walters joked.
Gonzaga’s league success is somewhat counterintuitive. The WCC is made up of eight private colleges, with the others in San Diego, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area and Portland, Ore.
Spokane is a remote, snowy outpost far from the glamour of the West Coast’s major metros. Yet it is Gonzaga that recruits a steady stream of NBA prospects, and has had every one of its games televised and sold out for years.
Few said the secret is that Gonzaga recruits good players. The Zags have had nine of the past 10 WCC players of the year, starting with Casey Calvary in 2001 and including Dan Dickau, Blake Stepp, Ronny Turiaf, Adam Morrison, Derek Raivio and Jeremy Pargo. Matt Bouldin is the player of the year this season.
"What an amazing group of guys has come through here," Few said.
Every year there is buzz that some WCC team will dethrone the Zags. This year it was supposed to be Portland, which returned all its starters from a team that won 19 games a year ago. The Zags beat them twice.
Asked if he thought the young Zags might be vulnerable in the tournament this year, coach Eric Reveno said vulnerable would be an overstatement.
"I like their chances," Reveno said, drawing laughter.
-- Nicholas K. Geranios
Curry back in Charlotte, but not for SoCon tourney
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Southern Conference moved its basketball tournament here in hopes that Stephen Curry would be playing in his hometown to conclude his senior year at Davidson.
"As it turns out he is going to be in Charlotte this weekend," commissioner John Iamarino said, "just not quite the way we hoped."
Thanks to a scheduling quirk, Curry’s first game in Charlotte as a pro comes Saturday night — right in the middle of the SoCon’s first appearance here since 1971. It left the conference scrambling to adjust the tournament schedule so Davidson won’t be playing at the same time as the Golden State Warriors-Charlotte Bobcats game.
"It is kind of ironic. Our only appearance in Charlotte happens to be SoCon weekend and the tournament happens to be in Charlotte," Curry said Thursday. "So it’s going to be a fun day if the Cats are still in the tournament. If they are, I’m definitely going to make the game on Saturday. I’ll be there cheering them on."
But Davidson making it to the tournament’s second day is no guarantee. After going 62-4 in the league over the past three seasons with two NCAA tournament trips and a magical run to the NCAA Midwest Regional final in 2008, the Curry-less Wildcats (16-14, 11-7) fell to the middle of the pack this season and will face Elon on Friday afternoon.
The schedule adjustment puts Davidson in the afternoon session at the expense of North Division top seed Appalachian State (20-11, 13-5), which will play in the evening in its opener Saturday.
"Davidson folks didn’t want to put their fans in the dilemma of either going to watch the Davidson game or going to watch the Bobcats play against Curry," Iamarino said. "So they made it known to us early on that they would prefer to be in the afternoon session. We discussed it on a conference call with the athletic directors in December. There was unanimous agreement that that made sense."
Going up against Curry in this town is not a good idea. Curry, the seventh overall pick in last year’s draft after leaving school a year early, said Thursday’s he’s bought 80 tickets for the NBA game. That doesn’t include the groups from Davidson, his high school and church that he anticipates will make it "like a home game" for him.
"We understood going in it was a roll of the dice whether he’d come back or not," Iamarino said on the decision to move the tournament from Chattanooga, Tenn. "Frankly, if he wasn’t going to play I would have preferred him to come back to Charlotte on another weekend. But I didn’t have (NBA commissioner) David Stern’s ear on that one, I guess."
The departure of Curry, the SoCon’s all-time leading scorer, has left a wide-open race for the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Wofford (23-8, 15-3) was the South Division champion and earned the No. 1 overall seed behind coach of the year Mike Young and Noah Dahlman, voted player of the year by the league’s coaches.
"I think we’ve lost one time in 2010. I should just quit while we’re ahead and be done with it," Young said. "Life’s been pretty good for the Terriers here. We’ll go to Charlotte full of great hopes and expectations, but knowing it’s going to be a grind."
They’ll likely be challenged by College of Charleston (20-10, 14-4) and Appalachian State. The Mountaineers jumped to the top of the league in coach Buzz Peterson’s first season in his second stint with the school behind the media’s pick for player of the year, Donald Sims.
"I kind of looked at it as a honeymoon year and try to do the best job you can and try to stay encouraged, recruit hard and get your team ready for the following year," Peterson said. "But these guys in the last seven or eight weeks have turned the corner. They’ve gotten better and better. ... It’s been fun to coach them, but yeah, it caught me off guard a little bit."
Curry’s decision to turn pro may have done the same to the Southern Conference. But they’re making due despite an odd tournament format that will see the first two rounds played at Bojangles Coliseum and the last two at Time Warner Cable Arena — after Curry’s Warriors leave town.
"Is it inconvenient? In a lot of ways, yes it is," College of Charleston coach Bobby Cremins said. "But whatever is best. In order to bring it to Charlotte, it had to be done. People were hoping that Stephen Curry would stay another year."
At least Curry may be in the stands on Saturday if Davidson gets to the quarterfinals.
"I’ve already got my tickets," Curry said. "It’s all up to them now."
-- Mike Cranston
Santa Clara player raising money for malaria fight
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Troy Alexander is talking nets, and not the basketball kind he knows so well.
For the Santa Clara guard, this weekend’s West Coast Conference tournament in Las Vegas is about much more than just how his team performs.
Alexander is trying to raise awareness of the malaria epidemic in Africa and find supporters to donate toward the purchase of mosquito-repellant nets to protect children while they sleep so they can avoid contracting the sometimes-fatal infectious disease.
Alexander has already raised nearly $3,000 through the campaign Nothing But Nets, but he is now aiming for more than $5,000. Santa Clara checked with the NCAA to get approval on the project.
"My original goal was $1,000. I figured I’d start modest, but I was blown out of the water when I got that after only a few days," he said. "I said, ‘I might have to raise my goal."’
Alexander has been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support since he began his efforts in mid-February after reading about the campaign. He was moved to assist any way he could. Alexander has been using social networking to spread the word, on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, and that helped him quickly reach that initial $1,000 mark.
He also sent an e-mail to every one of his contacts.
"That’s the beauty of social-networking," Alexander said.
He has asked for as little as $10 to help save a life — that buys one protective net. He has received some donations up to $300.
"I am hearing from a lot of people I don’t even know," he said. "At this point I thought things would start to slow down but I’m finding the word is continuing to spread."
In fact, money is still coming in daily on his page of the Web site: http://tinyurl.com/yzsc48m — and Alexander is looking to get other teams from the WCC involved and perhaps eventually spread the word throughout college basketball.
"My original goal at the beginning was not to just raise money through my name but to set up a template that other colleges and student-athletes could use around the country," Alexander said. "That’s my bigger goal."
Alexander might even become more involved as a spokesperson for Nothing But Nets. He didn’t realize the severity of the problem until he read about the millions of cases of mosquito-borne malaria each year.
"I thought I’d try to do something on my own," Alexander said. "It’s definitely a cause that caught my attention. I didn’t know it was such an epidemic. I knew the epidemic was in Africa but I didn’t realize how many children were dying. There’s a direct correlation you can make between sports and Nothing But Nets."
As a member of Santa Clara’s student athletic advisory committee, Alexander also has brought up the idea of making this a conference-wide competition. He plans to stay involved throughout his college career.
Alexander’s Broncos open the WCC tournament Friday against San Diego.
-- Janie McCauley
Georgetown’s leading scorer Freeman has diabetes
WASHINGTON — Georgetown’s leading scorer Austin Freeman has been diagnosed with diabetes, leaving his status uncertain for the team’s upcoming games.
Freeman returned to practice Wednesday and Thursday after missing Monday night’s loss to West Virginia. He was also limited in Saturday’s loss to Notre Dame.
Originally thought to have a stomach virus, Freeman learned he had diabetes when he went to the hospital Monday night.
Coach John Thompson III said Thursday he is "100 percent" certain Freeman will play again this season, but the coach wouldn’t say whether the junior guard will return for Saturday’s regular-season finale against Cincinnati.
"It may be Saturday," Thompson said. "I don’t know what the timeframe is going to take for us to learn how to monitor and work with him. But we will get to that point, and with all the experts and support we have, I don’t anticipate it being long."
The No. 19 Hoyas will play in the Big East tournament next week.
As a precaution, a doctor from the university’s hospital will attend all of Freeman’s practices and games for the rest of the season.
"It just has to come to the point where I have to be honest with myself," Freeman said. "If I’m not feeling well, make sure I tell coach or (the trainer) or the doctor that I’m not feeling well, or even my teammates if nobody’s around."
Freeman is averaging 17 points per game for the Hoyas, who have lost four of their last five. He first disclosed his condition in an interview with The Washington Post.
