Texas and Big 12 Basketball Capsules: Texas A&M beats Utah State 69-53

SPOKANE, Wash. — When Texas A&M guard Derrick Roland broke his leg in December it forced some drastic lineup changes for the Aggies, including freshman Khris Middleton being moved into the starting lineup.

He played OK, then averaged a solid 15 points in three Big 12 tournament games.

But Middleton erupted for a career-high 19 points as fifth-seeded Texas A&M crushed 12th seed Utah State 69-53 on Friday in the first round of the NCAA tournament’s South Regional.

"Going into the game, I was a little nervous," the 6-foot-7 Middleton said. "But as we started, I was less nervous and just played."

Making your first four 3-pointers will do that. Middleton made 7 of 10 shots, including 5 of 6 3-point attempts, in 25 minutes. He came in averaging 7.0 points per game and shooting 29 percent from 3-point range.

Texas A&M (24-9) advanced to the second round for the fifth consecutive year and will face No. 4 seed Purdue on Sunday.

Middleton scored 14 points in the first half as Texas A&M built a 42-29 lead and shut down the normally efficient Utah State offense. Utah State never got untracked, shooting 38 percent — well below their season average of 49 percent — and scored 20 points below their season average.

"We haven’t played anybody as good as Texas A&M," Utah State coach Stew Morrill said. "Texas A&M physically dominated us."

David Loubeau added 12 points and B.J. Holmes had 11 for Texas A&M, which also dominated the rebounding.

"It all came down to defense," A&M coach Mark Turgeon said. "I was on them pretty hard in practice this week. We did it one game. Now we have to do it again on Sunday."

Utah State (27-8) lost its fifth consecutive first-round game. Its last win came in 2001 over Ohio State.

"I thought everybody kind of took their game to another level," A&M’s Donald Sloan said. "I thought for 40 minutes that’s the best defensively I’ve seen us in maybe weeks."

Texas A&M was in charge from the start. Consecutive 3-pointers by Middleton keyed a 10-0 run that gave A&M a 14-5 lead. Middleton hit another 3 for a 21-13 lead as Utah State made just six of its first 14 shots.

Jaxon Myaer’s basket cut the A&M lead to three points, but Middleton replied with his fourth 3-pointer and Holmes added two as A&M took a 30-20 lead.

Texas A&M closed with a 10-4 run over the final 4 minutes for a 42-29 halftime lead. They shot 56 percent in the first half, including making 6 of 12 3-point attempts. Utah State shot 41 percent in the first half, and was outrebounded 22-11.

"We did not do a good job in terms of locating him in the corner," Utah State’s Tyler Newbold said of Middleton. "We didn’t rotate fast enough."

Utah State hung around in the second half, as Texas A&M cooled off a bit. Nate Bendall’s rebound and layup brought the Aggies within 49-42 with 12:33 left.

But Texas A&M scored eight straight points to build a 57-42 lead with 9 minutes left.

Jared Quayle’s first field goal since he scored Utah State’s first two baskets cut the A&M lead to 57-47. But A&M rattled off eight straight points, capped by Holmes’ 3-pointer, for a 65-47 lead with 4 minutes left.

"I was shocked how strong and physical they were," said Tai Wesley, who led Utah State with 14 points. "They were really trying to throw us around."

Sloan was the fourth A&M player in double figures with 10 points. The Aggies shot 49 percent in the game, making 8 of 18 3-point attempts and 11 of 14 free throws.

A team that averages 42 percent from 3-point range, Utah State made just 5 of 20, and missed all four of its free throw attempts. Utah State was 23-0 this season when making at least five 3-pointers.

"Our whole thing was, Utah State had to beat us with 2s today," Turgeon said. "I think they were so fatigued because they had to work so hard to get a shot. I think our depth kind of wore them down."

Quayle, Utah State’s all-Western Athletic Conference guard, was 5 of 18 from the field in one of the worst shooting performances of his career. He finished with 11 points.

"We tried to wear him down," Holmes said.

Utah State has been to the tournament 19 times, but is 6-21 overall.

Holmes said A&M is not done.

"We didn’t come here just to win one game," he said.

Maryland beats Houston 89-77 in first round

SPOKANE, Wash. — Jordan Williams picked a good time to break out of his recent slump.

The freshman forward set career highs with 21 points and 17 rebounds, and Maryland beat Houston 89-77 in the first round of the NCAA tournament’s Midwest Regional on Friday night.

Williams, held to seven points in each of his past two games, carried the fourth-seeded Terrapins (24-8) into Sunday’s second-round game against fifth-seeded Michigan State (25-8), a 70-67 winner over New Mexico State.

Greivis Vasquez, the ACC player of the year, said Maryland’s plan was to go to Williams, his roommate.

"That was the game plan — inside out," Vasquez said. "He’s only a freshman. In two, three years, he’s going to be GOOD."

Williams was pretty good Friday night, shooting 9 of 14 from the field and adding a blocked shot. Landon Milbourne scored 19 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

Vasquez had just four points in the first half, but finished with 16 on 5-of-13 shooting. He added seven rebounds and six assists.

Aubrey Coleman, the nation’s leading scorer, had 26 points for 13th-seeded Houston (19-16). The senior averaged 25.6 points per game this season. Kelvin Lewis added 24 for Houston, 17 in the second half.

Coleman was held to 10 points in the second half and went 11 minutes without scoring.

"In the second half we just tried to slow him up a little bit, try not to let him penetrate as much," Maryland’s Sean Mosley said. "He was getting into the lane too easily.

"We started helping more (on defense). We slowed him down a little bit."

Maryland overpowered the Cougars 50-29 on the boards and held them to 41 percent shooting. Houston also was hurt by 20-of-32 shooting from the free throw line.

The Terrapins made 21 of 25 free throws, which helped them keep Houston from making a run in the second half.

Maryland has been to the NCAA tournament eight times this century. This was Houston’s first appearance since 1992.

The Cougars qualified by winning four games in the Conference USA tournament and beating top-seeded UTEP in the final. It was their longest winning streak of the season.

This was the first time the teams met since the 1983 NCAA tournament during Houston’s Phi Slama Jama heyday.

Maryland led 43-42 early in the second half. Then the Terrapins went on a 12-2 run, capped by Adrian Bowie’s 3-pointer, for a 55-44 lead with 16:45 left.

Lewis replied with five straight points for Houston to close the gap to six. But Maryland worked the lead back to double digits, mostly at the free throw line.

After Zamal Nixon’s free throw brought Houston within 72-63, Williams’ layup pushed the lead back to double figures with 6:49 remaining.

Houston would not go away. Adam Brown’s 3-pointer and three free throws by Lewis cut Maryland’s lead to 78-69 with 5 minutes left. But that margin held, as Coleman went 11 minutes without a point late in the second half.

In the first, Houston held a 24-22 lead despite making just eight of its first 25 shots. Coleman had 11 of those points.

Maryland pulled ahead 27-25 on Bowie’s 3-pointer. Williams put back a couple of missed shots as Maryland built a 35-29 lead with 2:27 left before halftime. Williams had 10 points and 10 rebounds in the first half.

Maryland was leading 39-31 with a minute left when Lewis sank a long 3-pointer. After the Terrapins missed, Houston rebounded with a few seconds left and Brown hit a long, running 3 at the buzzer to cut it to 39-37 at halftime.

Maryland shared the ACC regular-season title with Duke, but lost to Georgia Tech early in the conference tournament. The Terrapins drew an at-large bid to make their 17th consecutive postseason appearance.

In an odd twist, Maryland coach Gary Williams and Houston coach Tom Penders both entered with 648 career victories, tied for fifth among active coaches.

Penders, in his 36th season, was taking a team to the NCAA tournament for the first time since he coached George Washington in 1999. This was his 11th NCAA appearance.

-- Nicholas K. Geranios

Baylor, Old Dominion preparing for 2nd round

NEW ORLEANS — Old Dominion coach Blaine Taylor is one of the NCAA tournament’s most entertaining talkers.

Before his team’s first-round win over Notre Dame, he joked that he’d taken a few of the Fighting Irish to Bourbon Street for St. Patrick’s Day and given them the wrong start time for their game against his Monarchs.

Now, as Old Dominion prepares to face third-seeded Baylor, Taylor is devising a new defense.

"We’ve been working on the box-and-five," Taylor said Friday. "We think if we can get away with it, we think it will be very strategic."

For all of Taylor’s joking around, the 11th-seeded Monarchs are very serious about their chances Saturday in the second round of the South Regional. Old Dominion shut down Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody in its victory Thursday, and in a tournament with plenty of upsets already, the thought of a double-digit seed reaching the round of 16 isn’t far fetched.

Baylor, meanwhile, outlasted Sam Houston State for its first NCAA tournament win in 60 years. The victory was a big milestone for a program that only a few years ago was banned from playing non-conference games as part of NCAA penalties for numerous violations under former coach Dave Bliss.

"We don’t focus on the past," guard LaceDarius Dunn said. "We don’t get caught up in the things that happened at Baylor when we weren’t here."

Sam Houston State used an unusual triangle-and-two defense to try to slow down Baylor’s explosive backcourt of Dunn and Tweety Carter. It worked for most of the game, so Taylor was asked whether he might try something similar. After his "box-and-five" joke, Taylor said he’s unlikely to resort to any tricks. Old Dominion (27-8) played a solid zone against Notre Dame and got enough offense from frontcourt players Frank Hassell and Gerald Lee to pull out a win.

The Monarchs held Notre Dame to 36 percent shooting.

"I don’t consider us to be a weak defensive team. A lot of times you gimmick when you are masking the inability to match up at certain spots," Taylor said. "That hasn’t been our modus operandi. Ours has been to come pretty straight at you with maybe different looks, but not with the gimmick stuff."

Baylor (26-7) eventually came away with a 68-59 victory over Sam Houston State. It was a stressful win, but one that could give the Bears some confidence now that they’ve survived.

The last time Baylor won two games in the NCAA tournament was in 1948, and that pair of wins was enough to put the team in the national championship game, which it lost to Kentucky.

"I think just the feel you get from winning a close game is something that you can’t measure. That confidence you get from that and the closeness it brings a team," Baylor coach Scott Drew said. "That only bad thing is Old Dominion had a close win as well."

Baylor forward Ekpe Udoh had 20 points and 13 rebounds against that weird Sam Houston State defense, and the Bears finally pulled away in the last three minutes to break their six-decade tournament drought. Taylor took note of the celebration afterward.

"I sensed there a little extra glee," Taylor said. "For a three seed, you know, and to be where they are in the Big 12, to win a first-round game against Sam Houston State, I was kind of looking at them. They were pretty giddy.

"I didn’t realize until later how much of an achievement it had been to get to the tournament, to win a game and to advance. I’m sure they’re thinking this is going to be a memorable run for their people, but I would caution that in our setting, we feel the same way."

-- Noah Trister

Longhorns limp home from NCAA tourney

AUSTIN — The Texas Longhorns’ long, frustrating flameout is over.

Once ranked No. 1, Texas ended the season unranked and hoping the NCAA tournament would give them a fresh start.

That was asking too much.

The same problems that sank the regular season — bad free throw shooting, suspect defense and a lack of scoring from key starters — doomed the Longhorns again in an 81-80 overtime loss to Wake Forest in the first round. It was the third time in four years Texas (24-10) hasn’t gone past the first weekend of the tournament.

When asked to sum up the season and its dismal demise, senior Damion James said, "No comment."

Now the question is whether Avery Bradley and Texas’ other freshmen players will return next season or leave for the NBA. And if they do come back, what will their roles will be?

Two months ago, many thought Texas was on its way to its first Final Four since 2003. With James and Bradley leading the way, Texas started 17-0 and reached No. 1 for the first time in school history. Bradley scored 29 points in his Big 12 debut.

But cracks were starting to show.

Senior forward Dexter Pittman’s production dropped off after Christmas and never really came back. Free throw shooting — Texas ranked last in the Big 12 — was becoming a problem that would never get fixed.

Against Wake Forest, James missed a free throw that could have won the game with 9.9 seconds left in regulation. In overtime, J’Covan Brown, a 90 percent shooter, missed two and Gary Johnson, a 70 percent shooter, missed two with 10 seconds left before Wake Forest hit the winning shot.

"We lost a lot of games this year because of the free-throw line," coach Rick Barnes said. "We had some nights where we just really struggled."

Wake Forest also dominated Texas in rebounding 59-34, which shocked Barnes. James, the career rebounding leader in the Big 12, didn’t have one in the first half.

"I don’t remember us getting outrebounded ever like this," Barnes said.

The loss to Wake Forest drove home Texas’ inability to get consistent scoring from starters and Barnes’ own unwillingness at times to showcase his freshmen.

Brown and Jordan Hamilton both came off the bench to combine for 39 points. Hamilton had 16 in the first half to pull Texas back from a big early deficit, then just took three shots in the second. Brown scored all 20 of his points in the second half and overtime.

While those two were pumping in the baskets, senior guard Justin Mason and Pittman combined for seven points in 53 minutes.

Brown and Hamilton struggled to find their roles all season. While Hamilton could get hot from 3-point range, he had games where he completely disappeared.

Brown was the bigger puzzle. A starter at the beginning of the season, turnovers and poor defense knocked down his minutes. His highest-scoring games — Wake Forest and a 28-point effort against Kansas — came in losses.

Against Wake Forest, Barnes wanted Texas’ best free throw shooter to keep the ball in the final seconds of overtime. Instead, Brown passed to Johnson, which turned out to be crucial mistake.

"We wanted him to keep the ball. I told him that," Barnes said. "What he should have done is dribbled it and see if they would have (fouled)."

Texas lost starting point guard Dogus Balbay, a defensive stopper who offers little as a scorer, to a knee injury on Feb. 20. Barnes wouldn’t say who he expects to be his starting point guard next season.

"We’ll do what we do every year. We’ll put it up for competition and see who wins it," Barnes said.

Texas’ eyes will now be on Bradley, one of the top-rated recruits coming out of high school, who must decide if he wants to turn pro. Bradley had some dazzling moments this season but faded down the stretch. He averaged 7.5 points over Texas final six games, four of them losses.

Barnes said Bradley got worn down. He averaged 30 minutes a game, second only to James’ 31, and played 42 minutes against Wake Forest, most on the team.

"Avery I think has had a tremendous year," Barnes said. "He played way too many minutes early. The minutes he played as a freshman were probably in some ways overwhelming, but he tried to fight through it."

-- Jim Vertuno

Big 12 Men

Missouri stifles Booker, beats Clemson 86-78

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Trevor Booker’s stellar career at Clemson ended on a sour note. You can thank "The Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball" for that.

Kim English and Keith Ramsey each scored 20 points, and Missouri’s swarming defense lived up to its reputation during an 86-78 victory over Clemson in the first round of the NCAA tournament Friday.

Missouri’s defense, small, swift and smart, played at a high level. It forced 20 turnovers, nabbed 15 steals and stifled Booker for 35 minutes. Everybody that played for Clemson had at least one turnover.

"When you play at that pace — we scored 86 points but only had nine turnovers. That’s efficient basketball," Missouri coach Mike Anderson said. "We had 15 steals, forced 20 turnovers and they outrebounded us by 15. I thought we imposed our will on a very good Clemson team.

"It ain’t the Xs and Os. It’s who wants it the most. I thought our guys displayed that today."

Ramsey, a junior-college transfer, picked the perfect moment for a memorable game. He finished with a career high in points, grabbed eight rebounds, had four assists with no turnovers, and made three steals in playing a team-high 34 minutes.

More importantly, he helped keep Booker at bay.

"He really put his stamp on the game, really every minute that he played," said J.T. Tiller, who had 10 points, five assists and five steals for Missouri. "Just being able to guard one of the best players in the ACC and hold him to 11 points, that says something about his effort. That says something about his pride, his integrity and his character."

Booker finished with 11 points, eight coming in a late 3-minute span, and pulled down 11 rebounds. Booker, the only player in ACC history with at least 1,500 points, 1,000 rebounds, 200 assists, 200 blocks and 100 steals, played his 134th straight game for Clemson to set a school record for total games started. He departs without a win in the NCAA tournament.

Missouri (23-10), the 10th seed in the East Regional, has won five straight opening-round games and will play Big East tournament champion West Virginia in the second round Sunday. The second-seeded Mountaineers beat Morgan State 77-50 earlier Friday.

No. 7 seed Clemson (21-11) goes home for the third straight year after a first-round loss to a lower-seeded team. Tigers coach Oliver Purnell is winless in six trips to the NCAA tournament with three schools.

"We were definitely expecting it," said Andre Young, who had a career-high 19 points for Clemson. "That’s just the kind of team they are. We just weren’t strong enough with the ball. They converted those turnovers into points, easy points that we couldn’t defend."

Missouri, which entered averaging nearly 11 steals a game, tops in the country, outscored Clemson 22-2 on the fast break, 20-5 off turnovers and 42-28 in the paint.

Demontez Stitt had 21 points and Jerai Grant 12 for Clemson, which shot 12 of 24 on 3-pointers but managed just two steals.

English’s 3-pointer from the right corner gave Missouri a 54-50 lead with 13:10 remaining in a game that featured 11 ties and 11 lead changes. That sent the Tigers on a 15-5 run that put them in command.

Nothing signified Clemson’s troubles more than a single possession with just under 10 minutes to play. Booker, trying desperately to get something going despite constant double and triple teams, was stripped of the ball by Ramsey, who turned and quickly fed a closing Laurence Bowers for a resounding slam dunk and a 63-55 lead with 8:18 left.

English drained another 3 with 6:51 to go and Tiller’s three-point play 27 seconds later boosted the Missouri lead to 71-60. And it was all hustle as Tiller rebounded a miss by English and was fouled as he drove the lane for a layup.

Both teams play a pressing style and entered hoping to right what had gone wrong recently. Missouri was stunned 75-60 by 12th-seeded Nebraska in the Big 12 tournament, while Clemson lost by a basket to 11th-seeded North Carolina State in the ACC tournament.

"We still had a bad taste in our mouth," English said. "So we just had to just come out with the same feeling we felt after the Nebraska game and know that we didn’t want that same locker room after this game."

This wasn’t the Missouri team that advanced to the round of eight a year ago. Missouri lost 1,000-point scorers Matt Lawrence, DeMarre Carroll and Leo Lyons from last year’s team, which won a school-record 31 games.

It’s still pretty good, though, good enough to withstand a long-range onslaught in the first half. Clemson shot 51.9 percent and hit 8 of 13 3-pointers in the first half to overcome 12 Missouri steals and leave the court tied at 39. But Clemson went 14 of 36 (38.9 percent) after the break and Missouri shot nearly 60 percent (16 of 27).

-- John Kekis

Could BYU’s Fredette be next March darling?

OKLAHOMA CITY — Jimmer Fredette has all the ingredients to be the next out-of-nowhere star in the NCAA tournament: the catchy nickname, the sweet shot, the late-game heroics.

He’s even got the intriguing back story of toughening up his play with a handful of pickup games against inmates at a couple of upstate New York prisons.

After he scored a tournament-high 37 points in BYU’s double-overtime thriller against Florida, all that stands between Fredette and a trip back to Salt Lake City for a close-to-home regional is Big 12 behemoth Kansas State and its own talented backcourt of Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen.

First, though, Fredette spent Friday soaking in the star treatment brought on by his first-round performance. Just after he got done answering a series of questions from reporters on one side of the Ford Center and wrapped up a quick visit with CBS, he returned to the BYU locker room to find another two dozen reporters and television cameras in a huddle, eagerly awaiting his return. A handful of national radio interviews were sprinkled in, too.

"I’ve been in a small market for my whole life," Fredette said, "and obviously we’re on a bigger stage now."

Fredette — whose mother gave him the nickname to avoid confusion with her brother, who’s also named James — grew up in Glens Falls, N.Y., with his older brother, T.J., as his de-facto basketball coach. He trained Fredette on random drills such as dribbling down a dark hallway and made him sign a contract that he’d work to reach his dream of playing in the NBA.

Once Fredette turned 18, his brother talked him into going to the prisons to play.

"At first, I didn’t believe him, of course," Fredette said. "I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I thought he was playing another joke on me like he always does. But he went a couple times without me and I realized that it was real."

Even more real were the looks he got when he first walked through the prison yard to get to the gym, and the fouls that made him a tougher player.

"They were very physical. They were big, strong guys," Fredette said. "But it was good. They were good sports, they went in and they fouled you hard and they’d help you back up because they knew that if they didn’t act good, their privileges would be taken away from them and they didn’t want that. They wanted to stay out and they wanted to play against us."

Kansas State’s bruising front line might be even less forgiving on Saturday night while trying to prevent seventh-seeded BYU from reaching the third round for the first time since Danny Ainge led it there in 1981.

Fredette’s trademark scoop shots and 3-point shooting — including the two in double OT that helped sink Florida — made it onto the second-seeded Wildcats’ scouting report, but not his time playing on the prison circuit.

"I haven’t heard that story. That’s an interesting story," K-State forward Curtis Kelly said. "It’s hard to respond to that but the thing about our team is that we probably won’t back down to him because we’re all from tough backgrounds. I’m a former inner-city kid and I played against guys that got in jail or are going to jail."

Kansas State also has a guard tandem capable of pouring in the points just as fast as Fredette, who’s averaging 22.1 points. Clemente and Pullen combine for 35 points and will team with swingman Dominique Sutton to try to keep Fredette from scoring at least 30 points for a fourth straight game.

"Everybody wants to talk about what sounds sexy or what looks sexy, but it’s a team game," Wildcats coach Frank Martin said. "Defensively, we’re not playing in some one-on-one tournament. We play five against five, and our five have to be solid and give us a chance to defend the right way."

-- Jeff Latzke

Jayhawks get another mid-major, dangerous N Iowa

OKLAHOMA CITY — The defining characteristic of Kansas’ 2008 national championship team was its killer instinct, the joy it took in stepping on an opponent and never letting it up. Those Jayhawks were hope crushers.

This year’s group? They’ve been a hope chest for opponents.

So far, except for two cases during the regular season, letting a beaten opponent up for air hasn’t hurt Kansas.

The Jayhawks have been able to crank it up when they need to, using a spurt or two, usually in the second half, to turn a tight game into another 15-point win. The latest letdown/runaway was Thursday night in the NCAA tournament’s first round, when Kansas allowed little Lehigh to believe in a dream before snuffing it out with a game-defining run.

Now’s the time for Kansas (33-2) to hit the hole shot and keep its foot down.

Pull it all together or it could be a short run for the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed.

"Sometimes we play to the score instead of the opportunity," Kansas guard Sherron Collins said Friday. "That’s something we’ve stressed, that killer instinct."

The Jayhawks will likely need it against Northern Iowa (29-4) in the Midwest Regional’s second round on Saturday.

The Panthers are a bigger, more athletic, more defensive-minded version of Lehigh. In other words, Northern Iowa is a mid-major that could become a monster, the kind of team that could bump the mighty Jayhawks out of the bracket and keep right on going.

It doesn’t matter that Northern Iowa has never faced a No. 1-ranked team and no one from the Missouri Valley Conference has beaten one since 1962. This could be the chance.

The Panthers aren’t afraid of the spotlight or facing bigger-name programs. They’ve been to the NCAA tournament five of the past seven years and were the only team to win a nonconference road game in the Big 12 this season, beating Iowa State to become the 1 in the conference’s 106-1 home record.

So if Kansas plays in spurts, lets off the gas for even a little bit, it could get sent home by a Missouri Valley team just like in 2006, when Bradley pulled out a 77-73 win in the first round. And the Jayhawks know it.

"They’re not Cinderella," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "They can beat any team in the country any given night. That’s not a Cinderella team. Lehigh, last night, that was more of a Cinderella. Northern Iowa, if they played a series with many, many teams across America, they’d have success win the series let alone the game."

Northern Iowa is a tough matchup with a lane-clogging center in 7-footer Jordan Eglseder, interchangeable parts along the perimeter and an in-your-jersey defense that ranked second in nation, allowing just over 54 points per game. Like Kansas, the Panthers are deep, the seventh and eighth guys not much different from the first, nearly everyone able to shoot from 3-point range.

The combination worked in the first round. Matching UNLV shot for shot, Northern Iowa survived a tense, back-and-forth game, making it to the second round for the first time in 20 years on Ali Farokhmanesh’s 25-foot 3-pointer with 4.9 seconds left.

Now comes a chance at beating No. 1, the potential for a program-defining win. The Panthers are ready.

"The opportunity that has presented itself for us is certainly an important moment for our program, no question," Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson said. "Not very often do you have the opportunity to play the best team in the country. We’ve got that opportunity tomorrow and it’s a challenge that our guys are excited about."

History is on their side, too. Well, at least recent history. The past three Valley teams to win first-round games in the NCAA tournament have gone on to the round of 16: Bradley and Wichita State in 2006, Southern Illinois a year later.

This is a little different. Kansas has been No. 1 all but four weeks this season, lost just two games with one of the nation’s toughest schedules. The Jayhawks are deep, talented and explosive. If one of the stars, like Collins or Cole Aldrich, are having a bad night, there’s someone — or two or three someones — to pick up the load. Spurty or not, they’re tough.

"They’re a pretty impressive team," Northern Iowa forward Adam Koch said. "There are big guys inside, guards outside. They’ve go so much talent. They can do it all. There’s not much weakness in their game."

-- John Marshall

Big 12 Women

Abi Olajuwon making her own name for Oklahoma

NORMAN, Okla. — During her first three seasons at Oklahoma, Abi Olajuwon heard the sermon many times from coach Sherri Coale — drop some weight and you’ll become a better player.

Then came an ultimatum of sorts after last season.

"Coach Coale gave me a number," Olajuwon recalled. "She said, ‘You will not step on this court for practice on day one if you don’t reach that number.’ I didn’t want to see if she was joking or not. She was like, ‘You can reach this number on your own, or when practice comes, I’ll make you reach this number."’

Thus motivated, the 6-foot-4 senior center started working to reach that goal — which, even now, she won’t publicly reveal. Trips to fast-foot restaurants, long a staple of Olajuwon’s diet, were out. Cooking at home was in, as were long workouts and hours in the gym, away from the spotlight.

She shed about 30 pounds and at a weigh-in the week before preseason practice started, Olajuwon had reached Coale’s target. Not coincidentally, the daughter of former NBA great Hakeem Olajuwon has looked like a brand-new player this season for the Sooners (23-10), who will host South Dakota State (22-10) on Sunday in a first-round NCAA tournament game.

"Her level of fitness has helped us throughout the whole year," point guard Danielle Robinson said. "She runs the floor better, finishes better. That personal discipline has helped our team."

Thrust into a starting role after three seasons of playing behind All-America center Courtney Paris, Olajuwon is the Sooners’ third-leading scorer at 10.2 points per game and ranks ninth in the ultra-competitive Big 12 Conference in rebounding at 7.2 per game and eighth in field-goal percentage (48.4). She’s also recorded four double-doubles, including one against then-No. 3 Nebraska.

"She put herself in a situation to be able to take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself," Coale said. "A lot of guys don’t do that. A lot of kids come in and think they’re supposed to play immediately. If they don’t get to play immediately, that’s it. They’re just satisfied with where they are. She has never been satisfied."

Olajuwon was a McDonald’s All-America selection coming out of The Marlborough School in Los Angeles. Plenty of other colleges promised her playing time early in her career. But she knew the reputation of twins Courtney and Ashley Paris, who already were at Oklahoma, and said she wanted to be challenged every day in practice — even if it meant waiting her turn for playing time.

"I really didn’t feel like I was ready for collegiate basketball," Olajuwon said. "To go and play on a public level and make mistakes and not get better, I guess some people want that because of playing time. I don’t knock anybody wanting to contribute, but I really wanted to get better as a player, and I felt like to get better, it takes more than coaches. You have to have players that are going to be the best."

As a freshman, she played in 17 games, never scoring more than four points. She appeared in 19 games as a sophomore, recording a double-double in a blowout of overmatched Central Arkansas. Her playing time bumped up a bit as a junior, as she appeared in 27 games, averaging 1.4 points and 2.2 rebounds per game.

Also last season, Olajuwon watched as Ashley Paris — who had dropped 25 pounds in the offseason — became a go-to player in her own right, helping the Sooners reach the Final Four. That example, combined with the knowledge the Sooners would need her to play a key role as a senior, motivated Olajuwon to reach her weight-loss goal.

"When you see it work and you see the productivity and the change from the year before ... I knew it was something I needed to do," Olajuwon said. "The moment the Final Four was over, I knew I had to commit to it."

Coale said her role was minimal in the whole process.

"She made a commitment," Coale said. "That’s always what it is, when you see a kid do that. They change their body, they change their lifestyle, they change their eating habits. They change their exercise regimen. They do it — we don’t do it. Ever."

Robinson spent much of the summer away from Norman, playing on various USA Basketball teams. All summer, her teammates had told Robinson she would be surprised the next time she saw Olajuwon. On Robinson’s first day back in August, the two crossed paths.

"I was actually walking into the (women’s basketball) office, and she was walking out," Robinson said. "I was like, ‘Is that Abi?’ I couldn’t believe it. They told me I wouldn’t believe it ... and that was the case."

The weight loss wasn’t the only change for Olajuwon. She also switched her jersey number to 34, the one made famous by her father when he led the Houston Rockets to two NBA titles.

-- Murray Evans