NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Midwest Regional at Lincoln, Neb. : Tueller Bows Out With Utah State

Rod Tueller ended his career as Utah State basketball coach Friday in the right place at the wrong time.

Tueller’s nine-year tenure came to a close where he had in mind--the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Tournament--but the Aggies’ 80-77 loss to Vanderbilt came a little early, in the first round of the Midwest Regional.

Tueller, who announced his resignation during the regular season, said he expected Vanderbilt’s 7-foot center, Will Perdue, to give his team problems. What he didn’t expect was a career-best game from 6-8 forward Frank Kornet.

Kornet set career highs with 20 points and 10 rebounds as the Commodores (19-10) advanced to Sunday’s second round against Pitt, which beat Eastern Michigan, 108-90.

Utah State, champion of the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament, ended its season 21-10.

Kornet and Perdue controlled the game inside. Perdue scored 20 points--14 in the first half--and had 11 rebounds as Vanderbilt won the battle of the boards, 47-34.

Vanderbilt led by 14 at one point in the first half and three times took 11-point leads after intermission, before Utah State pulled within a basket with 32 seconds left.

The workhorses for Utah State were Jeff Anderson and Kevin Nixon, who scored 18 and 15 points, respectively--all in the second half.

Pitt 108, E. Michigan 90--Charles Smith scored 31 points and sparked an 11-6 run midway through the second half to lead the Panthers into the second round.

Smith vaulted over the 2,000-point career mark with 16 first-half points and finished the game with a career total of 2,024, only 9 short of the school record set by Clyde Vaughn in 1980-84.

Eastern Michigan ended its season at 22-8 as Pitt (24-6) snapped the Hurons’ seven-game winning streak.

Lorenzo Neely had 16 points and Brad Soucie 17, including 15 on five three-point shots, by halftime to help Eastern Michigan stay with Pitt early.

Soucie finished with 26 points, and Neely wound up with 20.

Joining Smith in double figures for Pitt were Demetreus Gore with 24 and Jerome Lane with 22.

Murray St. 78, N. Carolina St. 75--Murray State continued the Ohio Valley Conference’s habit of pulling off first-round upsets, defeating the third-seeded Wolfpack.

“That’s what intercollegiate athletics are all about,” Racer Coach Steve Newton said. “I told them to go out tonight and play shirts and skins and see what we could do. We were the underdogs. We’ve been that way all year. These guys just never believed it.”

Last year, Austin Peay of the Ohio Valley Conference defeated heavily favored Illinois.

Jeff Martin, the Ohio Valley player of the year, scored 23 points and Don Mann had 16, including two free throws in the final 19 seconds, as the Murray, Ky., school with an enrollment of 7,300 sent the Wolfpack home with a 24-8 record.

The 14th-seeded Racers will carry a 22-8 record into Sunday’s game against Kansas.

Kansas 85, Xavier 72--Danny Manning scored 24 points and Milt Newton added 21 as Kansas avoided a second-half charge by Xavier.

The Jayhawks (22-11) dominated the first half but stumbled in the second. Their 25-point lead dwindled to 8 late in the game. But Xavier (26-4) could not catch up.

Xavier’s Byron Larkin, who averages 26 points a game, had just 5 through the first half but the senior guard finished with 16.