Tulsa Old-Schools Marquette
The ball swung from Cordell Henry, Marquette’s second-leading scorer, to Dwyane Wade, its leading scorer, to Travis Diener, a dangerous outside shooter who comes off the bench. This was the Golden Eagles’ final possession Thursday in a riveting game with Tulsa, which had just taken a two-point lead on a runner by Greg Harrington with 14.6 seconds remaining.
Diener went up from 25 feet with just over two seconds remaining and offered up a prayer that was far short. Wade sliced along the left baseline and went up to meet the ball in an effort to transform Diener’s shot into an alley-oop dunk ... to no avail.
That was how Thursday’s first-round East Regional matchup in St. Louis ended--in a 71-69 win for Tulsa, which moved on to a Saturday meeting with Kentucky, conqueror of Valparaiso. That, too, was how the season ended for Marquette, the region’s No. 5-seeded team and a 41/2-point favorite.
Tulsa, seeded 12th, shot 45.6%, outrebounded Marquette, 37-28, and scored 27 second-chance points. It took a four-point halftime lead and built it to 14 with 12 minutes remaining. But Marquette rallied, and a Henry jumper at 3:54 finally brought his team even at 65-65. The score would be tied again at 67 and at 69.
A minute later, after a Tulsa timeout, Marquette shut down the play the Golden Hurricane sought, but Harrington improvised and put up a running 12-footer that bounced in. “That was an old-school shot famous in the ‘50s,” Tulsa Coach John Phillips said. “But it wasn’t luck. We’ve seen him do it before.”
And Marquette couldn’t answer.
Kentucky 83, Valparaiso 68--For one day, at least, the Wildcats looked like a team. They found the open man on offense. They hustled on defense. They even played as if they liked each other in a victory over No. 13 Valparaiso in an East Regional opener at St. Louis.
Given Kentucky’s recent play, this might qualify as the NCAA tournament’s first upset.
The fourth-seeded Wildcats arrived in town in apparent disarray. They had lost four of their last nine games, including an uninspired 70-57 loss to NIT-bound South Carolina in a Southeastern Conference tournament semifinal.
That result, at the end of a season racked by suspensions and dissension, seemed to foretell an early NCAA tournament exit.
But this was a different team.
“When you turn on ESPN and you hear them saying, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Big Blue,’ and you look in a magazine and see that everyone’s picking Valpo, you do take that to heart,” said Keith Bogans, who scored 21 points in Kentucky’s record 88th NCAA tournament win.