Huskies the Team UConn Count On

And Then There Was One

1. The national championship game was a runaway, but Emeka Okafor never stopped wanting the ball. He dived onto the floor for it with Connecticut leading by 25 in the second half, and after the horn sounded on an 82-73 victory over Georgia Tech, he chased a laughing Rashad Anderson all over the court, begging him for the game ball. Okafor earned it, with a 24-point, 15-rebound performance that earned him the most outstanding player honor.

Duke Is Done

2. J.J. Redick drove the lane and was stripped of the ball as time ran down on Duke’s season, and for once, in a game full of whistles, there was no foul. Coach Mike Krzyzewski went ballistic on the Duke sideline, but Connecticut went to the title game after Okafor overcame foul trouble to lead a 12-0 stretch run for a 79-78 victory.

Where There’s a Will

3. Oklahoma State’s John Lucas had just tied the game with a shot much like his game winner against Saint Joseph’s a round earlier. But Arizona transfer Will Bynum answered for Georgia Tech, using a screen to drive all the way to the basket for a layup with 1.5 seconds left that put the Yellow Jackets in their first national championship game with a 67-65 victory.

Saint Joseph’s Goes Marching Home

4. Lucas, the Baylor transfer and son of the former NBA player and coach, sank a three-pointer with 6.9 seconds left to put St. Joe’s on the brink of elimination. Jameer Nelson, the Hawks’ unanimous All-American, had one final shot to try to keep the Hawks’ Final Four dreams alive, but he missed at the buzzer of a 64-62 regional final loss and sat stunned on the court near the top of the key.

Blazing a Trail

5. Mike Anderson took Nolan Richardson’s old “40 Minutes of Hell” attack from Arkansas to Alabama Birmingham, and the Blazers turned the all-out press-and-run game into an upset of Kentucky, top-seeded team in the tournament. UAB’s Mo Finley pump-faked and made a 17-foot jumper with 12 seconds left, and Kentucky couldn’t answer as ninth-seeded UAB stunned the Wildcats, 76-75, to advance to the Sweet 16.

The Sun Sets on the West

6. So many times before in a season marred by a single loss, Stanford had pulled out a victory in the final moments, and even Alabama Coach Mark Gottfried wondered whether it was about to happen again.

But Dan Grunfeld’s three-pointer to tie Alabama bounded off the rim at the buzzer, and Stanford was out of miracles in the second round, 70-67.

Wolf Pack Uprising

7. Gonzaga’s Blake Stepp, with another woeful NCAA tournament shooting performance behind him, started congratulating the Nevada bench even before the final horn had sounded. The Zags, tournament darlings of so many seasons past, reached the Sweet 16 as a 10th-seeded team in 1999 and 2000 -- and it was 10th-seeded Nevada that sent second-seeded Gonzaga home early with a 91-72 second-round upset.

Eating His Words

8. With 51 seconds left in St. Joe’s 84-80 victory over Wake Forest to reach the Elite Eight the crowd started to chant: “Billy Packer! Billy Packer!”

Packer, the CBS announcer and former Wake Forest player, started a firestorm when he said on Selection Sunday that St. Joe’s didn’t deserve a No. 1 seeding and didn’t belong in a league with a list of teams that included first-round loser Florida.

“I just want to check -- is Billy Packer playing for a team?” St. Joe’s Coach Phil Martelli shot back that day. “He’s got a lot to say. We’d like to play against him.”

Twist and Shout

9. Two minutes into a Sweet 16 game against upstart Nevada, Georgia Tech’s leading scorer, B.J. Elder, twisted his right ankle. But the Yellow Jackets kept after it, avoiding an upset with a 72-67 victory and racing all the way to the championship game even though a hobbled Elder managed only two points in three games.

A Florida Flop

10. It was one of the most predicted “upsets” in the tournament -- Florida was ripe after losing Christian Drejer to a pro career in Europe before season’s end.

But the amazing thing about the first-round upset pulled by 12th-seeded Manhattan College and Luis Flores was that it wasn’t even close, 75-60.