INDIANAPOLIS — Tyler Kolek had 21 points and 11 assists, and David Joplin made two free throws with 7.4 seconds left to help Marquette finally put away Colorado 81-77 on Sunday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
In their third season under coach Shaka Smart, the second-seeded Golden Eagles (27-9) reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2013 by outlasting the 10th-seeded Buffaloes (26-11) and their dynamic offense.
Kam Jones scored 18 points and Joplin finished with 14 for Marquette, which shot 61.8% from the field but still couldn’t shake Colorado until the closing seconds. Chase Ross made a tiebreaking 3-pointer off a pass from Kolek with 2:53 left and finished with 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting.
KJ Simpson scored 20 points and Tristan da Silva had 17 for Colorado, which trailed by 11 at halftime but rallied to take a 55-54 lead just over five minutes into the second half. Kolek put the Golden Eagles back on top with a short jumper and Marquette never trailed again, but Colorado tied it twice, the last time on a 3-pointer by da Silva with 4:02 remaining.
The Buffs trailed 79-77 and had to foul three times before putting Joplin on the line for a 1-and-1. He knocked down both and set up a South Region semifinal meeting with No. 11 seed North Carolina State in Dallas on Friday.
(1) PURDUE 106, (8) UTAH STATE 67
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Toronto’s Zach Edey had 23 points and 14 rebounds, and No. 1 seed Purdue cruised into the Sweet 16 by pounding eighth-seeded Utah State 106-67 with an impressive offensive performance in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday.
Trey Kaufman-Renn added 18 points and eight boards for Purdue (31-7), which broke the school’s single-season record for victories. Fletcher Loyer had 15 points, and Braden Smith had all six of his assists in the second half when the Boilermakers shot 65.2% from the field before pulling the starters.
Purdue also set a school record for most points in a March Madness game. Next up is fifth-seeded Gonzaga in the Midwest Region semifinals in Detroit.
Great Osodor, the Mountain West Player of the Year, had 14 points and six rebounds for Utah State. The Aggies (28-7) were outrebounded 49-26, and they headed home still in search of the program’s first regional semifinal since 1970.
The biggest reason this time was Edey, who had another dominant showing in Indianapolis, just 60 miles southeast of campus.
(4) ALABAMA 72, (12) GRAND CANYON 61
SPOKANE, Wash. — Mark Sears carried Alabama long enough for the Crimson Tide to get an unexpected contribution and reach the Sweet 16.
Who is Mouhamed Dioubate?
“He won us the game the last five minutes,” Sears said.
Sears had 26 points and 12 rebounds, Dioubate scored all nine of his points in the final 5 1/2 minutes, and fourth-seeded Alabama used a late surge to beat No. 12 seed Grand Canyon 72-61 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night.
Sears carried the Crimson Tide (23-11) for the better part of 35 minutes before getting some unexpected help from Dioubate. The 6-foot-7 freshman scored more than nine points only twice all season but made the most of his chance to contribute in the final minutes of a physical game with Alabama in foul trouble and without starter Latrell Wrightsell Jr., who suffered a head injury in the first half.
“I was just playing hard and I got lost in the game, honestly. I wasn’t thinking about scoring. I just let the game come to me,” Dioubate said. “Coach put me in with a few minutes left in the game because Jarin (Stevenson) fouled out and I just tried to play as hard as I can and let my defense contribute to offense, and that’s what I did.”
Alabama advanced to the Sweet 16 for the 10th time overall and third time in the last four seasons under coach Nate Oats. The Crimson Tide will play in a regional semifinal in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1990-91; last year, Alabama was a No. 1 seed and fell to eventual national runner-up San Diego State.
This time, it’ll be the Tide trying to take down top-seeded North Carolina on Thursday in a West Region semifinal in Los Angeles.
“We had multiple guys in there putting their nose in and making tough plays,” Oats said. “Sears wasn’t going to lose. He wasn’t letting us lose tonight.”
Sears made 8 of 18 shots and cheekily waved goodbye in the final seconds to the Grand Canyon “Havocs” fans who filled Spokane Arena. Dioubate also grabbed five rebounds — all on the offensive end — in his 12 minutes and played solid defense on Grand Canyon star Tyon Grant-Foster.
Grant-Foster scored 29 points, one off his career high, but didn’t score in the final 4 minutes. The Lopes shot 32%, including a brutal 3 of 17 to begin the game. Grand Canyon (31-4) also couldn’t find anything from beyond the 3-point arc, going 2 of 20. Coach Bryce Drew’s squad came in averaging seven 3s per game.
(4) DUKE 93, (12) JMU 55
NEW YORK — Jared McCain scored 22 of his 30 points in the first half and set a Duke record for an NCAA Tournament game with eight 3-pointers as the Blue Devils ended 12th-seeded James Madison’s dream season with a 93-55 second-round victory Sunday.
The fourth-seeded Blue Devils (26-8) are headed to the Sweet 16 to face the winner of Houston-Texas A&M in the South Region semifinals Friday in Dallas.
McCain and Duke emphatically ended the nation’s longest active winning streak at 14 games, taking a 22-point lead into halftime and never letting the advantage slip below 20 in the second half. The rugged defense JMU used to beat Wisconsin in the first round didn’t seem to bother the Blue Devils at all.
The Dukes (32-4) finished with a program record for victories. Terrence Edwards Jr. led JMU with 13 points. Attention for the Sun Belt champions now turns to fourth-year coach Mark Byington, who has been speculated to be a candidate to fill the vacancy at West Virginia.
McCain made his eighth 3 with 11:59 left in the second half, holding the follow-through and making the score 66-39.
The charismatic freshman from California broke a school record set by Quinn Cook in a stunning first-round loss to Mercer in 2014.
It was all smiles for the Blue Devils in this one. They finished 14-for-28 from 3-point range.
Two days after Duke beat Vermont with a quiet offensive performance from 7-footer Kyle Filipowski (three points and one shot attempt), the second-team All-American had 14 points on 6-of-8 shooting against JMU.
Tyrese Proctor added 18 points and four 3-pointers.
Duke was knocked out of the tournament in the second round by Tennessee last season, coach Jon Scheyer’s first as Mike Krzyzewski’s replacement. Scheyer has been part of seven Sweet 16 teams as a player and an assistant. Now he’s got his first as a head coach.
(6) CLEMSON 72, (3) BAYLOR 64
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Chase Hunter had 20 points and six assists, and No. 6 seed Clemson held off third-seeded Baylor for a 72-64 victory in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday.
The Tigers advanced to the Sweet 16 for the second time in coach Brad Brownell’s 14 seasons. They also made it in 2018, when they lost to Kansas in the third round.
Joseph Girard III scored 13 points for the Tigers (23-11), and Ian Schieffelin and PJ Hall each had 11.
Next up for Clemson is No. 2 seed in Arizona in the West Region semifinals in Los Angeles. The Wildcats advanced with a 78-68 victory over Dayton on Saturday.
RayJ Dennis led Baylor with 27 points, including 21 in the second half. Ja’Kobe Walter added 20 points, but the Bears (24-11) lost in the second round of the NCAA tourney for the third straight year.
Baylor went 16 for 26 at the foul line, compared to 20 for 24 for Clemson.
(1) UCONN 75, (9) NORTHWESTERN 58
NEW YORK — Donovan Clingan, Tristen Newton, and top overall seed UConn overwhelmed an undermanned Northwestern team 75-58 on Sunday night to sail into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
Newton had 20 points and 10 assists, and Clingan finished with 14 points, 14 rebounds and eight blocks as the Huskies (33-3) led wire-to-wire and became the first defending national champions to reach the regional semifinals since Duke in 2016.
Connecticut built a 30-point cushion and matched a program record for wins set by the 2013-14 national championship squad. It will play Thursday night in the East Region semifinals against No. 5 seed San Diego State or 13th-seeded Yale in Boston, about an 85-mile drive from UConn’s campus.
The Huskies beat a fifth-seeded San Diego State squad 76-59 in last year’s national championship game. They lost Adama Sanogo, Jordan Hawkins and Andre Jackson Jr. to the NBA from that talented team, but this balanced and focused group has looked even more dominant as it attempts to become the first program to repeat as NCAA champion since Florida in 2007.
Yale, the Huskies’ in-state neighbor located about 60 miles south, won the most recent matchup between the schools, 45-44 at Storrs in December 2014 — against a UConn team coming off a national title the previous season.
Sound familiar?
Undersized and overmatched, Boo Buie and the ninth-seeded Wildcats (22-12) were buried under a dizzying display of dunks, blocks, alley-oops and layups.
They made a late push that prompted Huskies coach Dan Hurley to call a timeout with 5:26 remaining, but Northwestern never got the margin under 16.
(1) HOUSTON 100, (9) TEXAS A&M 95 (OT)
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Emanuel Sharp started overtime with a 3-pointer that put top-seeded Houston ahead to stay as the Cougars advanced to the Sweet 16 back in Texas by topping ninth-seeded Texas A&M 100-95 on Sunday night.
The Aggies forced overtime with a furious rally, outscoring Houston 17-5 in the final two minutes of regulation. Andersson Garcia beat the buzzer with his ninth 3-pointer of the season, and then was mobbed by his teammates.
Sharp fouled out after his 3, finishing with 30 points. His teammates outscored Texas A&M 7-1 to start the extra session and close it out.
The win by Houston (32-4) means all eight teams seeded 1 and 2 advanced to the Sweet 16 for the fifth time since the NCAA tourney started seeding in 1979. The top eight seeds also advanced in 2019, 2009, 1995 and 1989.
The Cougars will play Duke, a 93-55 winner over James Madison, on Friday in Dallas in the South Region semifinals. This will be Houston’s fifth straight Sweet 16 and 16th all-time.
Texas A&M (21-15) was trying to make the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2018 in its second straight NCAA Tournament under coach Buzz Williams. The Aggies had been 6-1 in March only to revert to the team that struggled offensively much of the season.
Jamal Shead had 21 points and had 10 assists for Houston. He was one of four Cougars who fouled out.
(5) SAN DIEGO STATE 85, (13) YALE 57
SPOKANE, Wash. — Jaedon LeDee had 26 points and nine rebounds, Darrion Trammell added 18 points and fifth-seeded San Diego State used a fast start to overwhelm 13th-seeded Yale and rolled to an 85-57 win in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night.
The Aztecs scored the first 10 points of the game, led by 24 at halftime and removed any chance of another potential March Madness, bracket-busting upset.
San Diego State (26-10) earned a rematch with No. 1 seed and defending national champion UConn on Thursday in Boston in the Sweet 16. The Huskies beat the Aztecs 76-59 last April in Houston, denying San Diego State a chance at its first title.
The Aztecs will be playing in the Sweet 16 in consecutive years for the first time in school history.
LeDee was again the star for the Aztecs after he scored 32 points in the first-round win over UAB. He made 9 of 12 shots, including a pair of 3s, and in two tournament games is 20-for-30 shooting.
But some of the outside shooting that was absent in the tourney opener returned and San Diego State hit a season-high 13 3-pointers. Trammell had just four points and took four shots against UAB, but hit four 3s against Yale.
Bez Mbeng led Yale with 12 points and Matt Knowling added 11. But even with borrowing the University of Idaho band for a second time, there was no magical late comeback after the Bulldogs (23-10) rallied from down 10 in the final 7 1/2 minutes to top No. 4 seed Auburn in the opener.
For the second straight year, San Diego State didn’t allow a No. 13 seed seeking a landmark second-round upset the chance to breathe. The Aztecs suffocated Furman last year after the Paladins upset Virginia in the first round.
They did the same to Yale.
John Poulakidas, the star of Yale’s upset win over Auburn, wasn’t able to match the same level of shot-making he displayed on the way to 28 points in the first round. Poulakidas missed all five shots in the first half and was scoreless at the break. He finally scored early in the second half but finished with only nine points.