PITTSBURGH– When the NCAA selection committee chose to put nine Big Ten teams in the brackets, it raised some eyebrows.
The power conferences are always looking to control the revenue from this tournament.
But somewhere along the line, the committee misevaluated the Atlantic 10.
This conference may have been buried in the shadow of the Big East, had six quality teams and deserved more than the two bids it got, especially when you consider the four the Mountain West received. That was never more evident that yesterday when A-10 tournament champion Richmond, a 12th seed, defeated fifth seed Iowa, Big Ten tournament champion, 67-63, in the first round of the NCAA tournament at Buffalo.
None of this came as a surprise to Richmond’s fifth year guard Jacob Gilyard, who sensed the Spiders had a chance at a first round upset last Thursday if they received a bid. “We’re a fairly confident group and I think last weekend showed up.”
Richmond went from off the board to an automatic qualifier when they upset Davidson in the A-10 final, The Spiders lost their chance of qualifying for the big dance in 2020 when they forged a 24-7 record but had their season canceled because of the pandemic. Last year, they slipped to 14-9, but they elevated themselves to tournament status when six seniors opted to return for an extra year of COVID eligibility
“I told them it wasn’t going to be perfect, like their careers haven’t been perfect,” Richmond coach Chris Mooney. “And, I said, ‘This reason you came back was to handle adversity And these guys have done that in a great way all season.”
Gilyard scored 24 points Tyler Burton added 18 points and 11 rebounds, and the Spiders (24-12) advanced to play fourth seed Providence, which defeated South Dakota State, in the second round Saturday.
First team All American forward Keegan Murray scored 21 points and Patrick McCaffery added 18 for the Hawkeyes (26-10), who set conference records with 123 field goals and 351 points and were coming off a huge 75-66 win over Purdue in the Big Ten final Sunday.
But the Hawkeyes, who were averaging 83.3 points, was limited to their third worst scoring total and worst performance since a 48-46 loss to Rutgers Jan. 19.
‘This game is probably the worst game we played all season,” Connor McCaffery said. “And I don’t think it’s so it’s definitely not a good feeling in our stomachs right now”
Join the club. The Big Ten finished the day 1-3 with Michigan the only Big Ten team to advance and Indiana and Rutgers also out.
It gets tiring watching the little guy constantly fighting to get higher than 12th seeds. But 12th seed New Mexico State upset fifth seed UConn, 70-63, in Buffalo and 15th seed St. Peter’s shocked second seed Kentucky, 85-79, in overtime at Indianapolis.
The Big Blue nation is coming to take a while to process this one.
St. Peter’s, a tiny Jesuit school from Jersey City, got 27 points from Darryl Banks III to defeat the bluest of blue bloods.
“Our guys had a chip on their shoulder,” Peacocks’ coach Shaheen Holloway. “A lot of them believe they can play at Kentucky. At the end of the day, every team that made it to the NCAA Tournament deserves to be here. Every team taht made it to the NCAA Tournament believes they can advance. It’s about this night.”
St. Peter’s, the MAAC champion, kept the game, which had 13 lead changes, close and Banks’ two free throws with 1;45 in overtime gave the Peacocks (20-11) the lead for good. The Peacocks are a classic Cinderella, a school with an undergraduate enrollment of 35-3500 as compared to the SEC goliath, which has 22,000 undergrads and a 900- acre campus.
“It’s huge,” Banks said. “We’re putting Jersey City on the map. We’re from Jersey a small school, probably a lot of people don’t even know who we are.”
Oscar Tshiewbe, a 6-9 sophomore who is an early favorite to win the Wooden award, had 30 points and 16 rebounds for mighty Kentucky (26-8)– who was looking for a ninth title– but his two missed free throws in overtime were costly and the Wildcats never discovered a second option as Ty Ty Washington shot just 2 for 10 and scored only five points The Cats shot just 43 percent and were just 23 of 35 from the line, including 1 for 6 in overtime.
“My whole thing this week, because I knew they had never played in this stuff, was to get them free and loose and we never got to that point,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. ‘Even during timeouts,i was trying to do that . . . As a coach it’s your job to figure how to cross the finish line and we didn’t do that.”
