The last Saturday of the 2020-21 regular college basketball season was absolutely fulfilled. There were key implications of the NCAA Tournament across the country, buzzer beats, upsets and a top-10 thriller that set the stage for an epic Big Ten tournament.
Illinois’ victory in Ohio marked the return of Ayo Dosunmu and Fighting Illini moving one step closer to securing a seed 1 at the NCAA Tournament. It helps not only that Illini won consecutive victories against the top 10 teams, but also that the victories came against a team from Michigan apparently stuck in the top row and a team from the state of Ohio that was holding on to the chances of losing weight. back from a losing streak and close the season strong after maintaining “projected # 1 seed” status at the start of the season.
While Illinois was celebrating the return of its best player, Oklahoma State proved it had depth beyond Cade Cunningham with a win in West Virginia, while the potential No. 1 in the 2021 NBA Draft tended to an ankle injury sustained on Thursday night. -market. On the other side of the spectrum, Villanova played his first game since the defeat of Collin Gillespie, and not only lost at Providence, but saw point guard Justin Moore suffer an ankle injury in the first half.
The day saw several No. 1 seeds lost in their conference tournaments and one USC winner to sweep UCLA. We will see a little of this and much more in our next edition of the winners and losers of another Saturday full of university hoops.
Winner: Oklahoma State without Cade Cunningham
With freshman Cade Cunningham sidelined with an ankle injury and rebound leader Isaac Likekele also missing a fourth game in a row due to a hand injury, no one would blame Cowboys # 17 for sending him during the final. Saturday’s regular season. 6 West Virginia. Instead, OSU secured one of his most impressive wins of the season with an 85-80 win over the Mountaineers. Avery Anderson III led the Cowboys with 31 points and surpassed the previous record of his career by 14 points and reminded the country that this team is loaded with talents beyond its star.
Loser: Villanova’s bad luck continues
Number 10 Wildcats was already dealing with the overwhelming loss of senior leader Collin Gillespie for the rest of the season. In the first half of the first game without Gillespie on Saturday, third top scorer Justin Moore fell, and Villanova coach Jay Wright said Moore would need an MRI on his knee. As if things weren’t difficult enough for the Wildcats, they ended up losing 54-52 in Providence in a game that would have gone into overtime if that information had happened an instant earlier.
Matt Painter has been 7-0 against Indiana since Archie Miller was hired, and there is not a Purdue supporter in Hoosier State who does not remind his Indiana teammates of this fact on Monday and during the off-season. In addition to the right to boast about the rivalry, however, there is some real excitement about this Purdue team when we launched March Madness. The Boilermakers have a strong NCAA tournament profile that includes a sweep in the state of Ohio and a victory against Wisconsin, but as exciting as the team sheet is its current form. Purdue has five consecutive wins and lots of signs to suggest this group that has two fresh entries and two newcomers as significant contributors outside the bench are growing up and ready to throw some of their best balls in the postseason.
Loser: State of Florida gives up ACC crown in South Bend
The Seminoles had the chance to win the regular season ACC championship for the second consecutive season on the road in Notre Dame. It wasn’t the only way to a conference championship and a No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament, but winning Fighting Irish certainly seemed like the easy way, considering Notre Dame had lost four games in a row and things were bad enough for the students to sing “Fire Brey” at the conclusion of Wednesday night’s loss to NC State. Brey and Notre Dame helped turn the tide in an important way with this victory against the Seminoles, but the big story is a missed opportunity for the state of Florida. The bad defeat cost the Seminoles the title of the regular season, as Virginia beat Louisville later in the day.
Lost by 63-61 with 3.7 seconds remaining, USC guard Tahj Eaddy dodged the fact that he missed five of his six three-point attempts in a game the Trojans had never led. That was the rivalry against UCLA at the Pauley Pavilion, and Eaddy was going to present himself in a way that would prove to be a dagger for all daggers for the Bruins. UCLA did almost everything right to avenge the unbalanced defeat to the Trojans earlier this year and defend the home court to split the series, but it was not enough, as Eaddy’s 3-point horn cemented the sweep for Andy Enfield and a USC team that will be dangerous at the NCAA Tournament.
Loser: Navy chance to make an automatic bid
The seed of the Patriot League Tournament fell on Saturday afternoon, with the Navy losing 76-68 at the hands of Loyola-Maryland. This opens the door for Colgate, a Boston University winner for the fifth time this year, to take advantage of the situation as it avoids a potential confrontation with aspirants in their quest for a conference championship and NCAA Tournament bidding. Navy, the best defensive team in the league, and Colgate, the best offensive team in the league, never played in the regular season and now will not play in the conference tournament. The Raiders, now 12-1, have become the new favorites to claim the Patriot League automatic offer.
Winner: Rutgers cementes NCAA tournament curriculum
The Scarlet Knights entered Saturday’s regular season finale in Minnesota as a 9th seed in the NCAA Tournament, and may still be out on the field with a defeat. But for a show that hasn’t been on Big Dance since 1991, some guarantee would be nice. Rutgers accomplished this by knocking Minnesota down 77-70 in overtime to enter the Big Ten Tournament with a record of 14-10 (10-10 Big Ten). Last year’s team would break the drought of the NCAA Tournament program, but COVID-19 ended the opportunity. So it was nice to see the suffering Scarlet Knights have a chance to expire on Saturday.
Loser: Top Ten Faced Coaches
Victories on Saturday probably would not have helped much to save the faded hopes of the Indiana and Minnesota NCAA Tournament. But Gophers coach Richard Pitino and Hoosiers coach Archie Miller may have enjoyed the victories. Rutgers’ defeat was the seventh in a row for the Gophers, who will end with a losing record for the second straight season and the fourth time in Pitino’s eight seasons, unless they win a few games in what appears to be a brutal Big Ten tournament. As for Miller, the Hoosiers are stumbling over the Big Ten Tournament with five straight losses. This is the fourth season of Miller leading the Hoosiers, and his term has seen the program ranked in the AP Top 25 for a total of five weeks. That was in 2019, when they reached 21st place and then lost the NCAA tournament.
Winner: Alabama returns against Georgia
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Georgia led Alabama at halftime and then Crimson Tide left the locker room with a decidedly different game and went back to winning. OK, aside from all the jokes from the national championship related to Tua, this was a strong course correction from an Alabama team that started the jets and started to bury three points along the way to turn a double digit deficit in the first half into a deficit. double-digit win. Villanova transfer Jahvon Quinerly left the bench and had the team’s best mark of 18 points to lead the Crimson Tide, who overcame 22 turns to improve to 21-6 in the year.