NCAA March Madness: Michigan Knocks Off Colorado State

St. Patrick’s Day turned into St. Peter’s Day.

St. Peter’s University, a school with about 2,300 undergraduates in Jersey City, N.J., stunned mighty Kentucky, 85-79 in overtime, in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianpolis on Thursday. It was the first time the Naismith Hall of Fame coach John Calipari has lost in the first round of the tournament and it marked the 10th time in tournament history a No. 15 seed had ousted a No. 2. A year ago, No. 15 Oral Roberts stunned No. 2 Ohio State.

“Kentucky’s a great team, Coach Cal’s a great coach,” Peacocks Coach Shaheen Holloway said in a television interview. “But I got guys with a chip on their shoulder. Some of our guys think they can play at Kentucky.” He added: “They think.”

Daryl Banks III led the Peacocks offensively, finishing with 27 points off five 3-pointers. Banks’s free throws with 1 minute 45 seconds left gave St. Peter’s a 77-76 edge in overtime.

St. Peter’s guard Doug Edert hit a floater that rolled around the rim before dropping in to tie the game at 71 and send it to overtime.

In overtime, Banks made two free throws to put the Peacocks up 81-76 with 31.6 seconds left. A 3-pointer by Kentucky’s TyTy Washington cut it to 81-79.

St. Peter’s guard Matthew Lee made two free throws for an 83-79 lead.

Richmond gets an upset win over Iowa.

Richmond needed to win four games in four days during the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament just to qualify for the university’s first N.C.A.A. tournament since 2011.

Now, the Spiders are making the most of their opportunity.

Behind 24 points, 6 assists and 6 rebounds from the 5-foot-9 fifth-year guard Jacob Gilyard, the No. 12 Spiders contained No. 5 Iowa’s high-octane offense en route to a 67-63 first-round victory in Buffalo. The Spiders (24-12) won their fifth straight game and held Iowa to about 21 points under its scoring average. Richmond will face No. 4 Providence — which knocked off No. 13 South Dakota State on Thursday — in a round of 32 game on Saturday in Buffalo.

“I mean, we’re resilient, you saw it last weekend, you saw it today,” Gilyard, who hit four clutch foul shots in the final 15.2 seconds, said in a television interview. “We’re a battle-tested team, we’re pretty confident in ourselves and we think we can beat anybody.”

Entering the tournament, No. 12 seeds were 51-93 against relatively upset-prone No. 5 seeds, and Richmond kept the trend going by ousting the Big Ten tournament champion. Tyler Burton added 18 points and 11 rebounds for Richmond, while Nathan Cayo, a fifth-year senior from Montreal, made two huge layups in the final minute and 24 seconds to finish with 15 points.

Iowa’s Keegan Murray, a first-team Associated Press All-America selection and a projected N.B.A. lottery pick, finished with 21 points on 8 for 15 shooting and 9 rebounds. He entered Thursday as the fourth-leading scorer in Division I with 23.6 points per game.

A year ago, the Big Ten sent nine schools to the 68-team field, but only one — Michigan — advanced out of the round of 32.

This year, the conference again sent nine schools to the tournament. Iowa was a Big Ten favorite to make the Final Four, but now it is finished for the season.

New Mexico State pulls off the 12-5 upset.

With New Mexico State clinging to a 3-point lead in the final seconds against Connecticut on Thursday night in Buffalo, Teddy Allen forced a turnover by getting into the body of UConn point guard R.J. Cole in the backcourt.

After a teammate ended up with the ball, Allen got it back, drove for a layup, crashed to the ground and then jumped up and began flexing his muscles in front of the New Mexico State fans, who roared their approval.

Allen enjoyed playing the villain and, boy, was he a good one. He finished with 37 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists as the No. 12-seeded Aggies stunned the No. 5 Huskies, 70-63. It was the program’s first N.C.A.A. tournament win since 1993.

The Aggies joined Richmond as the second No. 12 seed to oust a No. 5 seed on Thursday. The Spiders took out No. 5 Iowa in the same arena.

“I’m just happy that we got the ‘dub,’” Allen, who scored his team’s final 15 points and was 13 of 13 from the free-throw line, said in a television interview. “I just had to find anywhere I fit in. It never rattles me.”

He added: “My teammates kept looking for me, telling me to shoot it, that’s all you can ask for, a team that believe in you, a coach that believes in you and you see what happens.”

For Coach Dan Hurley and UConn, it had to be a bitterly disappointing loss to the season after they had expected to make a run.

Another Big East Conference program, No. 9 Marquette, also lost Thursday, falling, 95-63 to No. 8 North Carolina. No. 9 Creighton beat San Diego State, 72-69, though its starting center, Ryan Kalkbrenner, left the game with injury in overtime.

No. 1 Gonzaga survives an early scare.

For about three-fourths of No. 1 Gonzaga’s first-round N.C.A.A. tournament game against No. 16 Georgia State in Portland, Ore., it seemed possible that the Panthers could maybe — just maybe — become the second No. 16 seed to ever topple a No. 1.

Then, the inevitable happened.

Drew Timme, Chet Holmgren and the Bulldogs used a 21-0 second half sprint to run Georgia State out of the gym en route to a 93-72 victory. The Bulldogs avoided the fate of No. 1 Virginia, which became the only men’s No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 when it fell to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in 2018.

The 6-foot-10 Timme finished with 32 points and 13 rebounds, and the 7-foot-1 Holmgren, the potential No. 1 pick in this summer’s N.B.A. draft, flirted with a triple-double before ending up with 19 points, 17 rebounds and 7 blocks. The Bulldogs matched Kansas among programs that have won their first-round game in each of the last 13 N.C.A.A. tournaments.

On Saturday, Gonzaga (27-3) will next face Coach Penny Hardaway and No. 9 Memphis, which beat No. 8 Boise State, 64-53, on Thursday.

The Bulldogs have appeared in two of the last four N.C.A.A. championship games, losing in last year’s title game to Baylor as their quest to become the first undefeated champion since Bob Knight’s Indiana squad in 1976 came to an end.

Georgia State lost big man Eliel Nsoseme in the first half to an apparent left knee injury. The senior guard Corey Allen, who scored 16 points, was one of four Panthers to reach double figures.

Michigan mounts a comeback to knock off higher-seeded Colorado State.

As one member of Michigan’s famed Fab Five exhorted the Wolverines from the stands at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, another member coached the team into the round of 32 in the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Jalen Rose flexed, shouted and raised his arms throughout as Michigan coach Juwan Howard, Rose’s former teammate on a squad that reached back-to-back N.C.A.A. championship games in the early 1990s, led the 11th-seeded Wolverines to a 75-63 victory over No. 6 seed Colorado State. The Wolverines (18-14) will face No. 3 Tennessee, which routed No. 14 Longwood, 88-56, in a South Regional round of 32 game on Saturday.

Howard was coaching in just his second game since serving a five-game suspension at the conclusion of the regular season, a punishment for slapping a Wisconsin assistant in the head after a game on Feb. 20. Michigan lost to Indiana in its first game of the Big Ten tournament last week.

Michigan’s win meant that, for the sixth straight tournament, a No. 11 seed had knocked off a No. 6 seed, though oddsmakers had favored the Wolverines anyway. Michigan, which peaked at No. 4 in The Associated Press poll early in the regular season, has won at least one game in six straight tournaments.

The Wolverines trailed by as many as 15 points in the first half, in which they missed all seven of their shots from beyond the arc, but roared back in the second half, outscoring the Rams, 46-27. Michigan shot 4 for 7 from deep in the second half.

Asked during a television interview what he told his players at halftime, Howard said: “Get back to our habits. Defensively, we got to do a better job against that 3-point line. We also have to take our time. We gave them too many possessions, nine turnovers, as well as overall they sped us up. What’s been our meat and potatoes is our inside play, and our guys really rose together, led by Hunter Dickinson.”

Dickinson, Michigan’s 7-foot-1 sophomore center, finished with 21 points and six rebounds as the Wolverines outscored the Rams 34-16 in the paint. The graduate student guard Eli Brooks added 16 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists, including a jumper to put Michigan up 70-60 with just under two minutes remaining.

Michigan played without point guard DeVante’ Jones, who is in the concussion protocol and could return Saturday, but the freshman point guard Frankie Collins stepped up with a big performance, notching 14 points with 6 rebounds and 2 assists. The Wolverines shot 19 for 22 from the free-throw line.

Michigan forced Colorado State, which entered Thursday’s game averaging 10 turnovers, into committing 11 of them, and outscored the Rams 15-11 in fast-break points.

Michigan became only the fourth team this season to beat Colorado State (25-6), which also fell to San Diego State, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and Wyoming. Under coach Niko Medved, the Rams have won 20 or more games in three straight seasons.

Providence shuts down South Dakota State, a popular upset pick.

No. 13 South Dakota State entered its matchup with fourth-seeded Providence in Buffalo riding one of the most potent offenses in college basketball.

It was averaging 86.7 points per game, second only to Gonzaga, while shooting 45 percent from 3-point range.

But then the Jackrabbits ran into the Friars and some old-fashioned Big East physicality and toughness. Providence contained South Dakota State, 66-57, while holding it to 39 percent shooting and 30 percent from behind the arc. The Friars (26-5) also kept the Jackrabbits off the foul line, limiting them to 6 for 9 shooting on free throws.

“I thought our players were determined, I thought our players were focused, I thought our guys had incredible understanding of what they were trying to do and our will to win,” Providence coach Ed Cooley, the Big East coach of the year, said in a television interview. “We always heard about how good they were. Our players feel that they’re a good basketball team as well.”

Providence, which won the Big East regular-season title, rebounded from a blowout loss to Creighton in the Big East tournament semifinals last Friday at Madison Square Garden to win its first N.C.A.A. tournament game since 2016.

“It means the world to us,” Cooley said. “We haven’t been fortunate in the tournament, and this is just another step for us to continue to improve as an organization.”

Providence slowed down the pace of the game and led by as many as 14 points in the second half before South Dakota State trimmed the Friars’ lead to one possession. But Providence’s Jared Bynum was fouled while attempting a 3-pointer and made all three of his free throws to push the lead to 63-57. He finished with 12 points, while Al Durham and Noah Horchler scored 13 apiece.

The Friars, one of six Big East teams in the field, will face the winner of Thursday’s Midwest Regional game between No. 5 Iowa and No. 12 Richmond.

Memphis notches its first N.C.A.A. tournament win in nearly a decade.

The Memphis native Alex Lomax overcame an ankle injury in the first half to help Coach Penny Hardaway lead the Tigers to their first N.C.A.A. tournament victory since 2014.

Lomax, a 6-foot senior guard, injured his left ankle when he landed on it awkwardly after making a 3-pointer in the first half, leaving him screaming in pain. But he returned to finish with 9 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists as the No. 9 Tigers fended off No. 8 Boise State, 64-53, in Portland, Ore. The Tigers will next face the winner of Thursday’s game between Gonzaga, the No. 1 overall seed, and No. 16 Georgia State in the West region.

“Man, I’m feeling very great right now,” Lomax said in a television interview. “I’m very emotional, it’s been eight years since we were able to get to the tournament, and just being from Memphis and able to get our first win and being a part of that, I can’t do nothing but feel good right now.”

After being ranked No. 12 in Division I in the preseason, Memphis started 9-8 amid viral setbacks and mixed play. After a loss to Southern Methodist in a conference game in January, Hardaway made national news when he bombarded members of the media with expletives after the game. Around that same time, the highly regarded freshman Emoni Bates briefly left the team to receive treatment for back pain at home in Michigan. Without him in the rotation, Memphis played much better down the stretch, winning 13 of its last 15 games.

The 6-foot-9 Bates, once compared to a young Kevin Durant, returned on Thursday for the first time since Jan. 27. He made his sole attempt, a 3-pointer, and finished with 3 points, no assists and no rebounds in three minutes.

DeAndre Williams led Memphis with 14 points and 5 rebounds, Landers Nolley had 12 points and 5 rebounds, and the freshman big man Jalen Duren contributed 10 points and 11 rebounds, scoring a huge layup off a steal by Lomax to make it 60-53. The Oregon transfer Abu Kigab kept Boise State, the Mountain West Conference regular-season and tournament champions, close in the second half, finishing with a game-best 20 points.

“It means the world to me,” Lomax said when asked what it felt like to win a tournament game for Memphis. “I honestly didn’t expect to be here, and now I’m here and I’m doing something special.”