Aidan Berg

North Texas reaches NIT finals, shuts down Wisconsin 56-54

Candice Ward-USA TODAY Sports
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LAS VEGAS – Tylor Perry scored 14 of his 16 points in the first half, Rubin Jones scored all 12 of his after halftime and North Texas closed on a 10-0 run to beat Wisconsin 56-54 on Tuesday night in the semifinals of the NIT.

North Texas (30-7) advances to the program’s first NIT championship game on Thursday. Conference USA is now 16-1 this postseason.

North Texas, which trailed 41-29 at halftime, took its first lead of the game at 56-54 with 2:08 remaining on Moulaye Sissoko’s shot in the lane to cap a 10-0 run.

Wisconsin forward Tyler Wahl missed two free throws with 49.1 seconds left and North Texas worked the clock down before Perry had it poked away. Wahl had a shot blocked at the rim, but Wisconsin secured the loose ball and called a timeout with 5.8 left. Wisconsin got it inside to Wahl but Sissoko knocked it away and dove on the ball to end it.

The Mean Green, the nation’s leader in scoring defense at 55.7 points per game, held Wisconsin without a point for the final 9:07 of the game. The Badgers made just one of their last 16 shots – with 10 straight misses.

Kai Huntsberry scored four of his 12 points in the game-closing run for North Texas, which extended its program record for wins this season.

Chucky Hepburn scored all 15 of his points in the first half for Wisconsin (20-15), which was making its first appearance in the NIT semifinals.

Wisconsin dropped to 13-8 this season in games decided by five points or fewer.

NEW VENUE

The semifinals and final are being played at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas after Madison Square Garden in New York hosted every year but two since 1938, with the 2020 tournament canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 event held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The 2024 semifinals and final will be played at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

LSU’s Mulkey senses reunion in trip to Texas for Final Four

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DALLAS – Kim Mulkey is returning to Texas for another Final Four, keenly aware that her LSU Tigers will play a short road trip from the school she made synonymous with women’s basketball.

Mulkey is the third coach to take multiple schools to the Final Four, doing so in her second season back in her home state of Louisiana after leading Baylor to the national semifinals four times in 21 seasons.

The Bears won three national championships under Mulkey, combined for 23 regular-season and tournament titles in the Big 12 Conference and made the NCAA Tournament in all but one of her seasons.

“You never spend 21 years of your life building a dynasty, and that’s what we did at Baylor. I think we can all agree with that,” Mulkey said Tuesday. “I still have a home there. My grandchildren are there. So my heart will always be there.”

Mulkey and the Tigers (33-2) will face first-time Final Four qualifier Virginia Tech (31-4) in the opener Friday night in Dallas, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Mulkey’s former college home in Waco. Defending champion South Carolina (36-0) plays Iowa (30-6) in the late game.

Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer took three teams to the Final Four, and Gary Blair made it that far with two.

Blair’s second was Texas A&M in 2011, when he won an Elite Eight showdown with Mulkey at American Airlines Center. Five years later in Dallas, the Bears again fell one win short of the Final Four.

Mulkey is back in Dallas with a new team after a 54-42 Elite Eight victory over Miami.

“There will be Baylor people sitting in my section that are heartbroken that I left,” Mulkey said. “I get it. Someday when I’m retired, maybe I’ll write another book and have more details, but I love Baylor University, the fans there, the Lady Bear fans there. But it was time. Timing is everything in life.”

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has fonder memories of the home of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. The Gamecocks won their first national title there five years ago, beating Mississippi State after the Bulldogs ended Connecticut’s 111-game winning streak in the semifinals.

“Dallas, it will be etched in my memory forever,” said Staley, whose team – the No. 1 overall seed – earned a return trip with an 86-75 victory over Maryland. “I remember vividly the police escorts. I remember our fans. I remember UConn losing. That was a huge moment in college women’s basketball.”

Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks is a Dallas Cowboys fan, so he remembers seeing star quarterback Dak Prescott in the stands five years ago rooting for his alma mater, Mississippi State.

Prescott remembers the “huge moment” to which Staley referred. His reaction to Morgan William’s buzzer-beating game-winner in overtime made the rounds on social media five years ago.

“That was a surreal moment,” Brooks said. “But my surreal moment was last night.”

That’s when the No. 1 seed Hokies beat Ohio State 84-74 to reach their first Final Four in Brooks’ seventh season. Iowa, which beat Louisville 97-83 in the Elite Eight, has advanced this far for the first time since 1993, when Stringer became the first coach to lead multiple teams to the Final Four.

Stringer had done it with Cheyney in the inaugural tournament season of 1982, and after the Iowa trip, she went twice more with Rutgers in 2000 and 2007.

“She called me immediately after we beat Louisville,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “In fact, she was my first voice message I got that night. I know coach Stringer is behind us. I haven’t been able to get back to her yet, but I will soon.”

Mulkey’s Bears were one of the top seeds in 2017, hoping to chase a title just up the road from their Waco campus. Mississippi State beat Baylor in overtime in the Elite Eight before the OT thriller against UConn.

The Tigers are this deep in the tournament for the first time since the last of five consecutive Final Four appearances in 2008, all of which ended in the semifinals.

Mulkey was asked if she felt the burden of living up to those glory years.

“We’ve already done that,” said Mulkey, who has now reached the NCAA Tournament in 19 consecutive seasons as a coach. “Winning a national championship will only put an exclamation mark on it. We have exceeded probably what anybody could just realistically say was possible this quickly.”

Black female athletes: Having Black female coach is crucial

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South Carolina senior guard Brea Beal knew she could trust Dawn Staley before she even suited up for the Gamecocks.

It wasn’t just Staley’s coaching accolades, which include fueling South Carolina’s meteoric rise in women’s basketball, that sold Beal. Beal knew that Staley – a Black woman like her – would best understand how to guide her as she navigated both life and playing basketball on a big stage.

“People that were telling me what this community was about, I know it’s somewhere I wanted to be,” Beal said. “As soon as I got here, she definitely led me down a journey so I could find out who I am.”

Black female representation in the coaching and sports administrative ranks has existed on a minute scale – even in a sport like basketball, which along with track and field has the highest concentration of Black female college athletes. Black female players who have been coached by a Black woman told The Associated Press that it was crucial to their development.

“There are some coaches who will just have all guys with no understanding that there are sometimes things that a young woman may need to talk to another woman about,” said Kiki Barnes, a former basketball player and jumper at New Orleans and current Gulf Coast Athletic Conference commissioner.

While the number of women coaching women’s sports has increased in the past decade, Black women continue to lag behind most other groups. During the 2021-22 school year, 399 Black women coached women’s NCAA sports teams in Divisions I, II and III, compared with 3,760 white women and 5,236 white men.

In women’s NCAA basketball, a sport made up of 30% Black athletes, Black women made up 12% of head coaches across all divisions during the 2021-22 season, according to the NCAA’s demographics database.

Fourteen Black women led women’s basketball teams across 65 Power Five programs this past season – up one from 2021. That’s less than 22% of the total in a sport that was played by more Black athletes (40.7%) than any other race in Division I, according to a report with data from the 2020-21 season.

For the first time in a decade, four Black coaches advanced to the Sweet 16 of the women’s basketball tournament, including Staley, who said she believes it’s more popular to hire a woman at “this stage of the game.”

“And it’s not to say that I’m going to sit here and male bash, because we have a lot of male coaches who have been in our game for decades upon decades,” said Staley, who will lead her team into the Final Four this weekend. “But I will say that giving women an opportunity to coach women and helping women navigate through life like they have navigated through life will allow your student-athletes a different experience than having a male coach.”

For years Staley has been an advocate for hiring more female coaches – especially minorities – in college basketball, but WNBA player Angel McCoughtry said Black female coaches as successful as Staley are still too few and far between in the sport.

“When I was getting recruited in high school, I don’t remember having a Dawn Staley to look up to,” said McCoughtry, who played at Louisville from 2005-09.

McCoughtry also named Carolyn Peck, the first African American woman to coach her team to an NCAA women’s basketball title in 1999 with Purdue, as another example of representation in the sport.

“So there’s one or two every decade,” McCoughtry said. “Why can’t we have 10? There’s 10 Caucasian coaches every decade.”

McCoughtry, a former No. 1 overall pick by the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, got used to being around people who didn’t look like or understand her. She is Black. Her AAU and high school coaches were Black men. Her college coaches were white men. Marynell Meadors, a white woman, was her first coach in Atlanta.

She has fielded frustrating questions from white peers, coaches and owners – like how often she washes her hair, or whether her passionate play was because she was from Baltimore.

“There’s just a disconnect in understanding things,” the 36-year-old said, adding: “We need more coaches to protect us.”

McCoughtry has never had a Black female head coach but did have the impactful guidance of Michelle Clark-Heard, a Black woman whom Jeff Walz brought on as an assistant when he took over at Louisville in 2008.

She also leaned on Tim Eaton, a Black assistant coach who she said advocated for her in her freshman year, when then-coach Tom Collen wanted to send her back to Baltimore because she was late to one of her first practices. Similarly, McCoughtry said, she felt she had less room to make mistakes than white teammates. When she questioned a coach, she was labeled a troublemaker; when she got fired up about a play, she was told she had a bad attitude.

“We just never had any inch to be human, like our Caucasian counterparts,” she said, adding: “But who understands that? Our Black coaches. Because they went through everything we went through. They have a story, too.”

Part of the reason for the lack of Black female coaches is because of who ultimately holds the power to hire, Barnes said. That’s often athletic directors, a level where there is an even greater lack of diversity – 224 of 350 in Division I are white men. Plus, she added, there are changing requirements for what it takes to get leadership opportunities.

“And now the system has changed to where now you’ve got to know search firms because now search firms are the ones that are managing and determining who gets these opportunities,” she said. “Every time we understand how to get in the room and what it takes to be prepared, it’s like the rules change.”

Barnes played high school basketball in her hometown of Minden, Louisiana, where she had an assistant coach who was a Black woman; Barnes still refers to her as “Coach Smith.”

“For her, it wasn’t just about basketball. It was about who I was as a young lady,” Barnes recalled, adding, “I would say it’s similar with a young woman wanting to talk to a mom about womanly things. It’s not that a man couldn’t do it, but I wouldn’t feel as comfortable talking to either my dad or any other man about woman things.”

Priscilla Loomis, a 2016 Olympic high jumper who is Black, said she became a coach to provide kids that look like her the representation the sport has lacked. NCAA track and field numbers mirrored women’s basketball numbers in 2021-22: 5% of head coaches were Black women, while 19% of women’s NCAA track and field athletes are Black.

“They want so badly to feel seen and to feel loved and to be given guidance,” Loomis said. “And so that’s why I always say it’s important to get women of color, men of color to the starting line, because a lot of times we’re so many steps behind.”

Auburn’s top ’22 hoops signee, Traore, plans to transfer

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AUBURN, Ala. – Auburn’s top signee from last year, center Yohan Traore, plans to transfer.

The five-star recruit from France, who played a limited role as a freshman, announced his plans in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

The 6-foot-10 Traore initially committed to LSU but landed at Auburn after the firing of coach Will Wade a little more than a year ago. He was rated the No. 24 overall recruit and No. 5 center according to the 247Sports composite rankings.

Traore averaged 2.1 points and 1.4 rebounds after arriving from Dream City Christian School in Arizona.

Traore was a member of the U15 and U16 French National Team.

He played nine minutes in Auburn’s opening NCAA Tournament game against Iowa. Traore failed to score and didn’t play in the second-round loss to Houston.

March Madness: Miami gets 21 from Pack to rally past Drake

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ALBANY, N.Y. – With Miami’s season on the line, the Hurricanes’ leaders got together and insisted the NCAA Tournament wasn’t going to end with an early loss to a double-digit seed.

Nijel Pack, Wooga Poplar and Norchad Omier made sure the season continued for fifth-seeded Miami.

Pack scored 21 points – including the go-ahead jumper and a pair of free throws in the final minute – to rally the Canes past Drake 63-56 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday night.

“I was like, ‘Man, this can’t be the way how it ends,’” Pack said. “I talked to my teammates. I felt like they felt the same way. We kind of brought some inner energy from within us.”

Miami also picked up its defensive intensity, got a couple of steals, put Drake on its heels and reeled off the final 10 points in an overall 16-1 closing spurt to get past the 12th-seeded Bulldogs (27-8) for the Midwest Region victory.

“It takes a lot to survive, and we fortunately survived today,” said Miami coach Jim Larranaga, whose team advanced to the Elite Eight last year before losing to eventual national champion Kansas.

Norchad Omier added 12 points and 14 rebounds for the Hurricanes, who won despite being held to a season-low 63 points. Wooga Poplar had 15 points.

Darnell Brodie had 20 points and nine rebounds to lead the Missouri Valley Conference tournament champions. The Bulldogs missed their last seven shots from the field and were scoreless the final 3:24.

“Certainly disappointed, disappointed for our group that we weren’t able to pull that out,” Drake coach Darian DeVries said. “I thought overall we played a really, really good 35, 37 minutes, and couldn’t quite finish it out.”

Mo Valley Player of the Year Tucker DeVries, whose father is the coach, scored three points on 1 of 13 shooting.

Miami will face the winner of the game between fourth-seeded Indiana (22-11) and 13th seeded Kent State in the second round of the Midwest Region.

Brodie tied the game at 47 with a free throw and then Calhoun hit two consecutive 3-pointers in an 8-0 run that Roman Penn capped with a jumper for a 55-47 lead with 5:40 to go.

Pack started the rally with a jumper and Poplar hit two free throws and a jumper to close the deficit to 55-53 with 3:34 to play.

After Penn scored the Bulldogs final point on a free throw with 3:24 left, Miller hit two free throws and Bensley Joseph made one to tie the contest at 56 with 2:20 to play.

Pack, who was 7 of 15 from the field, put Miami ahead for good with his jumper off a turnover.

BIG PICTURE:

Drake: The Bulldogs had this one won until they got ice cold at the end and see potential.

“Coach has built a great program here at Drake,” Penn said. “Us coming here, we just kind of wanted to lay the blueprint down for future Bulldogs hopefully and just hope to continue the tradition and keepon winning and playing hard.

Miami: The Hurricanes looked disconnected offensively all night and they will have to improve to get back to another Elite Eight. Miller and Isaiah Wong, the Canes’ top scorers, combined for 12 points. on 3 of 17 shooting. Miami was saved, making 23 of 29 from the free throw line.

Tshiebwe’s 25 boards helps Kentucky top Providence in NCAAs

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GREENSBORO, N.C. – Oscar Tshiebwe kept battling for position, pushing his way to daylight and grabbing seemingly every loose rebound with a rugged relentlessness.

No one was going to stop him, either.

When it was over, the two-time Associated Press All-American had turned in the best rebounding performance in the NCAA Tournament in nearly a half-century – and Kentucky was free to move past last year’s one-and-done showing.

Tshiebwe pulled down 25 rebounds and Antonio Reeves scored 22 points, helping the Wildcats beat Providence 61-53 in Friday night’s first round.

Tshiebwe’s rebounding output represented the most in any tournament game since 1977. Eleven of his rebounds came on the offensive glass – a big factor in the sixth-seeded Wildcats (22-11) staying in control as both offenses grinded to a halt after halftime.

“I told (my teammates), I said, ‘This year we come in and fight, last year doesn’t matter anymore,'” said Tshiebwe, who entered as the nation’s leading rebounder at 13.1 per game.

The “last year,” of course, was the shocking first-round exit against 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s that had hung over the program all season. Now the Wildcats are moving on to face the Montana State-Kansas State winner Sunday in the East Region.

“Yeah, it was a big relief obviously,” forward Jacob Toppin said.

When the horn sounded, guard Cason Wallace let out a scream before giving a chest bump to Reaves. And Tshiebwe soon emerged from a postgame TV interview by gleefully skipping his way off toward the locker room.

His rebounding total was the most in the tournament since Michigan’s Phil Hubbard had 26 boards against Detroit Mercy in 1977.

Behind Tshiebwe, Kentucky finished with a 48-31 rebounding advantage, controlling the offensive glass (plus-10) and dominating in second-chance points for an 18-2 edge.

That was vital considering shots weren’t falling; Kentucky shot 36.5% overall but just 7 of 28 (25%) after halftime.

Reeves hit five 3-pointers to lead the offense, while Toppin had his own big game with 18 points. Tshiebwe managed eight points, but he was still an indomitable force that the 11th-seeded Friars (21-12) just couldn’t manage.

“Sometimes you just have an ‘it,’ a la Dennis Rodman, Ben Wallace,” Providence coach Ed Cooley said. “Those guys just have an ‘it’ for it. Some guys have an ‘it’ to score. Some people have an ‘it’ to pass. He has an incredible ‘it,’ an elite ‘it’ to rebound.”

Ed Croswell scored 16 points for Providence, which shot just 36.2% while making 5 of 24 3-pointers. The Friars matched the Wildcats’ second-half troubles, making just 8 of 27 shots (29.6%).

“You can say you wish you could win this game and all that,” Friars guard Jared Bynum said, “but you have to embrace the moment at the end of it.”

BIG PICTURE

Providence: The Friars have been to the NCAAs seven times in the past nine seasons under Cooley, including last year’s Sweet 16 before falling to eventual champion Kansas. But they entered this game just 3-6 in NCAA games under Cooley.

Kentucky: The Wildcats got off to a successful though grinding start to March Madness – and that was good enough for coach John Calipari.

“If in this tournament, winning is a relief, what the heck are you doing here?” he said. “This is joy.”

KEY STRETCH

Tshiebwe came through in a tight game, starting with – what else? – his rebounding.

With Kentucky leading 50-46, he leapt to dunk home Wallace’s missed drive. Minutes later, he came up with a steal, then an offensive rebound off his own miss before feeding Chris Livingston on the other side of the paint for the layup and a 54-46 lead with 2:43 left.

BUMPY REUNION

The game marked a reunion between Providence star Bryce Hopkins and the Kentucky program he left behind. Hopkins came in averaging 16.1 points, but finished with just seven on 2-for-9 shooting in a tough night while being chased primarily by Toppin.

Hopkins fought back tears as he made his way through the postgame handshake line with Calipari and former teammates.

FULL STOP

The game’s oddest moment came at the foul line.

With 8:36 left before halftime, Providence’s Clifton Moore launched a free throw that hit the rim on the left side and rolled all the way around the inside of the rim before popping out and sitting on the back of the goal.

And then, it just stopped and stayed there.

The 6-foot-9 Toppin stood next to an official under the net looking up at the ball, his hands on his hips, before jumping to tap it loose.

It went down as a miss. Moore made the second.

LOOK-INS

The upset by 16th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson against No. 1 seed Purdue in Columbus, Ohio, drew a captivated audience in Greensboro Coliseum for live look-ins being shown on the scoreboard.

During one timeout, with Fairleigh Dickinson up five in the final seconds, fans in Greensboro began chanting “FDU! FDU!” and booing whenever the game was taken off the scoreboard even when Providence-Kentucky had resumed on the court below.