NCAA Basketball Tournament Round-Up – First Four Teams Bound for the Elite Eight
There is one team from last year’s NCAA championship game still alive and it’s not the Duke Blue Devils.
Yup Butler, the little-team-that-could from Indianapolis, is at it again, defeating Wisconsin 61-54 and advancing to the Elite Eight, where they’ll face the Florida Gators.
As for Duke, things were looking good for the defending champions in the first half, but the Arizona Wildcats outscored the Blue Devils 55-33 after the break, cruising to a 93-77 victory.
Arizona’s Derrick Williams, a power forward who shoots almost 60 percent from beyond the three point arc, dropped 32 points and 13 rebounds on Duke, establishing himself as the breakout star of the tournament.
Thursday night’s other two games resulted in narrow defeats of the upstarts from the Mountian West Conference: San Diego State fell to the University of Connecticut 74-67 in a seesaw match, and BYU went down to Florida 83-74 in overtime.
BYU star and tournament darling Jimmer Fredette had his moments, and managed to score 32 points in the defeat. However, his final college game will be most remembered for a series of questionable three point attempts he threw up and missed in overtime and the waning minutes of regulation.
- Contributed by Jeremy Taylor
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