Game of the Night. Penn St. 64, Illinois 63. It was nice to see a team turn the tables on Illinois after they had pulled off a furious comeback win in the last five minutes against Northwestern.  PSU was down ten pts with five minutes remaining, but the Lions stormed back and when Talor Battle’s feathery soft leaner dropped through with 0.3 remaining on the clock, the “white house” of fans went wild and quickly RTC’d the court.  Now, THAT is how you RTC, friends!  Quick, no hesitation, straight to the middle of the floor.  Immediate bedlam.  We have two clips here – the first will show the tv version of the winning shot by Battle (scroll ahead to the 6:00 mark); the second is a user-generated clip of the RTC.  Enjoy.  (btw, PSU is IN if they win at Iowa this weekend)

The Rest of Tonight’s Key Games.

• UCLA 79, Oregon St. 54. The Bruins kept their Pac-10 title hopes alive with a blowout win over Oregon St. tonight.  If they beat Oregon this weekend and Washington loses to Wazzu, then they’ll both be tied at 12-6, where the Bruins would presumably win the tiebreaker.  What’s up with Josh Shipp’s line tonight?  27 pts, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals, 0 turnovers, 0 fouls, 1 block.  He really didn’t do anything other than shoot tonight, did he?
• Villanova 97, Providence 80. Villanova picked up its second strong win of the week as it continues to make its case for the coveted double-bye in the Big East Tournament.  Scottie Reynolds had 23/4/4 stls as Nova finished off a perfect home slate.  Providence has a #69 RPI but finished at 10-8 in the Big East – what to do with the Friars?
• USC 80, Oregon 66.  USC shot 59% behind Demar DeRozan’s 19 pts and Taj Gibson’s 18 pts as the long nightmare continues for Ernie Kent’s Oregon team.  USC is a classic bubble team, sporting a mid-40s RPI and what will likely be a 9-9 Pac-10 record come Saturday night.
• California 83, Arizona 77.  Arizona really didn’t need to lose another home game, but they’ve fallen apart the last two weeks.  Tonight’s loss to Cal was their fourth in a row, and they absolutely need to get the game against Stanford this weekend to turn this around.  Cal’s Jerome Randle had eight threes on his way to 31 pts.
• Temple 68, St. Joseph’s 59.  This Big Five matchup had A10 ramifications as Temple moved into a two-way tie for the #3 seed in the conference (tied with Dayton), as well as kept their bubble chances alive.
• Tennessee 86, South Carolina 70. Tough home loss for SC, while Tennessee captured the top seed in the East Divison of the SEC behind Tyler Smith’s 22/6/7 assts.  The Vols are coming on lately, having won at Florida and SC in their last two games.
• Stanford 74, Arizona St. 64. ASU is slumping lately, having lost their last three games.  James Harden had 22, but was only 2-10 from three, and it doesn’t appear if either of the Arizona teams have much interest in playing deep into March at this point.

QnD Conf Tourney Update.  Tomorrow the America East, CAA, MAAC, SoCon and WCC begin.  Here’s what happened tonight.

A-Sun. The two higher seeds, #3 Belmont and #4 Lipscomb advanced, meaning the top four seeds will be in the semis starting tomorrow.

Big South. VMI will play Radford (the top two seeds) on Saturday for possibly the first NCAA automatic bid this year.

MVC. Indiana St. and Wichita St. advanced to the quarters.

NEC. The top three seeds (Robt. Morris, Mt. St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart) + Quinnipiac advanced to the semis on Sunday.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 2:30 am by rtmsf and is filed under after the buzzer. Tagged: after the buzzer, atb, atlantic sun, big south, illinois, missouri valley, nec, penn st, talor battle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.