PITTSBURGH– The madness continued in the Steel City Saturday night. Two competitive games each with a ticket to the Sweet 16 on the line.
The first game of the night featured two Cinderella’s in their downright. 14th-seeded Oakland and 11th-seeded NC State were in a dogfight all game long.
Oakland’s Jack Gohlke took the nation by storm with his 10 three-pointers on Thursday against Kentucky. The graduate student had another six threes for 22 points against the Wolf Pack.
“What he’s done in the last couple of days is simply impressive,” NC State head coach Kevin Keatts said. “16 threes in two days? You gotta pay so much attention to him. I thought our guys did a really good job. We knew we couldn’t stop him from taking threes, but we wanted him to take tough threes and shoot a bad percentage and I thought we did a great job with that.”
The Wolf Pack have been a crowd-favorite the past two weeks with their five wins in five days in the ACC Tournament but the crowd shifted their support to the Horizon League’s Golden Grizzlies.
“Going into the game, we don’t really focus on who’s the underdog or who’s the higher seed. It doesn’t really matter,” graduate student Michael O’Connell said. “We still had a lot of fans out there. The place was rocking. I couldn’t tell the difference if there were more or fewer fans. It was great to have our fans out there just supporting us all the way.”
As for Oakland, their run will come to an end. This is the deepest the Golden Grizzlies have been in the Big Dance.
“For me, I’ve been through so much basketball and a lot of college basketball seasons, and this was probably the most enjoyable one I’ve ever had,” Gohlke said. “Throughout this whole season, I’ve kind of been reflecting on it as it goes, trying to appreciate it as much as possible. I think I did that, and I think our team did that as well.”
Trey Townsend had 30 points and 12 rebounds in the loss to NC State.
“Trey Townsend is a pro and he proved it tonight,” 40-year Golden Grizzlies coach Greg Kampe said. “He went out and made threes tonight. He does what he has to do. He could have shot a lot of threes all year, but nobody could guard him there at our level.”
In the second game, Dana Altman and the 11th-seeded Oregon Ducks faced his old team, the third-seeded Creighton Bluejays.
The game was also close throughout, as it reached not one but two overtime periods.
No one had a lead as high as six until then. Creighton exploded to a 15-0 run to begin the second overtime.
“It’s what it’s meant to be, is for us to be in this situation,” Trey Alexander said. “We know that. Me and my teammates always try to find the fun in everything. We kind of live for this situation. It’s the fun of the game, and I think that for me, even though my shots weren’t falling, I knew that Baylor was going to step up, I knew Steven was going to step up. So I tried to do whatever I could to get those guys in situations to be successful.”
Bluejays starters had 79 of the 86 points. Steven Ashworth led the team in scoring with 21 points. Ryan Kalkbrenner had 19 points and 10 rebounds.
Oregon’s N’Faly Dante scored a whopping 28 points and 20 rebounds, and Jermaine Couisard scored a game-high 32 points.
The Ducks had many opportunities, including when Dante missed a free throw with 28 seconds to go in a tie game.
“I wish I could make that last free throw,” Dante said. That could have won the game, but that’s on me. There were a lot of things I could have done to help my team, but I didn’t.
The Bluejays will advance to the Sweet 16 for the second consecutive year and face Tennessee next.
