Alabama in hoops heaven
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Suddenly, spring football practice doesn’t seem so important in Alabama.
Sweet Home Alabama? Not this March. How about Sweet 16 Alabama — the new center of the college basketball universe.
Alabama-Birmingham sent another shock wave through the NCAA tournament on Sunday with a 76-75 upset of top-seeded Kentucky, ending the Wildcats’ expected run toward a national title almost as fast as it began.
Mo Finley made a 17-foot jumper with 12.2 seconds remaining as the ninth-seeded Blazers (22-9) held off Kentucky’s finally flurry in the closing seconds.
Kentucky’s Gerald Fitch missed a 3-pointer with 2.2 seconds left and Chuck Hayes’ tip rolled off the rim just before the final horn, ending the Wildcats’ season short of their stated goal — an eighth national championship.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Finley said. “It feels pretty good right now. That shot definitely was a blessing from above.”
UAB’s stunner came less than 24 hours after eighth-seeded Alabama defeated No. 1 seed Stanford in the Phoenix Regional. And it’s fair to say that the Blazers trumped their counterparts from Tuscaloosa with their second major upset of Kentucky in the NCAAs.
This one came almost exactly 23 years to the day that UAB beat Kentucky in the second round of the 1981 tournament — a victory the school had claimed as the turning point in its basketball program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this season.
This one might just top it.
“That was a long time ago,” Finley said when asked about UAB’s previous conquest of the ‘Cats. “It’s too early. It’s just one game. I’d like to keep winning. The next game we play will be bigger than this one.”
UAB will play fourth-seeded Kansas on Friday.
In Sunday’s other game at Nationwide Arena, Illinois beat Cincinnati 92-68 in the Atlanta Regional. The Fighting Illini get Duke in the next round.
The stunned Wildcats (27-5) followed Stanford’s early exit, leaving Saint Joseph’s and Duke as the remaining top seeds after two rounds of the tourney.
Cast as the team to beat for the ninth time since 1979, the Wildcats came up short in their quest to bring another trophy back to Rupp Arena.
“I’m still in shock,” Hayes said. “It’s tough to look at my teammates right now.”
Using a “40 minutes of Hell” attack that their coach Mike Anderson learned under Nolan Richardson at Arkansas, the Blazers took it to the Wildcats from the outset.
Richardson got to see every second of it, too, cheering and waving his arms in the stands for the Blazers as if he was on the sideline coaching the Razorbacks.
“Forty minutes of Hell — Part Two,” Richardson said. “I knew they had a chance.”
Anderson wasn’t so sure. On Saturday, the second-year coach said his team’s best chance at an upset would be if there was a celestial alignment.
Maybe he should take a look at the heavens.
“We knew coming in it was like David vs. Goliath and we were David,” Anderson said. “I’ll tell you what: David swung a mighty blow.”
Kentucky rallied from a 10-point deficit in the second half and took a 75-74 lead with 29.3 seconds left when Kelenna Azubuike dunked in a miss.
UAB called time before Finley made the shot that will go down in Blazers’ history.
Dribbling on the right side, the 6-foot-3 senior used a pump fake to get Hayes in the air, and then stepped inside the 3-point arc to drain his jumper.
Kentucky called time to set up a play that ended with Fitch getting a clean look from the left wing, but it bounced off the rim and Hayes’ follow wouldn’t drop.
“That’s a shot I’m supposed to make — that’s how I feel,” Fitch said. “I just didn’t make it.”
Illinois 92, Cincinnati 68
Another upset — not so much because of the seeds, but the final margin. It was Cincinnati’s worst drubbing in an NCAA tournament game during coach Bob Huggins’ 15 seasons.
The fourth-seeded Bearcats got trashed by a team that ignored their trash take and made 13 of 14 shots during a 10-minute spurt in the first half.
“We didn’t do a very good job of guarding them, but they did a great job of making shots,” Huggins said glumly.
Fifth-seeded Illinois (26-6) already was thinking about bigger things when coach Bruce Weber replaced his starters with 1:49 left. The orange-clad Illinois fans chanted, “We want Duke!”
So do the players.
“We match up well with them,” said Dee Brown, who had 14 points and eight assists. “They’ve got three great guards, and we’ve got three great guards.”
Even two would have been more than enough against Cincinnati (25-7), which has no true point guard and couldn’t stop a quick guard all season long.
The Big Ten’s regular-season champions shot a season-high 63.6 percent and made it back to the round of 16 for the third time in four years.