By Aidan Joly
Thursday’s Sweet 16 games delivered two unbelievable games that are sure to go down in March Madness lore.
Between Kansas State’s 98-93 overtime win against Michigan State and Gonzaga’s stunning 79-76 win against UCLA, it’s a night of basketball that we’re going to remember for a long time.
The Wildcats and the Spartans went bucket for bucket at Madison Square Garden, ending regulation with a layup from Michigan State’s Tyson Walker with five minutes on the clock to send it to overtime, where the two squads again went score for score.
There we saw the first of two amazing plays on the night, as Markquis Nowell seemingly fake argued with head coach Jerome Tang before lobbing it to Keyontae Johnson, who reverse alley-ooped it with 52 seconds left in the extra period to give the Wildcats a game it would never relinquish. It was a signature play for the game and for a player who stands at 5-7, but played like he was 10 feet tall.
Nowell put up one of the performances that will live on for a long time, scoring 20 points and dishing out a tournament-record 19 assists. Meanwhile, Johnson finished with 22 points.
The Wildcats played like a team that can win the national championship. It was their best game of the season and Nowell had one of the best individual performances in tournament history, a legendary display of controlling a basketball game. He did this after turning his ankle in the second half and going down in a heap, a scary moment for Kansas State
A shoutout to MSU’s AJ Hoggard is in order for this one, who scored 25 points, while Joey Hauser had 18 and Walker had 16.
Now, the Wildcats will have to take on the tournament’s official Cinderella in 9 seed Florida Atlantic, which grinded out a 62-55 win against Tennessee in the nightcap at MSG.
The final game of the night provided even more fireworks.
UCLA led Gonzaga by 13 points at halftime, a lead that the Zags could certainly come back from, but it was going to be tough as the Bruins were in control of the game.
As Gonzaga does, it clawed its way back into the contest behind a yeoman’s performance from Drew Timme, who put up 36 points on a 16-24 performance from the field and grabbed 13 rebounds.
However, it won’t be Timme’s performance that is remembered from this game. After UCLA’s Amari Bailey hit an impossible three-pointer with 12 seconds on the clock, Mark Few ran the “Jay Wright play” and Julian Strawther hit a three from 30 feet away to give the Bulldogs a two-point lead with seven seconds to play.
It marks the second time in three years that Gonzaga has stunned UCLA in the tournament after Jalen Suggs hit that impossible three at the buzzer in the Final Four in 2021. It was the latest chapter in what’s become the best college basketball rivalry on the west coast.
It was a full circle moment for Strawther, who grew up in Las Vegas and was playing in front of a hometown crowd in his native city. Strawther has almost played in the shadow of Timme the past two seasons and had his huge moment on the big stage and advancing his team to the Elite Eight, where it will face UConn, which dominated Arkansas 88-65 in the early game at T-Mobile Arena.
Credit to UCLA, which was playing short-handed and went on an 11-minute field goal drought as Gonzaga took a 10-point lead with 2:40 to play. It rallied back in the final minutes and trailed by as many as eight in the final minute.
But UCLA simply left too much time on the clock for Gonzaga and paid for it in the end, and are going home. By doing so, it ended the career for UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez, who scored 29 points and had 11 rebounds in the final game of his career.
Thursday’s games gave us a reminder: that this tournament in the best postseason in sports and games like this show that we wouldn’t want it any other way.
AJ Hoops 