MBB: Huskies Can't Contain Aggies' Allen in NCAA First Round Setback
BUFFALO-Western New York sports fans are getting used to the surname Allen dominating their autumns. In town on business, a New Mexico State Aggie brought the tradition to spring for 40 minutes on Thursday night.
Teddy Allen, the Western Athletic Conference’s Player of the Year, extended the Connecticut Huskies’ NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament heartbreak by yet another season through a dominant effort that accounted for more than half of the Aggies’ points in the team’s first-round showdown at KeyBank Arena. Allen put in 37, including the final 15, for the 12th-seeded Aggies en route to a 70-63 upset victory over No. 5 UConn in the first round of West Region play.
R.J. Cole paced the Huskies with 20 points in defeat, all but two coming in the second half.
“We knew it was going to be a really, really hard game. They’re a super physical team. They do a lot of the same things that we do,” UConn head coach Dan Hurley said of the victorious Aggies. “We knew it was a scary match-up.”
Thus ends a strong season for the Huskies (23-10), who returned to their winning ways in several regards but were unable to stop their drought of victories in the NCAA Tournament, which now stands at six years. UConn’s placement in the fifth seed in the West was its best since a No. 3 seed in 2011’s national title run, but they were met only with their first regulation postseason loss to an opponent seeded 12th or worse in program history.
The headliner of the victory was Allen, who has developed a hardwood home of sorts in Las Cruces after several stops through the transfer portal including West Virginia, Wichita State, and Nebraska. New Mexico State’s first NCAA Tournament victory since 1993 was defined by Allen’s exuberance, his reign over the final stanzas interrupted only by officials asking him to cool things down.
“The types of shots that he hit, some of them were unguardable,” Hurley said. “I don't think we've seen a guy take the type of shots he took during the course of the season or seasons. Our mistake here and the one thing we talked about for days was to not take the gyrations and the fakes and to not foul. He has a knack for getting fouled shooting jumpers.”
To Hurley’s point, not only was Allen, also the WAC’s leading scorer, deadly from the field, but he also reached the foul line 13 times and sank each attempt.
“We wanted him to take tough shots, but he just happened to take more tough shots than he missed tonight,” Tyrese Martin said. “That's a credit to his offense.”
The early stages of the game, one of four held in Buffalo on Thursday, provided little foreshadowing toward the game’s sharpshooting ending. Both teams got off to cold shooting starts en route to a 6-5 Connecticut lead at the media timeout shortly beyond eight minutes gone by. Allen was no exception, missing his first six attempts from the field.
UConn appeared to push the game in their favor thanks to consecutive triples from Tyler Polley that put them up 12-8. But the Aggies (27-6) fought back to make it 20-all by the time the final mandated stoppage of the half rolled around, setting the stages for a 10-2 run over the final four-plus minutes.
Despite Allen taking center stage, New Mexico State was able to establish a double-digit halftime lead through an effort that mirrored UConn’s successful identity of winning through defense and rebounding: the Huskies shot only 9-of-26 (35 percent) from the field in the first and were outrebounded 17-9.
“They denied everything in the first half. So it was tough to stay in the flow of offense,” Cole said. “In the first half, they were a lot more physical than us.”
“I think we got a little bit spooked,” Hurley said of his team’s effort in the first 20 minutes. “We had those transition opportunities. Adama (Sanogo) gets a steal and has a chance to get a dunk, we end up with nothing. Jalen (Gaffney) has a chance in transition. Just getting ourselves down by ten and then down by 14, we put ourselves in a horrible spot.”
New Mexico State inflated their lead up to 14 in the early stages of the second half but a more typical UConn second half allowed them to get back into the game. The Huskies got back into the thick of things by scoring 13 points off six turnovers and Cole headlining a strong offensive effort. In his final Connecticut effort, Cole sank 6-of-11 from the field, headlining a half where the Huskies shot 52 percent.
UConn tied the game twice, the equalizers coming with just over five and two minutes remaining. But Allen’s final showcase put them away for good, taking the lead for good by breaking a 58-all tie with a triple earned via offensive rebound by Clayton Henry. After expanding the lead on two free throws earned via Andre Jackson’s shooting foul, Allen then intercepted a Cole pass that became an and-one opportunity via fastbreak. A Martin triple sliced the lead to three with 18 seconds lift but more Allen free throws sealed the deal.
“Going through what we went through, it hurts going out how we went out,” Martin, he of nine points and five rebounds in his own UConn finale. “We're fighters. We just couldn't get over that hump, that one-point lead. We just couldn't find a way to get over that hump. That was the story of the game.”
UConn wasn’t the only No. 5 seed to fall on Thursday in Buffalo, as KeyBank Arena also played host to Richmond’s upset over Iowa in the Midwest Region. A No. 12 seed has earned a first-
round victory in all but five of the last 36 NCAA Tournaments, with this latest edition marking the sixth time over the last nine competitions where it’s happened multiple times.
With their win, the Aggies (who became the first WAC team to win an NCAA Tournament game since Nevada in 2007) will now face No. 4 Arkansas in the West Region’s Round of 32 action on Saturday night in Buffalo (8:40 p.m. ET, TNT). Other West Region winners on Thursday included top-seeded Gonzaga and No. 9 Memphis, who will likewise do battle over the weekend (9:40 p.m. ET, TBS).
| Date | Location | Game | Time (ET) | TV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Wednesday, 3/16 | Dayton, OH | No. 11 Notre Dame 89, No. 11 Rutgers 87 (2OT) (First Four) | - | - |
Thursday, 3/17 | Portland, OR | No. 9 Memphis 64, No. 8 Boise State 53 | - | - |
Thursday, 3/17 | Portland, OR | No. 1 Gonzaga 93, No. 16 Georgia State 72 | - | - |
Thursday, 3/17 | Buffalo, NY | No. 12 New Mexico State 70, No. 5 Connecticut 63 | - | - |
Thursday, 3/17 | Buffalo, NY | No. 4 Arkansas 75, No. 13 Vermont 71 | - | - |
Friday, 3/18 | San Diego, CA | No. 3 Texas Tech vs No 14 Montana State | 1:45 p.m. | TNT |
Friday, 3/18 | San Diego, CA | No. 6 Alabama vs No. 11 Notre Dame | 4:15 p.m. | TNT |
Friday, 3/18 | Greenville, SC | No. 2 Duke vs No. 15 CSU Fullerton | 7:10 p.m. | CBS |
Friday, 3/18 | Greenville, SC | No. 7 Michigan State vs No. 10 Davidson | 9:40 p.m. | CBS |
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
