A-10 Tourney LIVE - Round 2

(2) Massachusetts 71, (7) Saint Louis 74, FINAL

The Billikens come off of a one-point win over Duquesne, and are looking sharp in the early going. UMass comes in as the 2-seed, and at 56th in the RPI probably needs to win the whole thing to make it to the NCAA Tournament.
A-10 Player of the Year Stephane Lasme hasn't done much so far, and his blocks count is at zero. Lasme averages over five per game, good enough for second in the nation. He swatted 10 against La Salle last week for his fourth triple-double of the season. He has the highest shoulders-size-to-leg size I've ever seen.

I have to congratulate myself, I just made a sick catch off of a ball that SLU's Luke Meyer tried to save. He flipped it (with some good english) in the air, and I snagged it after about 3.5 seconds hangtime before it landed on the table next to me.

A guy from the crowd just hands bracketologist Joe Lunardi a pack of cookies, and says he must try them even though they're sugarfree. Lunardi offers to pass them around on a sampler platter. I'm not sure whether he actually knows Joe.

Lasme rejects 6-foot-10 Ian Vouyoukas. It should have been a jump ball, but the center gets it back and scores.
The Gabon man is also the A-10's leading rebounder at 9.4 per game

Halftime show:

I don't know how to describe this, but a guy is doing this puppet (almost a ventriliquist) show, dancing with four puppets connected to him (two in front, two in back) that mimic anything he does by poles and wires.
The hilarious part is that the guy, a pretty well-built African American, is dressed as a Native American, with a headdress, underwear-size shorts and boots. He's naked besides that. His puppets are a cop, a guy in all leather, a construction worker and a cowboy. They dance to classic American songs, it's absolutely ridicullous.

Slowly, the Billikens have creeped back into it, and now have taken the lead. Thanks to a methodical offense, they have practically doubled their score from the first half in less than 10 minutes.
Vuoyoukas and 7-footer Bryce Husak are doing some good work down low.

Yet another 7-footer, 7-1 Luke Bonner, gets an offensive rebound and goes to the line.
The other freak of nature, Husak, gets an and-1 for Saint Louis to take the 55-52 lead. Starting forward Rashaun Freeman has fouled out for UMass.

James Life hits yet another trey to tie it at 57.
Up by two now, UMass begins to press. Gary Forbes tries to pump up the crowd as it starts to get loud.

Justin Johnson's jumper ties the gamee at 63 with two minutes to go.
Bonner hits two from the line to take back the lead, but the Billikens tie it right back up with an inside layup.

UMass runs down the clock, but Life gets a violation with 4.7 seconds to go, and Saint Louis takes over with a chance to win.

Lisch's three is off the side of the rim and we go to OT

OVERTIME:

Five seconds in Lasme gets his fourth foul, and SLU goes up two on the FTs.
Lisch drains a jumper and Bonner airballs a three the other way.

A UMass turnover, and airball and a SLU turnaround, and the 2-seed is down 6 and in deep trouble.

A miss off of a five-footer, and the deficit is seven. But Forbes comes right back by nailing a three off of a screen at the top of the key. It was the Minutemen's first points of OT.

Liddell, a 75-percent shooter hits one, and UMass misses a few tough layups and gets it back.

Life then hits a huge three from the corner, and UMass is down two. Saint Louis calls timeout.

Lisch throws a pass to Liddell that goes backcourt (barely), but with eight seconds left Lowe gets stripped, and UMass has to foul.

After Liddell hits one, Forbes has a chance for the win ... but his pump fake and three hits the near rim as buzzer sounds.

What a crazy game. It is the fifth out of seven this week where the trailing team had an opportunity to win or tie on the final possession. This was the first upset though.

____________

(4) Rhode Island 73 (5) Fordham 69

In the battle of the Rams, Rhode Island defended its territory with a 73-69 win.

This was not a good result for Penn, as a Fordham win would have boosted the Quakers' RPI.
And while the game looked like it would be a blowout, Fordham made it into yet another A-10 Tourney nailbiter.

The Blue Rams held a 36-20 lead but a few threes later the Burgundy variety cut that lead to six on a 12-2 run.

Shortly after, Fordham looked like it was about to fall way behind again, but with a 14-0 run led by Sebastian Greene driving the lane and capitalized by a Bryant Dunston dunk and a two big threes, it actually took the lead, 49-46. URI was playing a 2-3 zone, but Fordham shot them out of it.

The Fordham defense started to close up inside, but Bryant Dunston fouling out with 4:54 left maimed their inside prescence. Soon after Marcus Stout also picked up his fifth, and with that the Burgandy Rams' two leading scorers were done for the night.

With under a minute to go, a backdoor dunk from Lamonte Ulmer for Rhode Island tied it up at 69.

And with 11.1 seconds to go, Jimmy Baron got into the lane got a hard layup to go taking the two-point lead.

In the final seconds, some great defense gave Brenton Butler -- who hit all of his six attempts from downtown, nowhere to go. Before he could even force up a shot, he picked up his pivot foot, traveled with 0.9 seconds to go to end it.

Unlike the first game of the day, both teams have about equal support in the crowd, though the 9,000-capacity Boardwalk Hall is still only about a third full.

Interesting notes: Rhode Island coach Jim Baron's son Jimmy is the third-leading three-point shooter in the country.
Also two players -- forward Joe Mbang and point guard Parfait Bitee -- are both from Yaounde, Cameroon. Former Quakers forward Friedrich Ebede and these guys woulda made a great 3-on-3 squad.

____________

(1) Xavier 72, (8) Dayton 51

The game started at a torrid scoring pace, but then Dayton just couldn't score. Xavier opened up a nice on a 20-5 run late in the 1st half.

As a goaltending call cuts it to 52-42, the Dayton fans start to get into it. A few Little drives -- one sailing dunk -- are keeping the Flyers in striking distance.

It was a balanced effort from Xavier, but Justin Doellman was really the leader in the second half. After the break he scored 11 points (19 total) on 3-for-5 shooting, with three assists -- all of which went for three-pointers.

UMass may have the best player, but Xavier clearly looks to be the best team. Doellman, Justin Cage, Stanley (no relation to Pat) Burrell and Drew Lavender all have the potential to take over a game. Cage went 6-for-6 from the field, while Lavender -- the diminutive, former highly touted prospect and Oklahoma transfer -- had nine assists to only one giveaway.

Most of the crowd -- quantity and sound-wise -- was XU fans, who are all obsessed w/ the 'X' in their name. One student shaved an 'X' in his hair, everyone did the intentional foul sign with their arms, and they all cheered "lets go X"