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NCAA Tournament Arizona Region Third Round
While there were some close games in this region, in going through the play by play, none of them really jumped out at me. So I'm going to do the same thing I did with the Kansas region and just do a short recap on the game of the pod, which for this pod is:
(13) St. Josephs vs. (5) New Mexico -- The reason I chose this game is for the fact that St. Josephs used only 7 players the entire game. 4 of those players played 35 minutes or more, and 2 of them played all 40 minutes. Despite the short bench, St. Josephs hung tough until the very end. They trailed by 8 at halftime but took the lead late in the second half. The Lobos are tough though, and they quickly regained the lead. In the end, New Mexico wore down St. Josephs enough to get a 63-58 win. Langston Galloway led St. Josephs with 22 points while New Mexico was led by Cameron Bairstow and his 25 points.
Other Pod Games
(1) Arizona- 73, (8) Oklahoma St.- 66 -- How Arizona won this game is beyond me. Oklahoma St. had a better shooting percentage all across the board, including making 7 more three pointers than the Wildcats. The difference was rebounding. Arizona won the battle of the boards 46-26 and that was enough to get quite a few more shots than the Cowboys. Markel Brown led Oklahoma St. with 19 points and Brandon Ashley led Arizona with 15 points.
(3) Syracuse- 65, (11) Iona- 60 -- This game got strong consideration for game of the pod, only because the Cuse had to come back from a 13 point deficit. Iona led 24-11 at one point in the first half, and actually led most of the game, but the Orange finally took their first lead with 2:37 to go in the game and made it stick. A.J. English had 17 for Iona, while Syracuse was led by C.J. Fair and Tyler Ennis who each had 12.
(2) Baylor- 75, (7) UConn- 47 -- This might be the most surprising score of the whole tournament so far. No way did I expect Baylor to dominate the team that actually won the national championship last season. Dominate they did though, leading by 16 at the half, forcing 15 Husky turnovers, and holding UConn to 37% shooting in a very impressive display. Ryan Boatright led UConn with 10 points while Baylor was led by Kenny Chery who had 15.
So this region seems to be the most stable, with 3 of the top 4 seeds and the 5th seed remaining, setting up what should be 2 awesome regional semifinals:
(5) New Mexico vs. (1) Arizona
(3) Syracuse vs. (2) Baylor
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