Sweet to Elite: A Hurricane without 's' just the best
3/17/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
to hear highlights from the TU/UNLV game in Nashville, Tenn.
to hear highlights from the TU/Cincinnati game in Nashville, Tenn.
to hear highlights from the TU/Miami game in Austin, Texas. Bruce Howard and JV Haney call the action.
Saturday, March 25, 2000
By: Mike Brown, Tulsa World Sports Writer
AUSTIN, Texas ----- Ho-hum, just another routine game on the road to immortality and the Final Four.
We've been at this stop before. Just like it did against Cincinnati last week, Tulsa's Golden Hurricane blew a big lead and, with time running down in the second half, looked like it was dead in the water.
But that was the calm before the storm. The Hurricane exploded on a 22-5 run and roared to an 80-71 victory over Miami (Fla.) in the semifinals of the NCAA South Regional basketball tournament here Friday night.
Tulsa (32-4) continued its improbable run by eliminating the sixth-seeded Hurricanes, Big East Conference co-champs, and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time in school history.
The Golden Hurricane will play the North Carolina-Tennessee winner here Sunday at 1:40p.m. for a berth in the Final Four.
"This is the farthest Tulsa's gone in this tournament. We're one of the eight teams left standing and by no means do we feel that we're done," senior center Brandon Kurtz said. The 6-foot-10 Kurtz matched teammate Eric Coley by scoring 17 points, all the second half, and hauled in a game-high 10 rebounds.
"We did it again," said senior guard Tony Heard. "We're for real, that's all I've got to say. People didn't think we were, but there's no denying it now."
"It's a great feeling to be one of the final eight and hopefully we're not satisfied," said head coach Bill Self, whose first coaching job was as an assistant to Miami head coach Leonard Hamilton when the latter was head coach at Oklahoma State.
Greg Harrington, Marcus Hill and Heard chipped in 14, 13 and 11 points respectively for the Hurricane, marking the 25th time Tulsa has had at least four players in double figures and the eighth time with five.
Miami (23-11) was led by Mario Bland and Vernon Jennings with 17 points each. Like it did against Cincinnati, Tulsa exploded out of the chute and led 25-8 after Harrington's basket with 7:52 left in the first half.
But again, it hit the doldrums. Miami, energized by a steal and layup by John Salmons, took control late in the first half and outplayed Tulsa until well into the second stanza. TU, which hit a sizzling 10-of-14 from the field to start the game, missed 15 of its next 17 and by intermission had lost all but six points of its lead.
The 23rd-ranked Hurricanes turned up the heat even more in the second half and got their first and only lead, 46-43, on a trey by Jennings with 10:22 remaining. Miami hit 10-of-17 from 3-point range.
But Tulsa suddenly reasserted its control. Hill scored on a dive and Kurtz stole a ball on the other end. He flipped it to Heard, who gave it back to him for a dunk at the other end and Tulsa was back in front, 47-46.
Freshman Dante Swanson drove the lane for a finger roll and Kurtz got loose for a layup and it was 51-46.
Tulsa ran its lead to 61-50 and then 65-51. Miami never got closer than eight after that. "We just couldn't seem to finish," Miami's Hamilton said, "I've said in the past for us to win, we need to have al the sum of our parts working and tonight, we just didn't seem to have all the parts together. We weren't working on all cylinders."
"I thought the game went pretty much as scripted," Self said. "It was a lot like the Cincinnati game. We didn't make some plays in the first half and we didn't play the first 10 minutes of the second half.
"But give them credit. I thought late, we had some players really step up and play big. I thought Brandon played big, I thought Greg came in late and gave us a lift after getting in foul trouble. Eric just made play after play after play."
