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PITTSBURGH — All good things must come to an end. Oakland’s magical basketball run did just that on Saturday.
The 14-seeded Golden Grizzlies fell to 11-seeded NC State 79-73 in overtime at PPG Paints Arena in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, just 48 hours after becoming the top seed of the tournament by defeating 3-seeded Kentucky. .
“Way different than a couple nights ago,” OU coach Greg Kampe said. “It’s hard because it’s over.”
Trey Townsend and Jack Gohlke stole the show in the second half. Townsend, the Horizon League Player of the Year, finished with 30 points and 13 rebounds, while Gohlke had 22 points and eight rebounds and made six of 17 3-pointers.
But it wasn’t enough to surpass the 6-foot-10, 275-pound DJ Burns, who had 24 points, 10 rebounds and four assists, or his quartet of teammates who also scored in double figures: Michael O’Connell had 12, while Mohamed Diarra, DJ Horne and Casey Morsell finished with 11 each.
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“That guy was a liability down there,” Townsend said of Burns. “We did everything we could. It just didn’t work out for us.”
basketball bonus
With the game tied at 66 entering the extra period, Townsend got the scoring started when he split a pair of free throws, but there was Burns on the other end making a layup.
After a pair of Townsend free throws gave Oakland the lead, 69-68, Burns got an offensive rebound on a missed 3-pointer from the short corner and his return gave NC State a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
“I don’t think the ball even reached 10 feet 2 inches in the air,” Kampe said. “He hits it right in front of the rim, it goes right to the big guy and he puts it in. We were in front of the big guy, the only bounce he would get is if he hit the rim and fell straight down.
“Those are the rebounds of the game.”
After turning the ball over on a pass from DQ Cole to Townsend, DJ Horne hit a mid-range jumper with 1:33 to go up three. Blake Lampman responded with a free throw to get within two, but Jayden Taylor hit the 3-pointer from the right corner with 1:13 left to go up five.
Burns made four consecutive free throws to take a lead, 79-70, with 17 seconds left, before Cole hit a 3-pointer to bring Oakland within six with 13 seconds left.
The Grizzlies forced a turnover, but Gohlke missed his third straight 3-pointer as the clock struck midnight on the Oakland run.
“We’ve done a tremendous job this entire season executing the last few games and today we just didn’t do as good a job,” Gohlke said. “Give NC State credit, they were a very good defensive team today and disrupted some of the things we wanted to do, especially on the last possession (of overtime).
“It all comes down to those close margins in the final minutes of the game. They went our way in the Kentucky game because we executed well; we gave it our all today, but NC State made the plays at the right times.”
The final minutes (we thought)
Oakland, which trailed for the first 37 minutes of the game, trailed by four with less than 4 minutes remaining when Gohlke caught the ball on the left wing and his fake took the defender down, before he coincidentally hit his sixth 3-pointer. . game pointer.
On the next possession, Townsend completed a three-point play to give Oakland its first lead, 63-61.
Oakland was still up by one point when NC State’s Michael O’Connell scored a left-handed layup plus a foul, then got the free throw to fall to go up two with 55.6 left. Gohlke was fouled off the ball 15 seconds later and made a pair of free throws to tie the game with 41.7 seconds left.
After a miss by NC State, Oakland tried to make one last look in regulation.
“The ball was coming to Townsend facing the basket on his left elbow,” Kampe said. “He was supposed to attack and drive I was going to be the hero, I was going to go to the free throw line or they weren’t going to guard him; one of those three things was going to happen.
“It took us too long to enter (our set). They came and denied us the entry pass… It’s my fault because we had 17 seconds. We didn’t want to go until 10 or 12, if we had entered.” at 17, we could have handled that. “That was the mistake.”
Oakland fumbled with 1.7 seconds left and the Wolfpack missed a half-court attempt.
absorbing the first blow
Much like Thursday night, it was a slow start for the Golden Grizzlies, who missed seven of their first eight shots.
Horne didn’t need that much time to warm up. He made a transition layup to open the game, then hit a 3-pointer from the left wing, then a floater to score the Wolfpack’s first seven, before Burns got involved with a low left hook to take a 9-2 lead.
Chris Conway added a putback hit before Gohlke, who received a standing ovation when he checked in, hit his first 3-pointer from the right wing on his first shot attempt of the game to pull OU within two.
“I know I’ve never put on a substitute in my life and I’ve seen a place go crazy three minutes into a game,” Kampe said. “What place does this place have, 18,000 or something? That was the loudest roar of the night when he came in three minutes into the game, and then he caught it and made it.”
That was the only shot attempt he was able to make in the first 12 minutes of the game as NC State took turns switching defenders from Morsell to O’Connell to Taylor, who guarded Gohlke as he ran screen after screen.
By the time he made another 3-point attempt, he came up short and the Wolfpack retreated the other way in transition and received a basket from Taylor to go up 26-17 and bring the contingent of red-clad fans to their feet.
Meanwhile, Lampman hit a pair of 3-pointers to keep OU within striking distance.
Oakland continued to weaken. Conway stopped the bleeding with a spinning bucket and Gohlke was finally able to get going. He used a fake to get a clear view from the top of the key and hit a 3-pointer, then after a Diarra layup, Gohlke hit another 3-pointer, curling in from the right wing to get Oakland back within three. 28-25.
NC State led, 32-29, at halftime after making just two of its last 12 field goals, but the Wolfpack had a 20-12 advantage in points in the paint.
Two man show
Oakland made a concerted effort to feed Townsend to open the second half with four straight possessions.
After missing on the first trip and spitting out a pair of free throws on the second, Townsend made a right hook off the left block and then put the ball on the floor and wasted Burns for a layup that brought Oakland back within two. , 36-34.
“The adjustment we made was we wanted to catch the ball on a rebound or if they scored and fly it out of bounds,” Kampe said. “You saw a lot more fluidity from us in the second half and we were able to get the ball to Trey.”
After a Burns turnover, OU had a chance to take its first lead of the game on a Gohlke three-pointer, but it missed wide and didn’t get the foul it was looking for. At the other end, Burns answered with a spinning layup and Morsell hit a transition 3-pointer and NC State’s lead was back to seven.
Townsend responded with a three-point play before Gohlke eventually got involved once again. After the Grizzlies forced a fumble, Lampman scooped up the ball in transition and passed to Gohlke, who drilled the long ball from a step inside the logo.
On the next possession, Townsend completed a low layup and, for the first time since the game ended scoreless, OU was tied, 42-42.
“Trey Townsend is a professional,” Kampe said. “He proved it tonight.”
NC State scored back-to-back 3-pointers when Burns passed out of a triple team and found Morsell on the right wing and then O’Connell hit one from the same spot to go up 51-45 at the halfway point. half.
Townsend sandwiched a 3-pointer from the left wing and a hook shot around a Burns layup to get OU back within three, then, after Diarra hit a pointer from the corner directly in front of his bench, Gohlke hit another 3-pointer, this time as he was fouled and the free throw brought OU within two with just over 6 minutes left.
NC State would call a timeout and, with less than 2 seconds left on the shot clock, O’Connell hit a 3-pointer from the left wing to put NC State up five, before Townsend responded with a 3-pointer from the same spot to achieve the score. 59-57 before the final media timeout.
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