Hokies stun Illinois
Posted Mar17, 2007 at 12:00 AM
Mark Berman here from Columbus, Ohio, where the Virginia Tech men's basketball team, to my utter amazement, scored the final 12 points of the game to beat Illinois 54-52 in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
"We knew the game was going to be ugly because at times both of our teams were offensively challenged," coach Seth Greenberg said. "I didn't know it was going to be that ugly.
"It's just another example of the resiliency of our basketball team. We obviously were a little bit dysfunctional at times offensively. We squandered a number of scoring opportunities, but we continued to defend. Obviously we extended our defense [late] and turned them over some, got them on their heels a little bit in terms of not attacking us. The more passive they got, the more aggressive we got."
Tech will play Southern Illinois at 2:40 pm Sunday. It will be a rematch from last November, when SIU won 69-64 in the fifth-place game of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Fla.
Tech trailed by as many as 13 points in the second half Friday. Brian Randle made a layup to put the Illini up 52-42 with 4:27 left, but Illinois never scored again.
Illinois wanted to make Tech play a half-court game and got its wish. Tech's halfcourt offense was dreadful until the final 4:27, but then Deron Washington (14 pts) had two 3-pointers and the game-winning bank shot. He was 2-of-10 from the field prior to those three late buckets.
Greenberg put the ball in Gordon's hands late. He praised Gordon for doing a good job o fpenetrating and making plays for his teammates.
"Zabian [Dowdell] told me at one point in the game that I need to step up," said Jamon Gordon, who had 10 points and seven assists. "I told him, all right, I'm just going to try to get to the hole as best I can. I start driving, they start helping over."
Tech won despite shooting 35.7 percent from the field, its third-worst percentage of the season.
"We were horrible in terms of moving our offense and running our sets," Dowdell said. "[The half court offense] hasn't been real good lately. That's why we haven't been scoring as many points as we're usually accustomed to."
Tech switched to pressure defense for those final minutes, and it paid off.
"We were pressuring so much. They came down the court and they were throwing the ball all over the place," AD Vassallo said.
"If we wouldn't have pressed, we would've lost," Gordon said. "Pressure kind of won the game. They played not to lose, and when you do that, you always lose."
"We just tried to speed them up," Dowdell said "They really don't like to get into an uptempo type of game so the press kind of forces them to speed up."
"We had to get more possessions in the game," Greenberg said. "I'm not sure we sped them up but we did turn them over. ... That was a way to find a way to maybe get some extra possessions, turn them over, maybe get out in transition and score some easy baskets."
Tech won even though Vassallo was 3-of-11 from the field, Zabian Dowdell 3-of-9 and Gordon 2-of-6. Coleman Collins was 2-of-4 but was 9-of-12 from the line for 13 points. Jamon was 6-of-9 from the line.
A.D. and Deron had big defensive rebounds in the final minutes, and Collins played well defensively down the stretch.
Vassallo went to the line for the first time all night with Tech up 53-52 with 23.1 seconds left. He missed the first one but made the second for a 54-52 lead.
"I thought that first one was going in," he said. "That rim played with me right there. That ball hit the rim too many times and came out. I knew definitely I was going to hit one of the two."
Greenberg was whistled for a technical foul for a foot-stomping protest of a no-call with 16:24 left. He said he probably overreacted.
Illinois shot 35 percent from the field in the second half and finished with 21 turnovers.
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