Thursday, January 16th ended up being a wild night of college basketball even though we only had a three game slate of ranked teams playing. Two matchups were decided in overtime and the third was a wire to wire game.
Not only that but every underdog won. All three ranked teams took a loss on the night to unranked teams, the most spectacular of them being a overtime buzzer beater three ball(from the logo) for the unranked Minnesota Golden Gophers.
No. 20 Michigan Wolverines vs. Minnesota Golden Gophers
The 8-9 Minnesota Golden Gophers, one of the best- named teams in all of college basketball, were heading back home on a four game losing streak(0-6 in conference) with their hardest opponent of the season waiting for them at their door.
Going into the game they were 10.5 point underdogs per ESPN Bet.
Michigan never had a 10.5 point lead, the game was back and forth from start to finish. The defense of Minnesota really stepped up, getting stops in clutch moments down the stretch of the 4th quarter and was propelled by the scoring of senior forward Dawson Garcia. Garcia scored 27 points on the night, his best game since their season opener.
No basket was bigger than Garcia’s halfcourt heave to beat the buzzer and give the Golden Gophers the lead with zeroes on the clock after a clutch, game tying layup by Michigan’s Danny Wolf in the previous possession.
Minnesota’s students and fans alike rushed the court following their game winner, swarming Dawson Garcia in masses.
No. 16 Gonzaga Bulldogs vs. Oregon State Beavers
Another overtime thriller, Gonzaga traveled to Corvallis, OR Thursday night to take on Oregon State only to run into an offensive uproar by OSU which inevitably led to their victory.
Oregon State had four players with 15+ points in the outing the most notably being juniors Michael Rataj & Nate Kingz with 29 and 20 each. Rataj, who scored his college basketball career best, led the way for Oregon State as they would pull away late in overtime.
Oregon State fans would rush the court as the clock hit zero.
This snapped an eleven road game win streak for Gonzaga and would tack on another loss onto an already shaky season. They sit at 14-5 and move to second in the WCC, behind unranked St. Mary’s.
Despite the loss, Graham Ike, Gonzaga’s leading scorer, had a great game with 26 points and 9 rebounds. The projected second round NBA pick hit a rare three pointer with four seconds left to send the game to overtime but it would not be enough to leave Gill Coliseum with a dub.
No. 18 Memphis Tigers vs. Temple Owls
As one of the more underrated college basketball teams going into week 12, the Memphis Tigers visited the Temple Owls in Philadelphia Thursday night, expecting a hard fought game.
Well, the players thought so at least. According to a Memphis college basketball fan board, Memphis fans didn’t think highly of their opponent saying this after sustaining some injuries earlier in the season.
“The good news is, we will eventually have our full roster available and then we will beat a team like Temple by 50 pts.”– user memtigbb
That didn’t age well; maybe someone on Temple saw the message.
The Owls would go on to take an 88-81 victory led by 21 points by senior Jamal Mashburn Jr. He currently averages the ninth most points in college basketball with 20.7 per game. He would receive scoring help from sophomore guard Quante Berry who had 19.
This is a critical loss for Memphis, they will likely be removed from the AP-Top-25 poll because of it come Monday and with no more matchups versus ranked opponents, it will be hard to reprove themselves to the college basketball committee.
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1 Comment
amazing