SAN DIEGO β The Arizona Wildcats are going to the Sweet 16 for the first time in five years, and theyβre bringing their point guard with them.
Christian Koloko and Bennedict Mathurin led the Wildcats to an 85-80 overtime win over TCU in a second-round NCAA Tournament game Sunday at Viejas Arena, both making key plays in the final moments of regulation and overtime, while point guard Kerr Kriisa played for the first time since spraining his ankle on March 10.
Collecting a career-high 28 points along with 12 rebounds, Koloko helped send the game into overtime as part of a perimeter trap that forced a turnover by TCU guard Mike Miles with three seconds left in regulation, leaving the game tied at 75.
Then, in overtime, Koloko dunked in a missed 3-pointer from Mathurin with nine seconds left to put the Wildcats up by the final score.
Mathurin hit a 3-pointer to tie the game at 75 with 12.6 seconds left in regulation and put back a missed free throw by Koloko to give the Wildcats the lead for good in overtime, 79-77 with 2:56 left.
Mathurin celebrated demonstrably after the play, which gave the Wildcats a 79-77 lead with 2:56.
βMy coaches were getting on me for not getting enough rebounds so I was really happy about getting the offensive rebound,β Mathurin said. βI was emotional.β
Arizona center Christian Koloko is surrounded by the TCU defense as he tries to get a basket during the first half.
Mathurin hit only 3 of 11 3-pointers but still wound up with 30 points by hitting 5 of 8 two-pointers and getting to the line 13 times, hitting 11 of 13 free throws.
While Koloko and Mathurin were doing their thing, the Wildcats also returned Kriisa back for the first time since he sprained his right ankle in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals. Kriisa came off the bench to shoot just 1 for 10 from 3-point range but the Wildcats played better with him after they struggled at the beginning of each half without him.
Kriisa wound up with a plus-24 rating, 13 points higher than any other UA player.
βTo have 26 minutes recovering from a sprained ankle, and to have a plus/minus of 24, I think that tells you what he means to our team,β UA coach Tommy Lloyd said.
Chuck OβBannon led TCU in scoring with 23 points on 7-for-15 shooting while center Eddie Lampkin had 20 points and 10 rebounds.
βI'm gonna give credit to him. He's a big boy. Big boy,β Koloko said of the 6-foot-11, 270-pound Lampkin. βIt wasn't easy for us to hold him down there. I think we did a pretty good job at the end of the game to box him out and get those rebounds. It was really hard.β
TCU wound up outrebounding Arizona 48-44 and collected 20 offensive rebounds that led to 19 second-chance points.
βI knew this was going to be a hard game,β Lloyd said. βTCU plays in the Big 12 and they're battle-tested and they're great defensively, and just so hard to keep off the glass. We weren't having a crazy problem getting them to miss the first shot; it was just trying to get defensive rebounds. So they get a ton of credit. They're really hard to play against.β
It was only the second time Arizona has played an overtime game this season, and first since November, when the Wildcats outlasted Wichita State 82-78 in the first game of the Las Vegas Main Event.
The win moved Arizona to 33-3 and into a South Region Sweet 16 game against Houston (31-5) on Thursday night in San Antonio. The game starts at 6:59 p.m. and will air on TBS. The fifth-seeded Cougars beat No. 4 Illinois 68-53 earlier Sunday.
The Wildcats have not reached the Sweet 16 since 2016-17, when they lost to Xavier 73-71 in San Jose. TCU ended its season at 21-13.
Koloko led off the scoring in overtime with 1 of 2 free throws and returned with 3:39 for another twoΒ β hitting the first of two again but when he missed the second, Mathurin put it back to give the Wildcats a 79-77 lead.
Mathurin then made two of his own free throws to make it 81-77 entering the final two minutes of overtime. After TCUβs Mike Miles made a three-point play to cut UAβs lead to 81-80, Mathurin picked up a foul while driving inside with 1:10 left, but he missed the and-one, leaving the game at 83-80 entering the final minute.
However, O'Bannon missed a potentially game-tying 3-pointer with 44 seconds left in overtime, making Koloko's dunk of Mathurin's miss an exclamation point more than a game-winner.
At the end of regulation, Lampkin made a rebound basket with 36 seconds left to give TCU a 75-72 lead but Mathurin hit what was a 23-foot 3-point shot to tie the game at 75 with 12 seconds left β despite having struggled from the perimeter earlier in the game.
"Benn's not afraid of the moment," Lloyd said. "He's a special player who has an ability to rise it up another level when needed, and he has that clutch gene.
"I honestly felt really good when he had the ball in his hands there because I knew he was going to shoot a 3. I've seen him make that β the ball in his left hand β enough times. Right when he snapped the 3 off to tie it, it was pretty impressive."
After Mathurin's 3-pointer, TCU then had 12.6 seconds left to run a final play but Miles lost the ball in the trap of Koloko and Terry.
"I was scared when Coach asked us (to trap Miller) because I knew he was going to try to get at me and try to get a foul," Koloko said. "But I think I did a pretty good job just protecting my hip, like coach always says.
"We knew he was going to try to be a hero, and we wanted to trap him. He turned the ball over. That's what we wanted to do and it worked."
The backboard buzzer light flashes at the end of regulation with Arizona Wildcats guard Dalen Terry inches short of a game-winning dunk. The Wildcats and Horned Frogs instead went to overtime, where the UA prevailed.
While Koloko did give up his hips on a trap earlier the game, Lloyd said, he has "amazing feet" that made him central to what was a gangly, difficult trap between Koloko and the long-armed Terry.
"I'm always on him about (protecting his hip), because I knew β I had a good idea they were going to put the ball in Miles' hands," Lloyd said. "He's going to go left and try to come off a ball screen up top. So we had an agile, mobile group out there. What the heck, 10 seconds to go in the game, let's throw a trap on him and see what happens. And we'll live with it."
Lloyd said he knew "there's a lot of speculation" that UA fouled Miles on the play, and Miles expressed some.
"They double-teamed me," Miles said. "I wouldn't say it was not a foul, but it was a foul. They didn't call it. That's what it is."
With no whistle blown, the ball spun loose. Terry picked it up and tried to race in for a layup, but just missed doing so before time ran out, sending the game to overtime.Β
Earlier in regulation, Terry hit a 3-pointer from the right corner to tie the game at 70 with 2:43 left and end a 12-0 TCU run.Β
Arizona led by up to nine points midway through the second half before TCU went on the 12-0 run to take a 70-67 lead with 3:39 left. O'Bannon, the former USC transfer, highlighted the run with a 3-pointer and a two-point jumper.
Having led 39-36 at halftime, Arizona had already fallen behind 44-41 in the second half by the time Kriisa came off the bench two minutes into the second half.Β
But Arizona tied the game at 50 by the time Pelle Larsson assisted Koloko on a layup with 15:03 left. The Wildcats went ahead 57-52 lead after Mathurin took a toss from Koloko to the right of the basket, drove in and threw down an emphatic one-handed dunk, then Larsson converted a three-point play with 12:41 left in the game.
Kriisa had missed his first five 3s before hitting one with 9:28 left in regulation to give Arizona a 62-56 lead. That began an 8-0 run that also included layups from Mathurin and Koloko before the Horned Frogs rattled off their 12-0 run to take a 70-67 lead with 3:39 left.
In the first half, Koloko had 18 points while Lloyd put Kriisa back on the floor for the first time in four games, as the Wildcats took a 39-36 halftime lead.
Having suffered a sprained ankle on March 10 in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals, Kriisa did not start but entered the game at the first media timeout, when the Wildcats trailed 12-6 with 15:36 left in the first half.
The Wildcats immediately began looking more like their top-seeded selves at when Kriisa entered the game, tying it at 17 four minutes later.
They went on to take leads of up to five points toward the end of the half before Lampkin hit 2 of 4 free throws in the final minute to pull the Horned Frogs within a possession at halftime. Terry missed a half-court shot as time expired.
The bruising from Kriisa's ankle sprain was clearly visible above his socks, to about halfway from his ankle to his knee, but Kriisa wound up playing 26 minutes, with three points, two rebounds, one assists and two turnovers.Β
"For him to give us 26 minutes β our trainer, Justin Kokoskie, did an amazing job getting him available to play," Lloyd said. "That was a real sprained ankle. That was no tweak."
