Tuesday afternoon marked the return of the Big 12’s men’s basketball tournament, located in Kansas City, Missouri.
The day started off with an offensive masterclass by the Bearcats of Cincinnati as they won their standoff against Oklahoma State Cowboys with a final score of 87-68. Day Day Thomas was the leader of the Bearcats in this game as he scored 21 points, which was 12 points over his season average. Guards Josh Reed and Dan Skillings both scored double digits to help the Bearcats cruise their way past the Cowboys. The Cowboys were without their top scorer and rebounder, Abou Ousmane, who only played nine minutes before fouling out in the second half due to drawing a technical foul. Abou has been the backbone of the Oklahoma State team, and Ousmane fouling out early was detrimental to Oklahoma State’s gameplan. Abou was not alone when it came to foul trouble as fellow teammate Arturo Dean also received a technical foul. Oklahoma State’s foul troubles and loss of star player Abou Ousmane led them towards their defeat at the hands of the Bearcats. However, the next game on the schedule was far from a cake walk
It is not March without the madness, and the matchup between the ninth-seeded TCU Horned Frogs and the sixteenth-seeded Colorado Buffalos resulted in an upset. The Buffalos are arguably playing their best basketball of the year as the Buffalos lost thirteen straight in-conference games before they managed to build momentum late in the season winning three out of their last seven games. Colorado managed to just hold on against the Horned Frogs as Forward Andrej Jakimovski had 18 points and Guard Julian Hammond III contributed 16 points of his own. The Buffalos just scraped by due to their outstanding free throw performance, going 18-24 from the foul line while the Horned Frogs shot a measly 50% from the free throw line going 10-20. The Buffalos will not face the ninth ranked West Virginia Mountaineers tomorrow as they look to keep their run alive.
The Coleman Hawkins scored a season-best 26 points for Kansas State as they blew past Arizona State. The No. 10 seeded Kansas State Wildcats beat the No.15 seeded Arizona State 71-66 in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament with Dug McDaniel backing up Hawkins with 14 points, while Max Jones and Brendan Hausen added 10 each. Despite a strong seventeen-point performance from Alston Mason and key contributions from Joson Sanon and Basheer Jihad, the Sun Devils struggled to keep up after Kansas State’s late run. The Wildcats now face No. 7 seed Baylor in the second round.
The final game of the evening was back and forth all the way until the end when the knights of UCF managed to run away with the 87-72 victory over the Utah Utes. What was really unique about this matchup was the fact that Utah’s interim Head Coach, Josh Eilert, was the interim head coach for the Mountaineers in Morgantown last season. Eilert went 9-23 in his one-year stint at the Head Coach position before packing his bags and moving to Salt Lake City. The Knights scored the ball extremely effectively on the offensive end. Keyshawn Hall scored 23 points to lead four UCF players in double-figures scoring. Those player would be Dior Johnson who scored 20 points, Jordan Ivy-Curry who had 15, and Moustapha Thiam finished with 14 points for the Knights. These scoring performances paired with a dominant 24-3 second half run by the Knights is what allowed them to run away with the game and move on to the second round of competition.
The second round of action starts tomorrow as the fifth-seeded Iowa State Cyclones face off against the thirteenth-seeded Cincinnati Bearcats. With what the fans have watched so far, this could be any team’s tournament to win, as all of the competition that is left is fierce, competitive, scrappy, and fundamentally sound on both ends of the ball. Victory will be hard to achieve in the remaining matchups, making that automatic bid to March Madness that much more desirable.
