Opening night of the men's NCAA tournament’s round of 16 will be remembered for the guys who weren’t on the floor when the games were decided.
An intense and otherwise beautifully played Iowa-Nebraska game was decided by one of the most bizarre coaching boners in recent March Madness history and maybe ever. Nebraska had only four players on the court coming out of a timeout, with just under a minute left and Iowa up 71-68. Iowa center Alvaro Folgueiras exploited the Huskers’ heads-up-their-asses defensive scheme and ran a post pattern, and inbounder Kael Combs hit him in stride with a court-length bomb. Folgueiras powered through a desperation chase-down foul from Nebraska’s Berke Buyuktuncel to sink a layup, and the ensuing plus-one gave Iowa a six-point lead they never relinquished. The final score of the South Region tilt, played in Houston, was 77-71.
“This one hurts about as bad as any I've been a part of,” Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg said after the loss, while putting blame for the four-on-the-floor scheme on himself and “miscommunication.”
Hoiberg was asked in his post-game presser if the officials should have counted how many players were on the court and not let the game go on with his team shorthanded. He admitted he didn’t know what the rule was. “I've never been in a situation like that,” he said. “I know they always count to make sure there's not six. I don't know the rule on that, with four.”
(It is indeed illegal in the NBA and in high school basketball for a team to play with only four players on the court if a fifth eligible player is on the bench. I have not yet found a prohibition in the NCAA code, however.)
Nebraska had a double-digit lead in the first half, led by Iowa transfer Pryce Sandfort, who put up 25 points (with six three-pointers) on the night. And although the Huskers let their Big Ten colleagues back in the game with turnovers, Nebraska was ahead by three points heading into the second half. “They were the better team to start the game,” first-year Iowa coach Ben McCollum would later tell the press.
But the Hawkeyes’ offense, led by Bennett Stirtz (20 points on the night) and Tate Sage (19 points, 4-of-7 from three), took off after the break. So the lead see-sawed late, and the game was either team’s to win heading into its final stage. Then Iowa was gifted a rare basketball power play, leading to Folgueiras’s climactic and-one, and Nebraska was finished.
McCollum admitted after the game he couldn’t immediately process what was happening when he saw Folgueiras streaking down court for the deciding hoop. “I didn't even realize [Nebraska had only four players] till I was like, I don't know why he's not being guarded…” he said. “I didn't know it. Then he dunked it and then I'm like, what the heck just happened? And my assistant said they only had four on the court. I said, ‘Oh? That's a heck of a deal.’”
Iowa heads to the Elite Eight for the first time since 1987.
Another late-game blunder from Texas coach Sean Miller decided the Longhorns' 79-77 cliffhanger loss to Purdue in a West Regional matchup in San Jose. Miller inexplicably kept bulky 7-foot, 255-pound center Matas Vokietaitis on the bench for Purdue’s last possession with mere seconds left. And with the UT big man out of the picture, Purdue's Trey Kaufman-Renn was able to shove the comparatively little Longhorn guarding him, Dailyn Swain, out of the way and get the game-winning tip-in off Braden Smith’s missed runner with only 0.7 seconds on the clock. A three-quarter-court heave from UT’s Jordan Pope clanked off the top of the backboard after the buzzer, and the team’s Cinderella tournament run from the play-in game was over.
Likewise, Nebraska’s news-of-the-weird worthy loss ends an already memorable season. The team won the first NCAA tournament game in school history just last week, defeating Troy in a first-round matchup in front of an overwhelmingly pro-Huskers crowd in Oklahoma City. Then on Saturday, in front of the same rabid, raucous, and red-clad audience, Nebraska came out on top, 74-72, in an absolute thriller against Vanderbilt to advance to the round of 16. Yet now this same celebrated fan base—call them the Fifth Man?—goes home sad.
“You know, we were undermanned,” Hoiberg said during his postgame press conference while recapping the Huskers’ year. Well, Fred, that’s exactly how your team will be remembered for a long, long time.
