Last night's slate of games came in two distinct variety of outcomes: blowouts and down to the wire upset victories. Some of the teams you'd thought would win (Ohio St.) wound up falling, and this years cinderella, VCU, is keeping their glass slipper on for now as they have all moved on to the Elite Eight. Here's a recap of last night's action:
East No. 2 North Carolina Beats No. 11 Marquette 81-63: This wasn't really close. The Tar Heels went to the locker room at half with a 25 point lead and Marquette was simply shell shocked. There was nothing they could do but watch UNC simply out execute them on both ends of the floor.
Southwest No. 1 Kansas Defeats No. 12 Richmond 77-57: This was another one of those games where the better team showed who was boss. And unfortunately for Richmond, they didn't have enough to keep up with Kansas. There were spurts where the Spiders showed some fight, but in the end, they were outmatched by the Jayhawks.
East No. 4 Kentucky Defeats No. 1 Ohio St. 62-60: Ah, this is where it got good. This was a great game where we saw Ohio State and Kentucky go back in forth in the final minutes, a contest where it felt like whoever had the ball last would win the game. The final sequence of the game included Buckeye senior Jon Diebler draining a three pointer to tie the game at 60 with 21.2 seconds left. From there, Brandon Knight became the hero, as he drained a tough 15 foot jumper with 5 seconds left to win the game and help the Wildcats knock off the number one overall seed.
Southwest No. 11 VCU Defeats No. 10 Florida State 72-71 in OT: Cinderella lives to fight another day. VCU won a thriller against Florida State in a game that saw tons of lead changes the wire, both at the end of regulation and in the overtime. Trailing by one point with 7 seconds left in OT, Shaka Smart drew up a brilliant in bounds play to Bradford Burgess, who provided the game winning bucket to send the Rams into the Elite Eight.