Oregon guard Joseph Young yells in excitement after hitting the game winning shot. Young scored a game high of 25 points. (Matt Sisneros/CU Independent)
If college basketball in March is an asylum, the inmates are fully in charge. The SEC, Atlantic 10, American and Big 12 blew the doors off of their cells with upsets and buzzer beaters and comebacks. The Pac-12 took a while to join them. It was strapped to a gurney with its arms in a straitjacket and it waited until Friday night to rip free. Then, to atone for the delay, it bit a dude in the face, just like Hannibal Lecter.
The penultimate round of its tournament opened exactly how we thought it would — the Pac-12’s final four teams were its top four seeds, and they got to the semifinals after the dullest slate of games of any conference tournament thus far. Then Friday happened and the Pac-12 gave us a thriller and an instant classic in the span of six hours. Arizona endured the best shot of a wounded UCLA team. Oregon survived Utah by one second. It all set up a potentially epic conference championship game between the Wildcats– who everyone expected to be there– and the Ducks, who have no business being there.
Arizona 70, UCLA 64
The day’s first game was a microcosm of both teams’ seasons. Arizona’s defense strangled UCLA as the Wildcats dashed to an early 11-2 lead. The crowd in the MGM Grand was a sea of red; it felt like an Arizona home game. Behind the power of their fans the Wildcats felt invincible. Then the other Arizona showed up — the stagnant, putrid offensive team that couldn’t score in the half court even when its life depended on it. Friday, it did, and with a potential one-seed in the NCAA Tournament on the line the Wildcats went more than five minutes without scoring and missed seven shots in a row.
That left UCLA the most talented team in the Pac-12 other than Arizona, back into the game. The Bruins’ talent never coalesced this season but here they were behind eight straight points, hanging with the Wildcats. Part of that talent is freshman Kevon Looney, who scored UCLA’s first and last bucket but disappeared in between. Part of that is guard Isaac Hamilton, who scored 36 points in the Bruins’ quarterfinal win over USC. He picked up his third foul with eight minutes left in the first half and watched his team battle from the bench. Friday, it was Norman Powell who kept UCLA level. He scored 21 points, and every time Arizona threatened to pull away he pulled the Bruins back from the brink.
UCLA forward Kevon Looney slashes in for a layup. Looney finished with five points in UCLA’s semifinal loss to Arizona. (Matt Sisneros/CU Independent)
And the Wildcats did pull away. With 10 minutes left in the game it ditched its ugly halfcourt sets and exploded into a 15-0 run that turned a 47-40 UCLA lead into an advantage that Arizona would never relinquish. It held UCLA scoreless for five minutes, and forward Brandon Ashley and point guard T.J. McConnell took over. Ashley scored 24 points on 9-of-11 shooting. McConnell scored 10 and dished 11 dimes.
Arizona guard T.J. McConnel shows his excitement after clinching the Pac-12 semifinal game over UCLA. (Matt Sisneros/CU Independent)
Powell never quit, though, he scored six straight points — a corner three and an and-one — and suddenly the Bruins were within a possession with less than a minute left. But then Stanley Johnson, the Wildcats’ own freshman phenom, buried a three from the wing. That sent Arizona back to where its bid for a one-seed ended last year — the Pac-12 Championship Game. Last season it lost to UCLA. This year it will face Oregon, whose own appearance in the conference final was unlikely before this season, this moment.
Oregon 67, Utah 64
And what a moment it was. Oregon and Utah played the best game the Pac-12 has seen all year. It epitomized the best of college basketball in spring. Neither team ever led by more than six points. The two best players in the conference, Delon Wright and Joseph Young, gave a duel for the ages. Wright scored 16 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished five dimes. That was almost enough to push the Utes into the title game. Almost, but Young scored 25, 18 in the second half, and he was unstoppable when the Ducks needed him to be.
Oregon’s Joseph Young takes a quick look while setting up an offensive play. Young was awarded Pac-12 Player of the Year for the 2014-15 season and leads the conference in points-per-game. (Gray Bender/CU Independent)
The game began at a frenetic pace — the teams combined for seven threes in the first five minutes. It slowed down after that. Young was ice-cold in the first half, as he was in the quarterfinal against Colorado, but the Ducks’ usually unsound defense kept it in the game. Oregon doubled Utah center Jakob Poeltl in the post, and he wasn’t a good enough passer to escape the traps. The Ducks also sent Poeltl to the free-throw line, where he shot just 3-of-8.
Then, in the second half, Young did what Young does. Once he made his first off-the-dribble three, he was off. Then it was a fight between Young and Wright, with Utes guard Brandon Taylor acting as an occasional interloper. Taylor’s six treys made up for Utah forward Jordan Loveridge’s o-of-7 shooting night. Taylor and Wright answered everything that Young threw at them and had the Utes within two points with only 12 seconds left.
Then the Ducks almost choked it away. Loveridge drew a charge on Young; it wasn’t a charge — Loveridge’s feet weren’t set and he initiated the contact — but it wouldn’t be a classic Pac-12 game without a classically terrible call from the conference’s refs. The charge gave Utah the ball, then Oregon forward Joseph Young fouled Wright and his two free throws evened the game.
Overtime was a certainty at that point to everyone except Young. He caught the inbounds pass, raced up the court and disregarded the play that coach Dana Altman had drawn up. He got a screen just past halfcourt, and Wright made his only mistake of the game at the worst possible moment. Wright went under the screen — you never, ever go under a screen for Joseph Young — and Poeltl was late leaping out to help. Young pulled up and fired from 30 feet and you knew the shot was good as soon as it left his hand.
So the Pac-12’s final game will be between its best offensive team and its best defensive one. It will be between the team that everyone knew would be there and the one that was predicted to finish eighth in the conference. It’s March. If we’re crazy now, our brains will be melted come April.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Tommy Wood at thomas.c.wood@colorado.edu.
