Nevada rallies to beat Texas in overtime at NCAA Tournament
The Nevada bench reacts after beating Texas in overtime of a first-round game in the NCAA Tournament in Nashville, Tenn., Friday. Credit: AP / Mark Humphrey
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It was excitement that led Eric Musselman to leap into his assistant’s arms. That’s a given. But there also was something else. Nevada’s head coach said he could barely believe what happened. He honestly didn’t quite believe it. Had his Wolf Pack really just come back from 14 points down? Had they really just won in overtime?
Maybe Musselman wasn’t just leaping when he jumped into Johnny Jones’ arms with two seconds left in Friday’s 87-83 OT win over Texas in the South Regional. Maybe he was checking to see if he could fly.
“I don’t know how we won,” he said later, surrounded by Kendall Stephens, Josh Hall and Caleb Martin, the three players who spearheaded the comeback.
Texas coach Shaka Smart, on the other side: “It’s a devastating loss. It’s a terrible feeling right now.”
There was no shortage of emotion at Bridgestone Arena in a game in which No. 7 Nevada looked positively overmatched — until it didn’t.
Nevada (28-7), which used only six players, went ahead a minute into the game and didn’t lead again until overtime. The 10th-seeded Longhorns (19-15) were up 14 with 18:42 left and led by eight with a little less than nine minutes to go. But none of that mattered in the extra frame, when Martin hit back-to-back three-pointers to put Nevada up for good.
Stephens scored 22 points and hit five three-pointers for Nevada, which will face second-seeded Cincinnati in the second round on Sunday. Cody Martin added 15 points, six assists, four rebounds and four blocks and Caleb Martin had 18 points and 10 rebounds.
Kerwin Roach III led Texas with 26 points and 6-11 freshman Mohamed Bamba had 13 points and 14 rebounds before fouling out with three seconds left in regulation.
The Wolf Pack went on a 12-6 run in the final 5:18. Jordan Caroline hit a layup with 33 seconds left and had a chance to win it when he went to the line with three seconds left in regulation. He missed the first free throw but hit the second one to tie it at 68. Texas then threw away the inbounds pass, but Nevada missed at the regulation buzzer.
Martin’s three with 2:36 left in overtime gave Nevada a one-point lead, and he hit another exactly a minute later. Hall and Caroline each hit a free throw to put Nevada up by five with 22 seconds left, but Roach hit a three to keep Texas alive. Stephens hit both of his free throws to ice it with 14 seconds to go.
“When you have a lead, you’ve got to stay aggressive and keep attacking,” Smart said. “We were trying to look to throw the ball inside . . . They doubled before the ball even went in . . . We had some possessions where at the end of the clock, we didn’t get anything going that we wanted to.”
Texas shot 37.5 percent from the field in the second half to Nevada’s 51.7. That trend continued in overtime, when the Wolf Pack went 6-for-6 to Texas’ 5-for-9. Caleb Martin scored nine of Nevada’s 19 points in overtime.
“With overtime, it gave us new life,” he said. “It’s a whole ’nother five-minute game.”
And as Musselman learned, anything can happen then.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
