UCLA's won a lot in the NCAA Tournament a lot over time. Butler's been in the NCAA Tournament quite a lot of late. Both teams moved on in Thursday afternoon games.
March Madness bracket 2015: UCLA continues to surprise, Butler wins in NCAA return
One of the NCAA Tournament’s perennial upstarts and one of the sport’s blue-bloods went on in Thursday action. The blue-blood needed more luck.
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For the Bruins, moving on required more fantastic luck: Four days after surprisingly being included in the NCAA Tournament field, the Bruins went ahead of SMU on a controversial goaltending call, then held on for a 60-59 win.
The Mustangs' Yanick Moreira touched a ball seemingly as it glanced off the cylinder with just more than 10 seconds to go, and so three points were credited to Bryce Alford (27 points, and 12 in the game's final five minutes). The call gave UCLA its first lead since SMU ripped off a 10-0 run to take a nine-point lead with 4:33 to play, and SMU's Nic Moore missed two threes on the game's final possession to seal the Bruins' win.
And now UCLA, the most puzzling at-large inclusion in the 2015 NCAA Tournament, needs only to top No. 14 seed Georgia State to make the Sweet Sixteen for the second straight year.
Butler, the Midwest Region's No. 6 seed, advanced with a 56-48 win over Texas that it controlled for most of the day. Kellen Dunham had 20 points for the Bulldogs, who used an 11-0 run midway through the second half to take the lead from the Longhorns for good.
For perennial underdog Butler, being the better seed against No. 11 Texas was a bit odd. But the Butler blueprint hasn't changed much since Chris Holtmann took over for Brandon Miller, Brad Stevens's replacement, and led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since Stevens's last season. Today, it resulted in an undersized team getting a win against rugged Texas, despite making just one in three shots from the field and conceding 13 more rebounds to the 'Horns. Committing just five turnovers in 40 minutes helps with that.
Hilariously, the “top” of the bracket — the Midwest and East Regions — still hasn’t seen an upset. The bottom, though, has had three double-digit seeds claim wins.
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