Nashville, Tenn. — Tyler Tanner scored 20 points and dished out eight assists, Duke Miles scored 15 with seven assists and No. 22 Vanderbilt earned a 91-74 victory over No. 4 Florida on Saturday in the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference tournament.
The Commodores advanced to Sunday’s conference final against Arkansas.
Jalen Washington scored 17 points for the fourth-seed Commodores (26-7), who also got 12 from Devin McGlockton and 11 from AK Okereke.
Thomas Haugh had 19 points and nine rebounds for the Gators (26-7), who saw their 12-game winning streak come to an end. Florida also received 15 points from Boogie Fland, 13 from Alex Condon and 12 from Rueben Chinyelu.
Vanderbilt took a 39-27 lead with 3:29 remaining in the first half and maintained a double-digit advantage the rest of the way. The Commodores shot 54.5% from the floor and 47.6% (20 of 21) from 3-point range.
The Commodores overcame a 38-23 rebounding deficit by scoring 24 points off 14 Gators turnovers.
Okereke hit a 3-pointer to start the half and put Vandy up 50-34 before the Gators’ Condon and Chinyelu each drew their third fouls just over a minute into the second half. Condon picked up a fourth with 16:20 remaining.
Vanderbilt’s Chandler Bing hit a layup as he was crashing to the floor after an Urrban Klavzar shove and completed a three-point play for a 65-46 lead with 11:45 remaining.
On the next possession, Bing took a cross-court pass from Okereke, drove the left baseline and threw down a dunk that put Vandy up 67-46.
Miles drove the lane and kicked it to McGlockton for an open 3-pointer that extended the Commodores’ advantage to 74-51 with 8:19 left.
Florida coach Todd Golden called timeout and was subsequently whistled for a technical foul. Miles hit both free throws to make it 76-51.
Vanderbilt’s inside presence of Washington, McGlockton and Jayden Leverett all had four fouls when the latter picked one up with 7:09 remaining.
But the Gators put Vandy in the double bonus with 6:03 left, when Miles hit both free throws to push the lead to 78-56.
Vanderbilt committed a pair of turnovers late that helped Florida cut their deficit to 84-70 inside of the final three minutes before the Commodores put away the victory.
More Southeastern Conference
Arkansas 93, Mississippi 90, OT: At Nashville, third-seeded Arkansas got 29 points from Meleek Thomas, 24 from Darius Acuff Jr. and double-doubles from Trevon Brazile and Malique Ewen to escape with a 93-90 overtime victory over 15th-seeded Ole Miss in the Southeastern Conference tournament semifinals.
Ewen scored 14 and pulled down a game-high 13 boards while Brazile scored 16 with 10 rebounds as No. 17 Arkansas (25-8) advanced to face No. 22 Vanderbilt (26-7) in Sunday’s final. The fourth-seeded Commodores bounced top-seeded Florida 91-74 in the day’s first semifinal.
AJ Storr scored a team-high 24 points for Ole Miss (15-20), which included a basket with one second left to send the game into overtime. Malik Dia chipped in 16 points for the Rebels, who nearly pulled off their fourth upset in as many days. They also got 15 from Patton Pinkins and 13 from Ilias Kamardine.
Arkansas outrebounded the Rebels 44-31 and shot 74.2% from the line, though its 4-of-8 shooting in overtime left the door open for the upset.
With five seconds left in regulation and Ole Miss trailing 79-77, Storr took the ball the length of the floor and banked in a left-handed layup with one second left.
Arkansas never trailed in overtime, but Storr’s drive and dunk with nine seconds left kept Ole Miss in position to win by cutting the lead to 91-90.
Acuff hit the second of two free throws and then Storr missed a 3-point attempt from the right side. Brazile got the rebound and hit the second of two foul shots, which gave Arkansas a chance to set its defense.
Travis Perry’s mid-court heave crashed off the backboard as time expired.
Arkansas built an 11-point lead midway through the first half, but couldn’t put away Ole Miss. The Rebels trailed 37-36 at half after shooting 11 of 15 on layups.
Arkansas held a 70-60 lead with 5:43 to play in regulation after Thomas hit two foul shots.
Kamardine hit two free throws with seven seconds left to get Ole Miss within one.
Two seconds later, after a timeout, Kamardine fouled out, sending Thomas to the line where he hit one of two for Arkansas’s last points of regulation.
Big 12
(At) Arizona 79, Houston 74: At Kansas City, Koa Peat scored 21 points before fouling out and Brayden Burries also had 21 as top-seeded Arizona defeated second-seeded Houston to win the tournament and claim the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Jaden Bradley scored 13 points and Ivan Kharchenkov added 12 for No. 2 Arizona, which won its ninth straight game. The Wildcats (32-2) are in the running for the No. 1 overall seed after winning their first Big 12 championship in their second year in the league, avenging last year’s title game loss to Houston.
“I’m just doing whatever the team needs me to do,” Peat said on ESPN. “We worked for this and we deserve this.”
Joseph “JoJo” Tugler scored a career-high 20 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for the No. 5 Cougars (28-6), who had a five-game winning streak snapped. Mercy Miller had 13 points and seven rebounds, Chase McCarty had 10 points and Emanuel Sharp also scored 10 before fouling out for Houston.
“The best player on the floor tonight was JoJo Tugler,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said at the postgame press conference. “There’s not a lot of things that bother Joe. He doesn’t get confused or lose confidence or constantly need somebody to build him up. He doesn’t need any of that. He’s a warrior.”
The Cougars led for just 59 seconds. Still, they are expected to be a No. 2 seed when the bracket is revealed on Selection Sunday.
Miller drained a 3-pointer with 1:05 remaining and Milos Uzan buried a trey with 53.8 seconds left as Houston moved within 75-72.
Motiejus Krivas sank two free throws to give Arizona a five-point lead with 22.9 seconds remaining. McCarty’s two free throws with 13.2 seconds left pulled Houston within 77-74.
Burries made two free throws with 8.3 seconds left to seal it for the Wildcats.
“We’ve been playing with each other for a while,” Arizona senior guard Bradley said at the postgame press conference. “We know each other and want the ball and need the ball. But playing against Houston, it’s never easy. So you know you’ve got to move it, you gotta find each other and create plays for each other. Brayden was hitting shots, and Koa was getting to the rim and Ivan was getting to the rim. All our guys contributed tonight.”
Arizona shot 46.3% from the field, including 6 of 13 from 3-point range.
The Cougars made 43.8% of their shots and were 8 of 21 from behind the arc.
“I think it was great for the Big 12,” Sampson said of the tournament final. “You’ve got the two best teams in the Big 12 fighting down the stretch. Either team could have won the game. Sometimes it comes down to a break. Sometimes it comes down to a whistle. Sometimes it comes down to a bounce. When two teams are as evenly matched as those two teams were today, that’s really what it came down to.”
Arizona led by eight at halftime before scoring the first seven points of the second half to take a 51-36 lead. Burries made two free throws to cap the half-opening run.
The Wildcats again led by 15 with just over 14 minutes left before Houston rattled off 14 consecutive points.
Sharpe buried a 3-pointer to start the run and Uzan later converted a three- point play to move the Cougars within 59-54 with 9:32 remaining. Tugler and Miller followed with layups as Houston trailed by one with 7:08 to play.
Burries scored on a runner and made the ensuing free throw with 6:40 left to end the Arizona scoring drought at seven minutes, 24 seconds.
A basket by Kingston Flemings brought Houston within two before Kharchenkov banked in a long 3-pointer to give the Wildcats a 65-60 lead with 5:52 to play.
The long trey started a 9-2 run for Arizona. Kharchenkov had seven of the points and Peat ended it with a short jumper to make it 71-62 with 3:51 left.
Burries scored the final 10 Arizona points of the first half as the Wildcats led 44-36 at the break. Burries had 12 points in the half, one behind Bradley’s 13 and one ahead of Peat’s 11.
Tugler had 10 points in the half for the Cougars.
Big East
St. John’s 72, UConn 52: At New York, Zuby Ejiofor totaled 18 points, nine rebounds, seven blocks and three steals as top-seeded St. John’s started quickly and never let up to win the tournament title.
Projected to be a fifth seed in the NCAA Tournament by many bracketologists, the Red Storm (28-6) won their fifth conference tournament title and achieved the feat in consecutive seasons for the first time in school history.
“We’ve had a target on our backs and we had to battle through adversity all season,” said Ejiofor, the Big East Player of the Year. “Nobody believed that we could get to this moment but us. Everybody in the locker room and these guys, they earned it. They earned it. This is what they came here for, and we accomplished a few of the goals that we set out to do.”
St. John’s, ranked No. 13 in the nation, also became the first school to go back-to-back as Big East tournament champions since Villanova won three straight from 2017-19.
The Red Storm won for the 19th time in 20 games since a six-point home loss to Providence on Jan. 3. Their lone loss in that span was a 72-40 thrashing by UConn in Hartford on Feb. 25.
“We never mentioned revenge because we have so much respect for Connecticut,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said. “We just talked about (winning the Big East) championship. This is the championship. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing, it’s a championship at stake. You guys get a chance to be a part of history. It’s a championship. It’s another night to get better and improve. And we did. We improved every single game and we got better.”
Ejiofor, voted the tournament’s most outstanding player, made 7 of 11 shots and hit a pair of 3s on Saturday. He finished one shy of his career high for blocks set Dec. 6 against Ole Miss and matched in the next game on Dec. 13 against Iona.
“The point production, the rebounding production, the havoc he causes on defense, the relentlessness that he plays with, and then just him as a leader of that team, just his personality,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said of Ejiofor. “The rage that he plays with, the fire that he plays with, that guy’s just a total butt kicker. He’s one of the handful of best players I’ve ever coached against in college.”
Bryce Hopkins also scored 18 and Oziyah Sellers contributed 14 for the Red Storm, who scored the game’s first 10 points. St. John’s scored the first nine points in a quarterfinal win over Providence on Thursday and the first eight in the semifinal win over Seton Hall on Friday.
“We had to set the tone early against UConn because they’re such a great program,” Ejiofor said. “So we set the tone early like we did pretty much all tournament, but we had to be resilient to come out with a win like this and these guys did that.”
The Red Storm shot 48.2% from the field (27 of 56) and scored 24 points off turnovers.
“They just really jumped us to start the game,” Hurley said. “I think we knew that it would be a very forceful response from them and we just weren’t able to match it. We weren’t able to finish some things around the basket and just kind of settle into the game. And then just playing catchup was an issue.”
No. 6 UConn (29-5) was unable to win its ninth conference title and ended the game by getting outscored 13-3 and missing its last 13 field-goal attempts over the final eight minutes.
Tarris Reed Jr. led the Huskies with 17 points on 8-of-17 shooting but was constantly bottled up by Ejiofor in the paint. Reed was UConn’s lone double- figure scorer as the Huskies shot a season-worst 33.9% (19 of 56), missed 16 of 19 3-pointers and committed 17 turnovers.
“Zuby did a great job of staying out of foul trouble, and we took away the 3-point shot by doing that and that’s what we wanted to do,” Pitino said. “It wasn’t so much that we were trying to stop (Reed), it was we wanted to take away the 3-point line.”
Leading scorer Solo Ball was held to three points on 1-of-7 shooting while Alex Karaban finished with seven and Silas Demary Jr. had six.
After a basket by Erik Reibe made it a nine-point game with 9:58 left in the first half, the Red Storm ripped off an 11-3 run that featured dunks by Ejiofor and Dillon Mitchell for a 36-19 lead with 4:37 left before taking a 40-27 lead into halftime.
“They came out from the start just pressuring and, you know, they set the tone and we just had to find a way to respond and we just didn’t do that to start the first half,” Karaban said. “They pressure, they’re athletic, they could switch. They have a really good defense, they’re super well-coached.”
St. John’s held an 18-point lead on a basket by Sellers less than two minutes into the second half, and UConn scored the next nine points, getting within 47-38 on a layup by Reed with 15:08 left. The Huskies kept charging back, and Reed’s short jumper cut the lead to 49-42 and prompted a timeout.
UConn sliced the lead to 10 on a basket by Malachi Smith with 8:03 left. St John’s answered by getting six straight points from Darling, a jumper by Sellers and a layup by Hopkins for a 69-49 lead with 3:27 left to essentially clinch matters.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: College basketball roundup: Vanderbilt, Arkansas reach SEC final
Reporting by Detroit News wire services / The Detroit News
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