N.C.A.A. Tournament Live: Ohio State, Purdue Upset

“What we now know is the N.C.A.A.’s season-long messaging about ‘togetherness’ and ‘equality’ was about convenience and a sound bite for the moment created after the murder of George Floyd,” she wrote later, referencing the Black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis last spring. Directing her sharpest criticism at Mark Emmert, the N.C.A.A. president, Staley said that he and other association executives could not be allowed to “use us and our student-athletes at their convenience.”

“Every team here in San Antonio has earned and deserves at a minimum the same level of respect as the men,” said Staley, whose team is a No. 1 seed. “All the teams here dealt with the same issues as the men’s teams this season; yet their ‘reward’ is different.”

Emmert and other N.C.A.A. executives on Friday acknowledged disparities — most prominently involving coronavirus testing and workout facilities — and, in some instances, apologized for them. But Staley said Friday evening that it was “time for the N.C.A.A. leadership to re-evaluate the value they place on women.”

But once the Boilermakers got there, the Mean Green surged ahead and a missed 3-pointer by Jaden Ivey, who had 23 points, sealed Purdue’s fate. North Texas won, 78-69.

Mardrez McBride of North Texas finished with 24 points and 11 rebounds, finding open space where there did not seem to be any. But it was James Reese and Javion Hamlet who closed the game with a string of free throws to keep the North Texas lead in overtime.

Safe to say, judging by the strength of the boos rattling the north side of Lucas Oil Stadium, where the teams faced off, that many viewers — at least in person — were not happy.

There is no longer a team from Indiana in the 2021 men’s tournament.

Cunningham is one of four finalists for the Naismith Trophy as the nation’s top college player and is hoping to lead his team on a deep run in his lone season in college, much like Carmelo Anthony did in 2003 when he carried Syracuse to a national championship.

“Melo is big shoes to fill but I’m up for the challenge for sure,” Cunningham said this week.

In early June, the N.C.A.A. punished Oklahoma State for its role in a bribery scandal that ensnared several coaches, including a former assistant for the Cowboys. The punishment included a postseason ban for 2021.

But Oklahoma State was able to play in this tournament because the N.C.A.A. appeals process is still playing out.

The loss snapped a 12-game winning streak for Liberty (23-6), the champions of the Atlantic Sun Conference.

Avery Anderson led the Cowboys with 19 points, eight rebounds and four steals and Isaac Likekele had 11 points and six rebounds. Matthew Alexander-Moncrieffe went for 10 points and nine rebounds.

Elijah Cuffee led Liberty with 16 points and four assists.

Critics cited two other examples on Friday: the women were given antigen coronavirus tests, which are less reliable than the polymerase chain reaction tests used for the men; and the quality of gifts the players received and their inability to have food delivered to the hotels were they are encamped.

“We haven’t had this kind of issue before because the tournaments are run in quite different ways,” Emmert said, referring to how the first two rounds of the women’s tournament are normally held at 16 campus facilities.

Emmert parried several questions about the inequities over facilities, gifts and testing, saying he did not have enough information, but maintained that he had “complete confidence” in the tests the women were receiving.

As for these issues clouding the start of the first major event the N.C.A.A. has put on since the pandemic — it does not administer the College Football Playoff — Emmert said: “It’s deeply disappointing, first and foremost because we want the student athletes to have a great experience. Anything that detracts from a bad experience from the students is really disturbing.”

Coach Paul Mills of Oral Roberts

On how turnovers mattered: “We’re top 25 in the country at not turning it over, and Ohio State is 336th in the country at causing turnovers. So we knew that we were coming into a game where there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of pressure. We do a good job taking care of the ball. That’s not their strength. They do a number of things really, really well, obviously, but their strength isn’t that they’re going to pressure you.”

On facing a juggernaut: “Who walks into a game and says the other person can’t be beaten? I mean, I don’t think anybody does. As I shared with the guys, don’t let anybody put a number in front of your name. And it’s hard, right? Because when they’re high school players, they want a number in front of their name. They’re ranked this, or they’re ranked that, because that ranking is going to bring something for them, whether it be attention or a scholarship offer.”

Coach Chris Holtmann of Ohio State

On how the Buckeyes faltered: “I thought our preparation was really good. I thought that we just had too many missed opportunities, too many turnovers, too many empty possessions on offense. Did not think we had a great start. That’s my fault.”

No. 12 Oregon State 70, No. 5 Tennessee 56

Coach Wayne Tinkle of Oregon State

On the day’s defensive focus: “We have this drill we put in a little while back, and it’s called the change drill. It’s where we’ve got pressure on the ball. Everybody else is loaded into their gaps, man or zone. We talked about in the scouting report taking away the elbows and the blocks by having a presence there off the ball so that they couldn’t get their drives to the rim. They’re so athletic.

“Then we had to get to their shooters with high hands in man and zone. We lost them a couple times, but you look at the defensive numbers, I’d say, other than a couple of touch-down turnovers, the guys really responded to the defensive focus.”

On Oregon State’s team assists: “Our scouting report was they really dig hard in their help if you can get by the first wave. So we really worked hard on moving back behind any penetration, kicking the ball, sharing it. The “one more” phrase, we’ve been yelling that a lot in practice the last couple of months, and the guys have bought into it. I mean, we have really come together as a team, and you saw it on display.

“I think we were top 20 in the country most of the year, I think still, in our assist to field goal percentage. It’s just a credit of executing our offense. I thought we did a great job on that out of time-outs, especially the first 30, 34 minutes. We got the looks we were expecting to get early in the game to set the tone, and then the guys just kept making plays for each other.”

Coach Rick Barnes of Tennessee

On how Tennessee lost: “They played a good basketball game. Just sorry that we didn’t give them more competition really. I just told our team it was disappointing in the way that we started out. They had an inside game, and we didn’t get a chance — we didn’t do what we have to do to stop that, and we had no inside game. We couldn’t.

“They were certainly packed back in there daring us to make threes or take shots, and we had some looks, but it didn’t go down. Didn’t get much on the offensive board the way we needed to, but overall, give them credit for it. Disappointed that I didn’t think we played our best basketball. It’s hard to play this game when the ball’s not going in and when you don’t have an inside presence.”

The men’s Final Four tournament will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium, a 70,000-seat arena home to the N.F.L.’s Indianapolis Colts. The crowd will be capped at 25 percent of capacity, with fans masked and seated in socially distanced pods of two, four or six. And the area reserved for each 29-member band will be empty.

“I understand the N.C.A.A’s decision,” Jake Tedeschi, 22, a senior tenor saxophone player in the No. 1 seed University of Illinois’s basketball pep band, said. “But man, I wish I could be there. I’m hoping they’ll reconsider for the Final Four.”

But now, that dream is dashed, too.

After previously excluding bands only through the Elite Eight, an N.C.A.A. spokesman said in an email on Friday that no bands would be allowed at any of the games in either the men’s or women’s basketball tournaments this year.

The decision, he said, was based on health and safety protocols developed with local health authorities, which “led to reductions in the size of official travel parties and limits on overall capacity in venues.”

The six Indiana venues that will host this year’s games, he said, will still play school fight songs and anthems. They will screen cheer video performances, and other band music will be in rotation.

But the honking tubas and energy-building improvisation of pep bands are what attracts many fans to the college game — they are the antithesis of the N.B.A.’s reliance on canned noise to punctuate big blocks and thunderous dunks. And bands have an even more crucial role in the N.C.A.A. tournament, Barry L. Houser, the director of the University of Illinois’s marching and athletic bands for the past 10 years, said.

“There’s nothing like live music to bring a stadium or arena alive,” he said. “The playing of a fight song after a great play or going into a hot timeout after an amazing play for the team can really get the crowd riled up.”

Texas Southern, out of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, overcame a 10-point halftime deficit to beat Mount Saint Mary’s, 60-52, at Assembly Hall in the first of four play-in games between teams vying to reach the round of 64.

Texas Southern will next face top-seeded Michigan on Saturday at 3 p.m. Eastern at Mackey Arena.

“This game coming up with Michigan on Saturday obviously wasn’t on our schedule, but we’re glad that we’ve put ourselves in a situation and got an opportunity in the N.C.A.A. tournament to play one of the top teams in the country, so it’s not anything that our guys are not used to,” Coach Johnny Jones said. “It’s a challenge that they certainly accept.”

In a battle of No. 16 seeds, Norfolk State, out of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, held off Appalachian State, 54-53 after Devante Carter made free throws with 8.6 seconds left at Assembly Hall.

The Spartans’ reward? A date with No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga on Saturday at 9:20 p.m. Eastern at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

The wins by the pair of H.B.C.U.s came after the N.B.A. and the players union last month pledged $2.5 million in support of H.B.C.U.s and communities of color as part of its All-Star Game activities.

But Rick Barnes, Tennessee’s coach, had foreseen possible trouble.

“Oregon State finished as strong as any team in the country,” he said this week. “They won their conference, beat Oregon, U.C.L.A., and Colorado in that order, which shows how well they are playing. A team that’s been coached well, they’ve gotten better, and playing their best basketball right now. Most teams that are playing right now are capable of playing their best basketball, and I like to think that we’re on the verge of doing that as well.”

Not quite.

Tennessee, for instance, managed to make just one-third of its shots from the field and never held a lead. The preseason favorite to win the Southeastern Conference, it had the game tied just once.

Meanwhile, Oregon State sank nearly half of its shots, and four players scored at least 10 points each.

The Beavers, who led by 20 points at one point on Friday, will play the winner of the Liberty-Oklahoma State game.

According to her bracket, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, Sister Jean has Loyola (25-4) beating Ayo Dosunmu and Illinois and eventually advancing to the Elite Eight before losing to West Virginia.

Sister Jean and the Ramblers are back in the tournament for the first time since their surprise run to the Final Four in 2018.

Lucas Williamson led Loyola with a season-high 21 points along with six rebounds and four assists. Braden Norris had 15 points, Keith Clemons had 12 and Cameron Krutwig, the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year, was held to 10 points and five rebounds. The Ramblers shot 11-of-27 on 3-pointers.

“I know it feels so good and I want just to feel it again,” said Williamson, referring to the Final Four run in 2018. “I was just doing whatever I could to help put my team in a position to win.”

As for facing Illinois, he said, “It’s going to take everything we got. They’re one of the best teams in the country. We’re just going to have to come with it and be us.’

Georgia Tech was forced to play without the A.C.C. player of the year, Moses Wright, who was out because of coronavirus protocols. The Yellow Jackets were hurt on rebounding as a result.

Jose Alvarado, the Georgia Tech point guard who won defensive player of the year honors, wore Wright’s jersey number to honor him and finished with 13 points.

Some had Ohio State pegged as a potential Final Four team, but they are out and Oral Roberts advances to play No. 7 Florida on Sunday.

Oral Roberts became the first No. 15 seed to upset a No. 2 since Middle Tennessee State defeated Michigan State in 2016.

Other famous 15/2 upsets featured Florida Gulf Coast over Georgetown in 2013, Lehigh over Duke in 2012 and Richmond over Syracuse in 1991.

Oral Roberts outscored Ohio State 11-8 in the extra period.

With Ohio State trailing 73-69, E.J. Liddell drained a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 73-72.

Obanor then made two free throws to push the lead to 75-72 with 13 seconds remaining. He finished with 30 points and 11 rebounds.

Ohio State missed two 3-point attempts in the final seconds.

“I didn’t know if it was going in or not. I knew that the guys weren’t going to quit on the play, and that’s a great basketball team we just beat. At the end of the day we knew they weren’t going to quit and we were able to come out with a victory,” said Abmas, the leading scorer in Division I. He poured in 29 points on 10-of-24 shooting for Oral Roberts, and had 18 at the half, when Oral Roberts led 36-33.

About 24 hours into the tournament, two Big Ten powers are out: Ohio State and Michigan State, which lost in a First Four game Thursday night to U.C.L.A.

That’s the news, and it is delightful.

The English bulldog installed last year as Butler’s mascot greeted Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the 101-year-old nun who has been the team chaplain for Loyola-Chicago since the mid-1990s.

Sister Jean traveled to Indianapolis after the N.C.A.A. and the university reached a deal this week for her to attend the Friday game. The eighth-seeded Ramblers are meeting No. 9 Georgia Tech in the first round in the Midwest region.

If you just want to read about a dog and/or Sister Jean, we’ve got you covered.

• The Arkansas Razorbacks, the third seed in the South region, overcame a near-disastrous first half to oust Colgate, the 14th seed, from the tournament. Although Colgate trailed by only 3 at the intermission, the Razorbacks outscored the Raiders 49-35 in the second. Final score: 85-68, Arkansas.

• The seventh seed in the South, Florida, needed overtime to finish off No. 10 Virginia Tech. Colin Castleton, a junior forward, led the Gators with 19 points to help steer Florida past a scoring outburst by Virginia Tech’s Nahiem Alleyne, who finished with 30 after his 3-point shot sent the game into extra minutes.

• Texas Tech, the South’s sixth seed, extinguished No. 11 Utah State’s ambitions with a 65-53 victory at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind. Texas Tech managed a 13-0 run at one point in the second half.

Virginia Tech’s Nahiem Alleyne hit a 3-pointer with 1.4 seconds left in regulation to force overtime against Florida. Still, the Gators ultimately prevailed, 75-70, by outscoring the Hokies 48-37 after trailing at the half. The Gators came back from a 10-point deficit in the win.

Florida advanced to the second round for the eighth straight time in the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament and will face the winner between No. 2 Ohio State and No. 15 Oral Roberts in the South region.

Tre Mann’s 3-pointer with 22 seconds left in the overtime gave Florida a 74-70 lead. He finished with 14 points. Colin Castleton went for 19 points and 14 rebounds and Scottie Lewis tallied 15 points and four rebounds.

Alleyne poured in a career-high 28 points for the Hokies, including 14 straight bridging the second half and overtime.

Virginia Tech had two key players foul out in the overtime. Keve Aluma fouled out with 7 points and four rebounds and Justyn Mutts left with 6 points, five rebounds and four assists.

Still, the Raiders arrived in Indiana with a stellar place in the N.C.A.A. Evaluation Tool, known as the NET: No. 9, ahead of powers like Virginia and Kansas and, yes, Arkansas. Critics of the NET argue that Colgate unreasonably benefited from the algorithm, which draws in even the results of an opponent’s opponents.

Let’s turn to Matt Langel, Colgate’s coach, to sort out how the Raiders got there with some help from Army, one of Colgate’s time-and-again opponents this season:

It’s a little bit of a mathematical outlier because we didn’t have nonconference games. Army and Navy did have a few nonconference games. They did well in those nonconference games — you know, Navy beating Georgetown, Army beating Buffalo, who’s a good team, playing Florida really close. Then we beat Army three out of four times and only lost by two and Army beat Navy. As you run the algorithm, it spits you back out something that doesn’t necessarily identify what everything else that everybody looks at in the country.

Colgate played in the last N.C.A.A. tournament, which was held in 2019, and narrowly lost to another high-seeded SEC team, Tennessee.

But now it’s back. And it has a nifty NET ranking for history, no matter what unfolds in Indiana on Friday, when the Raiders took an early lead against the Razorbacks, or over the coming weeks.

“In what’s been a crazy year,” Langel said, “it will be a little bit of an asterisk star, a trivia question.”

• No. 7 seed Florida vs. No. 10 seed Virginia Tech, 12:15 p.m.

• No. 3 seed Arkansas vs. No. 14 seed Colgate, 12:45 p.m.

• No. 1 seed Illinois vs. No. 16 seed Drexel, 1:15 p.m.

• No. 6 seed Texas Tech vs. No. 11 seed Utah State, 1:45 p.m.

• No. 2 seed Ohio State vs. No. 15 seed Oral Roberts, 3 p.m.

• No. 1 seed Baylor vs. No. 16 seed Hartford, 3:30 p.m.

• No. 8 seed Loyola Chicago vs. No. 9 seed Georgia Tech, 4 p.m.

• No. 5 seed Tennessee vs. No. 12 seed Oregon State, 4:30 p.m.

• No. 4 seed Oklahoma State vs. No. 13 seed Liberty, 6:25 p.m.

• No. 8 seed North Carolina vs. No. 9 seed Wisconsin, 7:10 p.m.

• No. 2 seed Houston vs. No. 15 seed Cleveland State, 7:15 p.m.

• No. 4 seed Purdue vs. No. 13 seed North Texas, 7:25 p.m.

• No. 7 seed Clemson vs. No. 10 seed Rutgers, 9:20 p.m.

• No. 6 seed San Diego State vs. No. 11 seed Syracuse, 9:40 p.m.

• No. 3 seed West Virginia vs. No. 14 seed Morehead State, 9:50 p.m.

• No. 5 seed Villanova vs. No. 12 seed Winthrop, 9:57 p.m.