Nevada isn’t all Fazekas
NEW ORLEANS – Paying too much attention to Nick Fazekas is a gamble when trying to stop Nevada.
Marcelus Kemp, Ramon Sessions and Kyle Shiloh gave the Wolf Pack just enough balance to overcome a gritty performance from Creighton and lift Nevada to a 77-71 overtime victory in a first-round South Regional game Friday.
“I didn’t have any doubts at all that Marcelus and Shiloh and Ramon could take over, and that’s what they did,” Fazekas said. “It’s just good we got one under our belt now.”
With Fazekas off his game, Kemp capped a 27-point performance with nine points in overtime, sparing Nevada from another early exit in the NCAA tournament.
Nevada (29-4), bounced by Montana in last year’s opening round, needed Kemp to score nine points above his average to move into a second-round matchup against second-seeded Memphis (31-3) on Sunday.
Fazekas, the Western Athletic Conference’s player of the year, had his second-worst shooting performance of the season and fouled out with 3:06 left in overtime. The senior still finished with 17 points, but was 5 of 13 from the field and not his usual dominant self.
Sessions scored 16 and Shiloh 10 for the seventh-seeded Wolf Pack, who also outrebounded Creighton 48-31.
“On this team, we have a lot of different options and everybody plays well when other guys are out,” Kemp said. “I knew we could do it without Nick. He has confidence in us to go without him, and we did that.”
Nate Funk led Creighton with 23 points, but he began to lose his range late in the game and lost his handle on the ball as he missed a jumper in the final seconds of regulation that might have won it. Fellow seniors Nick Porter and Anthony Tolliver each added 15 for the Blue Jays (22-11) in what turned out to be their final appearance for a Creighton team that was playing in its second NCAA tournament in three years.
Creighton also struggled from long range, going 3 of 19 on 3-pointers. Dane Watts, who came in averaging 10.1 points, was 0 for 8 from long range and 1 for 12 overall.
“We took a couple of questionable shots and couldn’t get a rebound,” Creighton coach Dana Altman said. “We didn’t get the production from our bench this year that we have had in previous years. I’m not sure if that was the reason we couldn’t get a rebound the last 3 minutes of the game or not.”
Kemp finished with 12 rebounds. When Fazekas was in foul trouble in the second half and later left the game in overtime, JaVale McGee came on and asserted himself underneath. He had five rebounds in only 9 minutes of action.