Baylor’s Makai Mason was seen limping during Thursday’s win over Syracuse, but the 6-foot-1 guard remains the Bears’ heart. He hit four 3-pointers and scored 22 points in the opening round.
Megan Gustafson scored 30 points with 16 rebounds and second-seeded Iowa narrowly avoided a monumental upset, holding off No. 15 Mercer 66-61 on Friday in Iowa City, Iowa, for its first NCAA Tournament win in four years.
Fairleigh Dickinson found a wonderful reason to celebrate near the end of an otherwise dreary 87-49 NCAA Tournament loss to top-seeded Gonzaga on Thursday.
Baylor (20-13) and Gonzaga (31-3) will play for a Sweet Sixteen berth Saturday at 4:10 p.m. PT (TBS) in Salt Lake City. The schools have never met in the NCAA Tournament, but the Bulldogs have won each of the four regular-season meetings – most recently in 2013, when GU won 94-87 in Spokane.
We took their temperature, over and over. We wondered if the Gonzaga Bulldogs had really kicked that bad case of influenza WCC that laid them low in Las Vegas.
Zach Norvell Jr. was Gonzaga’s microwave oven last year, galvanizing the Bulldogs in NCAA Tournament wins over UNC Greensboro and Ohio State with his clutch shot-making.
There was no Saint Mary’s hangover, no sweating out a 1-vs.-16-seed opener the way the Zags experienced in 2013 against Southern. There was top-seeded Gonzaga’s 87-49 runaway Thursday that broke the school record for largest margin of victory in an NCAA Tournament game, surpassing a 27-point rout of Valparaiso in Seattle in 2004.
