Sullivan: Thursday’s upsets make list of best NCAA games in Buffalo

Watching St. Peter’s stun Kentucky in overtime as a 15th seed Thursday night, I was transported back to a thrilling St. Patrick’s Day in Buffalo exactly 22 years earlier, when Seton Hall beat Oregon in OT in the first NCAA Tournament game ever played in the city.

Shaheen Holloway scored the winning basket in the final seconds that day in 2000. And it was the same Shaheen Holloway who was the head coach for St. Peter’s in the biggest upset of the opening day of this year’s tourney, leading the Peacocks to their first-ever victory in the Big Dance. 

There was a pleasing symmetry to that St. Peter’s victory, the first by a MAAC school seeded below 13th in the NCAA Tournament. One of the best things about sports is that they provide us with memories. For a basketball lover, there’s nothing quite like the NCAA Tournament, which gives us three weeks of highlights and surprises to fill up the memory banks of sports fans.

I’ve seen a lot of games in my time. In my first year as a fan in Newport, Rhode Island, I lived and died with the 1965 Providence team that went all the way to the East Region final, where they lost by 40 to a Princeton team led by Bill Bradley. 

There were only 23 teams in the tournament field back then. Imagine that. Now we have 68, including ‘First Four’ games. I remember in my early days in Buffalo, writing in the 1990s about how we were a neglected basketball outpost and deserved to be a host in an NCAA subregional. 

Buffalo finally got the tournament in 2000. It was held on Friday, on St. Patrick’s Day, on the day they officially changed the name of the downtown arena to HSBC Arena. This week, we’re hosting a subregional for a seventh time in what is now KeyBank Center.

The games in Buffalo have given us a lot of fond memories. There have now been 40 NCAA tourney games played in the arena since the event came to town in 2000. In 12 of them, the lower seed has won. There have been four overtime games. Twice, we launched Connecticut on its way to a national championship — once after surviving an overtime in its first game. 

On Thursday, a team seeded 12th or lower finally won a game in Buffalo — and it happened in back-to-back games. Richmond knocked off Iowa in the second game of the day and New Mexico State toppled UConn in the first game of the evening session. No national title for UConn this time. 

So, there have been a lot of thrills in downtown Buffalo over the years, and who knows what’s in store in Saturday’s second-round games. But as they say, you never forget your first time. For me, the first Buffalo subregional in 2000 was unforgettable, the reporting assignment of a lifetime.

That 2000 season was also the one in which St. Bonaventure got back to the Big Dance for the first time since 1978, led by a tough little point guard from LaSalle High named Tim Winn. 

The Bonnies were placed in Cleveland as a 12 seed against Kentucky. It was close enough to drive. The Cleveland games were on Thursday and Saturday, the Buffalo games on Friday-Sunday. For the only time in my career, I was able to cover four NCAA tourney games over four days — two in Buffalo and two in Cleveland at the CSU Convention Center.

So, my top memory from the seven years in which Buffalo hosted a subregional took place in Ohio, where Bona lost to Kentucky in double overtime, 85-80. That was the game in David Messiah Capers made three free throws with 0.4 seconds left to force the second OT, and when Jim Baron didn’t have his team foul Tayshaun Prince before a game-tying three late in regulation.

That was the second-best college game I ever covered, behind the famous Christian Laettner game in the 1992 regional final. But it was only one part of a memorable four-day run of college hoops in Western New York.

Here are my 10 favorite games from the Buffalo subregionals, in chronological order. Chances are, I’ll have to update it after Saturday’s action:

1-2. Shaheen and Shine, 2000

I decided to combine the first two. In the very first Buffalo tournament game, Holloway drove the length of the floor and tossed in a shot high off the glass to give Seton Hall a 71-70 overtime win over Oregon. 

Tommy Amaker, the Pirates’ head coach, called a timeout with 8.7 seconds left to draw up a play with his team down a point. The play was known as “Quick,” and called for Holloway to drive and kick to a teammate for a jump shot.

“There was no way I was giving that ball up,” Holloway said later. “I was going to take the shot to win or lose the game.”

Holloway, whose Peacocks were similarly fearless against Kentucky on Thursday, scored 27 points. He hurt his wrist by falling on a camera, but returned and played 42 minutes. He wasn’t so lucky on Saturday. He hurt his ankle eight minutes into the second-round game against No. 2 seed Temple and had to be carried off the court. 

Enter Ty Shine, an obscure point guard who hit the game-winning shot in overtime as the Hall upset Temple, 67-65. Shine scored 26 points, seven over his previous career high. He made 7 of 11 three-pointers against John Chaney’s vaunted zone defense and had five assists and only two turnovers.

Shine performed his heroics in front of nine extended family members from Buffalo and Niagara Falls, most of whom had never seen him play. I had no idea at the time, but among them was Willie Shine, who lived around the corner from me in North Buffalo.

Willie told me that Ty’s grandfather, Henry, had been a point guard in Alabama. Henry had 13 kids, including three sets of twins. Ty’s mother was a twin. Ty was her only child, so he was Henry’s pride and joy. 

I’ll never forget Willie telling Ty after I interviewed the family below the stands after the game, “Ty, one last thing. You look just like your grandfather.”

3. Say Good Knight, 2000

The final game of the first day in Buffalo was also Bobby Knight’s final game as coach at Indiana. Pepperdine, the 11th seed, smoked the Hoosiers, 77-57, capping a rough week in which Knight was accused of choking a former player, Neil Reed, three years earlier.

Knight wouldn’t address the issue in his pre-tourney presser, defending his program in a 20-minute opening monologue. His team was less than inspired, falling behind 24-8 in the first 10 minutes and never seriously threatening the Waves thereafter. 

In a roundabout way, that game contributed to the worst hoop scandal in Western New York history. Jan van Breda Kolff was the Pepperdine coach that night and was hired by St. Bonaventure a year later. We all know how that turned out.

4. Down Goes Duke, 2007 

A few years before making a Final Four run in 2011, Virginia Commonwealth won the hearts of Buffalo hoop fans by upsetting Duke, 79-77, on a jump shot by Eric Maynor with 1.8 seconds to play. 

It was the first time Duke lost its first NCAA game since 1996 and snapped a streak of nine straight Sweet 16 appearances, the second-longest in history, for Mike Krzyzewski’s team. 

Maynor had 22 points and eight assists for VCU, an 11 seed. The leading scorer for Duke that day was Greg Paulus, who scored a career-high 25 points, along with five rebounds, four assists and three steals. Paulus, of course, would go on to become the head coach at Niagara. 

5. Pitt Survives VCU Scare, 2007

Pittsburgh ended VCU’s Cinderella run two days later, winning in overtime, 84-79. Levance Fields, a sophomore, missed two free throws at the end of regulation with the score tied. But Fields had a key three-pointer and assist in overtime as the Panthers won on St. Patrick’s Day.

“Yeah, I knew the whole country was watching,” Fields said. “But I didn’t think we had lost the game. We still had overtime.”

At the time, Pitt was a perennial tourney presence under Jamie Dixon, but was considered the best program never to reach the Final Four. The Panthers still haven’t gone that far and haven’t been in the NCAAs since 2016.

6. Syracuse Pulls an 0-Fer, 2014 

Syracuse was a No. 2 seed with Final Four aspirations, but there was a lot of concern about its dubious shooting entering the tournament. You could see why when their offense failed to show up in a dreadful, 55-53, loss to Dayton in their second game. 

Dayton held the Orange without a three-pointer, which would be unthinkable nowadays. They went 0-for-10. Syracuse had four points in the first 9:09. Jerami Grant, who became a fine NBA player, shot 2-for-3 and had four points. They finished with four assists. I called it a “breath of fresh airballs.”

“It’s very hard to win making layups, if that’s all you’re making against a good defensive team,” said head coach Boeheim.

7. From OT to the title, 2014 

Connecticut, a No. 7 seed, needed overtime to beat St. Joseph’s, 89-81, in the last game of the opening night. Shabazz Napier, who made a couple of bad mistakes late in regulation, scored nine of his 25 points in OT.

The Huskies were down, 70-67, with 49 seconds left in regulation. But Amida Brimah, a 7-foot freshman, retrieved Napier’s miss and made a conventional three-point play to tie it. St. Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli played all five starters more than 40 minutes. The Hawks ran out of gas in the extra session.

UConn was just getting started. The Huskies upset No. 2 Villanova in the next round (that game missed the cut) and went all the way to the national title game, where they beat Kentucky for the title. Warde Manuel, the former Buffalo athletic director, was the UConn AD at the time. 

8. Nova’s Descending Champs, 2017

Only one No. 1 seed has gone down in Buffalo. It was defending national champion Villanova, which lost to Wisconsin, 65-62, in a thrilling second-rounder at First Niagara Center (I have trouble keeping track of the Arena names). 

That was a tough draw for ‘Nova. Wisconsin reached its fourth straight Sweet 16. It was their 13th NCAA tourney win in that stretch, which included wins over three No. 1 seeds and two 2’s. Nigel Hayes, who hit the game-winning shot, was playing in his 16th NCAA tourney game and had more points in the Dance than any other active player at that point. 

But Villanova was loaded. They had five guys on the roster who are currently in the NBA: Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, Mikal Bridges, Jalen Brunson and Eric Paschall.

9-10. Beware The No.12 Seeds, 2022

The 12-5 games have provided an inordinate share of upsets over the years. There’s something about that line in the brackets. It’s often where secondary teams from major conferences collide with underestimated and dangerous teams from the mid-majors.

The trend doubled down in KeyBank Center on Thursday. Richmond beat Iowa as a 12, 67-63, as 5-9 senior point guard Jacob Gilyard, the national leader in steals, scored 24 points and played all 40 minutes for the seventh time in a row for the Spiders. 

Richmond became the first school to pull an upset three times in the tournament as a 12th seed. They did it in 2011, the last time they made the field. Oh, and they went on to the Sweet 16 that season. The Spiders also pulled historic upsets in 1991 (as a 15 against Syracuse) and in 1998, when John Beilein led them over South Carolina as a No. 14. 

Later in the day, New Mexico State upset UConn, 70-63, as redshirt junior Teddy Allen scored 37 points, including the Aggies’ final 15. Allen was in a zone. With the Aggies leading, 63-60, he made a steal, drove all the way for a basket, and began flexing in front of the delirious NM State crowd.

“Buckets” Allen is playing in his fifth college program. That’s amazing, even in an era where college players change schools at the drop of a hat.

New Mexico State, the WAC regular-season and tourney champ, had not won in the NCAAs since beating Nebraska in the first round at the Carrier Dome in 1993. Still, this wasn’t a great surprise. The WAC has pulled off some big upsets recently: Abilene Christian stunned Ohio State at a 15 seed last year, and Stephen F. Austin beat West Virginia as a 14 in 2016.

Saturday’s games in Buffalo

4-Providence vs. 12-Richmond, 6:10 p.m.

4-Arkansas vs. 12-New Mexico State, 8:40 p.m.