Written by Adrian Beecher The first round of the American Athletic Conference tournament was an eventful one with 2 close games and 1 blowout. Here is the breakdown of Thursdays 1st round. Game 1 UCF vs ECU In the first game of the Day the 9 seeded UCF Knights and 8 seeded ECU pirates faced each other and as the game started it looked as if the Pirates would run away with the game as they jumped out to an 30-15 lead with just 6 to play. The Knights showed their resilience coming back and tying the game with just 4 seconds to play forcing overtime. However, the Pirates would get the best of the Knights as a last second shot didn’t fall for UCF and ECU won the game 81-80 to move onto the second round where they will face the 1 seeded SMU Mustangs at noon on Friday. Game 2 Houston vs Tulane In the second game we saw another nail biter with the 10 seeded Houston Cougars going up against the 7 seeded Tulane Green Wave. A tight first half saw the Cougars clinging onto just a 3-point lead of 28-25. Houston’s Jherrod Stiggers had an explosive first half with 14 points to lead the team and he added 3 first half rebounds. Houston did not relinquish the lead in the second half and they jumped out to a 12-point lead with just under 8 minutes to play. The Green Wave were only able to close the gap to four making it 64-60 with just 21 seconds to play. Tulane would then miss a free-throw, a 3-point shot and a layup before Houston scored the final 2 buckets at the free throw line for a 66-60 win. The Cougars advance to face 2 seeded Tulsa in the 6th game on Friday at 7pm on ESPNU. Game 3 UCONN vs USF This one got out of hand quickly as the Huskies had a definitive home court advantage and out played the Bulls from the tip. The Huskies jumped out to a 8-0 lead before USF was able to get their first basket with 13:43 left in the 1st period. With 5:24 left to play in the 1st period, UCONN had extended their lead to 20 points, 25-5. USF then put together a 9-4 run before the half with the score 29-14. In the second half, the closest the Bulls would get was 13 points, which came with 9:33 left to play in regulation. The Huskies closed out the Bulls by a 26-point margin, winning 69-43 to advance to the second round of the American Athletic Conference tournament. UCONN will face 3-seeded Cincinnati on Friday night in game 7 at 9pm on ESPNU. Written by Adrian Beecher Hartford, CT- B.J. Taylor’s 22 points were not enough as the UCF Knights fell to the ECU Pirates in the 1st round of the American Athletic Conference Tournament 81-80 on Thursday in overtime. The Knights trailed by as many as 17 points but they turned the game into a battle that wasn’t decided until the final buzzer. As the game got underway, the Knights were able to jump out to an early 7-2 lead just 4 minutes into the game. But ECU fought back quickly an cut the Knights lead with a 9-0 run making it 11-7 with 12:49 left in the 1st period. The Pirates continued to put the pressure on UCF going on a 19-4 run to give the Pirates a 30-13 lead with just 5:59 to play in the 1st. It looked as if the Pirates were going to run away with this one, but the Knights couldn’t be turned away so soon. B.J. Taylor scored 5 of his 8 first half points in the final 6 minutes as the Knights charged on to a 15-6 run to end the 1st half. This made it 38-30 as the teams went into the locker room. Marshall Guilmette led the way for ECU in the first half with 11 points and 6 rebounds. “I thought we played unselfishly, we were able to put in some shots against that zone which is what we struggled with the previous times we’ve played them.” said UCF Head Coach Donnie Jones of his teams late run in the 1st half. “My biggest thing I was saying during the timeouts was to play hard, play with toughness, play unselfish and lets try to get this thing under 10 if we could and we got it to 8 coming into the half.” It was a back and forth 2nd half that saw the ECU lead slowly depleated with the Knights shooting 61.3% from the field. With 8:43 left to play in regulation, UCF had cut it to a 2-point lead, 60-58. But the Knights just couldn’t get the game to a tie until a layup by Kasey Wilson made it 76 all with just 4 seconds to play. A 3-point attempt by ECU’s Paris Campbell would be to no avail as the buzzer sounded and we headed to overtime. As the Overtime started, the Knights grabbed the first bucket and took their first lead since the 6:31 mark in the 1st half, as Justin McBride connected on a jumper to make it 78-76 UCF. After the Pirates pulled out to a 81-78 lead, UCF’s Kasey Wilson connected on 2 free throws and that made it a 1 point game with 3:05 left in the overtime period. Missed shots and free-throws by ECU left the door open for the Knights as they got one final chance, with possession of the ball trailing by 1 and only 8 seconds left on the clock. As the Knights passed the ball in, ECU switched their defense and forced Kasey Wilson to shoot and awkward jumper as time expired. Coach Jones spoke of the final seconds post game, “They switched everything off it, we got jammed up out front and we ended up having to take a tough shot at the end.” The Knights end the season 12-18 and will have to wait for next season for redemption. Senior Kasey Wilson ended his final game with the Knights with 11 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists in 37 minutes. Fellow Senior Myles Davis played 5 minutes in his final game as a Knight. ECU moves on to play against SMU, the 1 seed in this years American Athletic Conference Tournament. The Pirates and Mustangs will tipoff on Friday at noon on ESPN 2. AAC Tourney Communications HARTFORD, Conn. – SMU guard Nic Moore, who led the Mustangs to their first regular-season conference championship since 1993, has been chosen as the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year by the league’s 11 head coaches. The announcement was made Thursday by Commissioner Mike Aresco.
UConn guard/forward Daniel Hamilton was chosen by the coaches as The American’s Rookie of the Year, while Temple head coach Fran Dunphy was tabbed as the conference’s Coach of the Year. UConn guard Pat Lenehan accepted the league’s Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year award after he was chosen by the league’s Academic Affairs Committee.
Moore, a junior from Winona Lake, Indiana, was named as a unanimous all-conference selection Tuesday and adds The American’s Player of the Year honors to his impressive list of accomplishments. He enters the postseason ranked fourth in the conference in scoring (14.4 points per game), second in assists (5.3 apg) and eighth in steals (1.4 spg). He is the conference leader in both 3-point shooting (.429) and free throw shooting (.875).
Moore, who was a Wooden Award and Naismith Trophy top-50 watch list selection, has averaged 12.6 points and 4.6 assists per game in his career. Beyond his individual statistics, Moore has led SMU, which is ranked No. 20 in the week’s Associated Press poll, to the outright regular-season conference championship in 2015 and the most conference wins in a two-year span (27) in school history.
Hamilton was chosen as The American’s top newcomer after he averaged 10.8 points, 7.6 rebounds and 3.6 assists in the regular season for the Huskies, emerging as one of the conference’s most versatile players. The Preseason American Rookie of the Year lived up to his billing by starting all 30 games and leading the team in rebounding while ranking second in scoring. He enters the postseason ranked second in The American in rebounding and ninth in assists, finishing the regular season as the only player in the conference’s top 10 in both categories.
Dunphy was chosen by his counterparts as The American Coach of the Year after he engineered a remarkable turnaround for the Owls, who finished 22-9 overall and 13-5 in conference play. Temple, which was 9-22 last season, scored a signature win against then-No. 10 Kansas and surpassed the 20-win mark for the seventh time in nine seasons. He enters postseason play with 499 career wins on a ledger that includes 13 conference championships.
Lenehan, a guard from Cheshire, Connecticut, earned a scholarship this season after spending two years as a walk-on. He was chosen as the Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year after he was named a UConn Babbidge Scholar, a University Scholar, the recipient of the Drotch Scholarship in Biology and the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. Lenehan, who holds a 4.0 cumulative grade-point average as a molecular and cell biology major, has been accepted to a number of prestigious medical schools, including those at Harvard, Columbia, Duke and Johns Hopkins.
Complete coverage of the 2015 American Athletic Conference Championship will be available on the conference’s Championship Central page at www.TheAmerican.org/mbb.
2015 American Athletic Conference Player of the Year Nic Moore, G, SMU 2015 American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year Daniel Hamilton, G/F, UConn
2015 American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Fran Dunphy, Temple
2015 American Athletic Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year Pat Lenehan, G, UConn
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