Worcester, Mass. ? Retirement will have to wait at least two more days for Vermont coach Tom Brennan. And he couldn’t be happier to still be working.
The 13th-seeded Catamounts thrilled the Green Mountain state Friday night, pulling off a most stunning upset of Syracuse. They beat the Big East champion 60-57 in overtime in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
It was Vermont’s first tournament victory in three tries and its first victory over a ranked team. Next up for the Catamounts (25-6) is fifth-seeded Michigan State, another recent NCAA champion, in the second round of the Austin Regional on Sunday.
Germain Mopa Njila and T.J. Sorrentine provided the final drama by hitting consecutive 3-pointers in a 48-second span to give the Cats a 59-55 lead with just under a minute remaining in the extra period.
Sorrentine hit the eventual game-winner after waiting for the shot clock to wind down, and he did it against orders. Coach Tom Brennan wanted him to drive instead.
“T.J. said, ‘I’m gonna do what I want to do.’ God bless you, son. You brought us here,” Brennan said. “I didn’t bring us here. Those guys brought us here.”
When Sorrentine’s shot from well beyond the top of the key swished through the net, Brennan had to grasp his chest.
“When that went in, I thought I might burst,” said the wildly popular Brennan, whose 19th season with Vermont is turning out to be his best. “I thought you might find me in pieces around the arena because there’s no drug, nothing in the world that is that feeling. There’s nothing that can make you feel like that except competition and going through a lot with your guys, especially ones you love.”
And there is a lot of love among these Cats, who three years ago were unknown, even after winning the first of their three straight America East titles.
“It’s crazy,” sophomore center Martin Klimes said. “Everyone is just really excited, jumping around. We have great team unity. That we can share it with each other is just amazing.”
Fourth-seeded Syracuse (27-7), the 2003 national champion, had its hopes for a second trip to the Final Four in three years shattered amidst the raucous cheers of the Vermont faithful, who made the DCU Center feel like cozy Patrick Gym back on campus.
“We just didn’t get the breaks. We couldn’t get a stop,” said a distraught Gerry McNamara, who was 1-for-7 on 3-pointers and finished with just 11 points, a far cry from the 43 he scored in a win over BYU in the first round last year. “We played good defense. They just hit tough shots.”
When McNamara missed a desperation 3 from the top of the key in the final second, the Cats swarmed together and hugged in celebration, jumping up and down as Brennan raised his right arm in a triumphant salute.
“People are going to say we shocked the world, but to this group of guys, we knew we had a shot to win this game,” reserve Alex Jensen said. “Everybody was sending Syracuse to the Final Four, but we knew we could win this game if we played the way we did.”
Mopa Njila, who was averaging 5.5 points a game, went 9-for-10 from the floor and finished with a career-high 20 points, Sorrentine had 17, and Taylor Coppenrath 16 for Vermont.
“It’s going to keep getting better and better,” Klimes said. “We did the first step. We’re going to get some rest right now and prepare for the next game. It’s not over.”
It’s not over for defending national champion Connecticut, either. The Huskies withstood a late charge by Central Florida, getting 22 points from Charlie Villanueva to win 77-71 and keep their hopes of a repeat alive.
Central Florida (24-9) cut a 19-point lead to four thanks to Gary Johnson’s career-high 29 points. But UConn (23-7) held on for its 13th consecutive first-round victory and will face 10th-seeded North Carolina State on Sunday.
“Some of them have been awful. Some of them have been great. This one was OK at best,” coach Jim Calhoun said. “We played some brilliant basketball, took our foot off the pedal and couldn’t find it again. … From that point on, we didn’t play with the kind of enthusiasm this event deserves.
“But we’ll be one of the 32, and that’s the whole idea.”
So, too, will the Spartans (23-6), who managed to avoid a second consecutive first-round exit by holding off Old Dominion 89-81.
The fifth-seeded Spartans couldn’t pull away until the final minutes, when Shannon Brown made a spinning layup to start a three-point play.
“I was disappointed in the first half, at the energy they brought,” Tom Izzo said after his 20th tournament victory. “I’m not used to teams playing harder than us, and I thought they did.”
Julius Hodge carried the Wolfpack into the second round, finishing with 19 points, nine assists and seven rebounds in leading North Carolina State to a comeback 75-63 victory over Charlotte.
Hodge was determined not to repeat his performance of a year ago, when he fouled out of a second-round loss to Vanderbilt and left the court in tears.
“Last year’s in the past. I just told the guys that, ‘This is it, we have to step it up,'” Hodge said. “We know we have to play through deficits.”
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