CLEVELAND
- Sophomore Luke Hancock
drained a 3-pointer from the left
side with 21 seconds remaining, giving the George Mason men's basketball team
the lead for good as the eighth-seeded Patriots took down No. 9-seed Villanova,
61-57, on Friday afternoon at the Quicken Loans Arena.
The win advances Mason
(27-6) to the third round where it awaits the top overall seed in the field, Ohio State, and also matched the school single-season win total held by the 2006
Final Four team. Villanova concludes its season with a 21-12 record. Mason will take on the Buckeyes at 5:15 p.m. on Sunday, a game televised by CBS.
Hancock scored a team-high 18 points while junior Mike
Morrison posted his first double-double of the season with 11 rebounds and 10
points. Senior Isaiah Tate
matched Morrison's scoring total with 10 points,
while the Wildcats were led by 20 points from Corey Fisher.
The Patriots trailed by six with 3:28 remaining but mounted
a 8-0 run punctuated by Morrison's dunk at the 55-second mark to make the score
56-54 in favor of the Green and Gold. After Tate was whistled for a foul on
Fisher behind the arc, Fisher connected on all three attempts from the line to
make it 57-56 Wildcats with 31 seconds left.
On their next possession, the Patriots found Hancock who
drained the trey, and a missed jumper by Corey Stokes with 0:06 showing on the
clock resulted in a rebound by junior Ryan Pearson
, feeding the ball to Hancock
on the fast break who found Morrison for a highlight-reel dunk as time expired,
setting the final margin.
Mason trailed by as many as 10 points in the first half,
before cutting the gap to 35-29 at the half. The Wildcats connected on six
3-point attempts in the opening half and outrebounded Mason 20-14. That figure
was reversed to a 22-15 advantage for the Patriots in the second half, who held
VU to 29.2 percent field goal shooting in the second half.
The victory is the first for the Patriots over the Wildcats
in five tries, as well as the second-ever victory over a BIG EAST foe for
George Mason. The other, a 86-84 overtime win over Connecticut five years ago
which sent the Patriots to the Final Four.
