No. 11 Xavier shocks No. 2 Arizona to reach Elite 8

SAN JOSE — Arizona’s soul-crushing failures on the NCAA tournament’s second weekend continued late Thursday night. But so did a Xavier story that might be the best in all of college basketball.

The Musketeers, who lost starting point guard Edmond Sumner in January and slumped into the tournament as an 11 seed, are headed to the Elite Eight after a 73-71 upset of the No. 2 seed Wildcats at SAP Arena, scoring the game’s final nine points over the final 2 minutes, 37 seconds.

Xavier will play No. 1 seed Gonzaga at 6:09 p.m. (ET) Saturday for a trip to the Final Four, a place neither program has ever been.

“We weren’t perfect in the second half,” Xavier coach Chris Mack said. “But we were in the last three, four minutes of the game.”

BOX SCORE: Musketeers 72, Wildcats 71

Xavier got 25 points from Trevon Bluiett and 14 from J.P. Macura, who sliced up Arizona’s defense all game long, creating good looks for himself and his teammates. The Musketeers shot 53% for the game, getting an easy layup with 40 seconds left on a feed from Bluiett to big man Sean O’Mara rolling to the rim. That play completed the comeback for Xavier, which fell behind 69-61 with 3:44 left.

Though Arizona’s offense completely collapsed down the stretch, with five consecutive missed shots and a turnover, Wildcats coach Sean Miller pointed to the defense, which gave up open three-pointers to Bluiett and Malcolm Bernard (15 points, all in the second half) and a foul by freshman Lauri Markkanen going for a rebound, which put Xavier at the foul line to tie the game with 1:53 remaining.

“When you’re under the four-minute mark and you have teams fighting to stay alive, you have to jump, you have to run at them,” Miller said. “You have to close out with great effort. You have to make them miss. We didn’t do that, and they made the shots. And we weren’t able to get great looks down the stretch. We had both (offense and defense) going the wrong way, and that’s not on these guys. That’s on me.”

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Miller went to great lengths to take the blame for the loss, and there’s no doubt he will get criticized for Arizona’s approach to solving Xavier’s zone and failing to get a shot for Markkanen, who averaged 15.8 points this season, in the final 11 minutes. Combined with Miller’s three Elite Eight losses in the previous six seasons, two by razor-thin margins to Wisconsin, this will only ratchet up the angst about his failure to reach a Final Four.

But Arizona never got in a great rhythm on Thursday, and it was clear from midway through the first half that Xavier wasn’t satisfied to merely make the Sweet 16. Though it looked like the Wildcats might pull away thanks to shooting guard Allonzo Trier, who scored 15 consecutive points over a 10-minute stretch in the second half, his shot-making dried up at the worst possible time.

Then, after three consecutive misses and a wild drive into traffic, Arizona surprisingly attempted to get a look for big man Dusan Ristic, whose baseline leaner in tie game missed badly with 51 seconds left.

“When you get to this level of college basketball, your best players gotta be confident,” Miller said. “We have to get them shots no matter what defense they’re playing — 1-3-1, 2-3, man-to-man — and I don’t feel we did that tonight. And that’s probably the worst feeling you can have as a coach.”

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If there was any consolation for Miller, it's that he lost to Xavier, the program where he coached from 2004-09, and to a coach who used to be on his staff. This was Mack’s fourth Sweet 16 appearance in eight seasons, and he’s finally broken through to the Elite Eight with a team that figured to be one-and-done, having lost six out of seven (with the lone win coming against DePaul) heading into the Big East Tournament.

But Xavier’s growing confidence despite unusual circumstances has made it a dangerous team, and now a team that’s one win from the Final Four.

“For us to be able to go out and put together consecutive stops and come down and execute, it says a lot about how much our team’s grown,” Mack said. “I personally have so much love for Sean and his staff, and I know it’s heartbreaking for them because they had a special year. I know it’s tough. But today is a Xavier day.”

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