Thanks to Hasheem Thabeet, the top-seeded Huskies weren’t in trouble for long.
Thabeet scored 15 points, had 15 rebounds and blocked four shots, and Connecticut overcame a sluggish first half to defeat Purdue 72-60 in a NCAA West Regional semifinal on Thursday.
It was Thabeet’s 18th double-double of the season, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for the Huskies. UConn (30-4) advanced to a regional final for the fourth time since 2002.
Coach Jim Calhoun and the Huskies had won their first two tournament games by an average of 41 points, but they struggled to score against the defensive-oriented Boilermakers.
UConn jumped to an early 11-point lead, then went cold and let fifth-seeded Purdue (27-10) claw back into the game.
Leading 30-25 at halftime, the Huskies turned to the 7-3 Thabeet in the second half. He scored UConn’s first eight points of the second half, then blocked a shot to set up a fastbreak layup by A.J. Price, who scored 10 of his 15 points after halftime.
That play was part of an 8-0 run that gave the Huskies a 42-31 cushion with 13:37 to play.
“Hasheem just took the game over,” Calhoun said. “Purdue, quite frankly, ran into one of the best players in America in Hasheem Thabeet. Beyond that, the game might have been different if we had just, quote, a regular center.”
But the Boilermakers wouldn’t go away. They answered with a 7-0 burst and soon had pulled within four.
Thabeet dunked to push the lead back to 57-45 with 6:28 to play, and that was pretty much it for Purdue.
“They know I’m capable of doing a lot of stuff,” said Thabeet, a junior from Tanzania. “Today, the second half, they told me to go back there and do what you do all season long.”
Craig Austrie added 17 points for the Huskies, who will play Missouri (31-6) on Saturday for a berth in the Final Four.
Robbie Hummel had 17 points to lead Purdue, which was outrebounded 48-33.
“You’ve got to shoot the basketball at a very high percentage if you’re going to beat them, if you get outrebounded by 15,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “It is very difficult to keep those guys off the glass. They have a great team, and you’ve just got to tip your hat to them.”
EAST REGIONAL
No. 1 Pittsburgh 60, No. 4 Xavier 55
BOSTON - Levance Fields gave Pittsburgh the lead with a 3-pointer with 50.9 seconds left, then scored off a steal as the Panthers advanced to a regional final for the first time in 35 years with a win over Xavier.
Top-seeded Pitt (31-4) trailed 54-52 before Fields made the go-ahead shot. He followed that by poking the ball away from B.J. Raymond and going in for a layup with 23.9 seconds to go.
Sam Young led the Panthers with 19 points, Fields had 14, and DeJuan Blair had 10 points and 17 rebounds.
The last time Pitt was in a regional final was in 1974 when it lost to eventual national champion North Carolina State.
“It definitely was big for the players, the coaches and the city,” Young said. “It’s something we’ve been waiting for, for a long time.”
The fourth-seeded Musketeers (27-8) were led by Raymond with 15 points and Derrick Brown with 14.
Trailing 37-29 at halftime, Pitt scored the first nine points of the second half - and Xavier missed its first 10 shots - as the Panthers took a 38-37 lead with 14:33 left.
“We’re a confident group,” Fields said. “We haven’t played our best basketball, but the good thing is we’ve found a way to make plays when we’ve needed them.”
No. 3 Villanova 77, No. 2 Duke 54
BOSTON - Dante Cunningham had 14 points and 11 rebounds as Villanova beat Duke for the first time in more than 50 years by taking advantage of the Blue Devils’ poor shooting.
The Wildcats (29-7) will play Big East rival Pittsburgh (31-4), the top seed in the East, on Saturday for a trip to the Final Four.
Duke (30-7), which spent a week at No. 1 in the nation earlier this season, failed to reach the round of eight for the fifth consecutive year.
Kyle Singler scored 15 points and Jon Scheyer had 13 for the Blue Devils. But Scheyer and Gerald Henderson combined to make just four of 32 attempts as Duke shot a season-low 26.7 percent from the floor.
