VCU is going back to the NCAA Tournament. The Rams punched their ticket to March Madness by winning the Atlantic 10 Championship on Sunday, knocking off the Dayton Flyers 70-62 in Pittsburgh. Back-to-back A-10 titles. A 27-7 record. And a fan base that is absolutely losing its mind right now, and rightfully so. This wasn’t a fluke. This wasn’t a Cinderella moment handed to them. VCU went out and took it.
WASHINGTON (AP) Max Shulga scored 18 points and Joe Bamisile sealed the win with two free throws with a half-second left as Virginia Commonwealth held off George Mason 66-63 to win the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament championship Sunday.
VCU led by eight at the break, 36-28, but George Mason got back-to-back 3-pointers from Jared Billups and Woody Newton to trail by just two, 45-43 with more than 12 minutes to play. Shulga answered with a 3 and hit a pair of free throws before finding Jack Clark for a 3 to push the VCU lead to 53-43.
Darius Maddox hit a 3 with 2:27 left to get the Patriots within one at 59-58. Coming out of a timeout, Shulga held the ball at the top of the key, then calmly knocked down a step-back 3 with 1:59 left. Jalen Haynes' layup with 39 seconds left got George Mason within 3 but Zach Anderson missed a 3-pointer with :04 left and Newton was forced to foul Bamisile with a half-second left.
Bamisile and Jack Clark each scored 17 points for VCU (28-6). Shulga, the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, hit 8 of 9 from the line as the Rams converted 22 of 27.
Haynes led George Mason (26-8) with 17 points and eight rebounds. Maddox had 12 points to go with three steals and Anderson and Brayden O'Connor each added 10 points.
Virginia Commonwealth and George Mason finished the regular season tied for the regular season championship with 15-3 records. The Rams reached the conference championship game for the ninth time since joining the A-10 in 2012-13.
Duquesne earned an NCAA tournament bid for the first time in 47 years, beating fifth-seeded VCU 57-51 on Sunday to win the Atlantic 10 tournament championship.
The sixth-seeded Dukes (24-11) led by 14 at the half, but bringing home that long-awaited invite to March Madness was a struggle. Duquesne scored only 21 points and shot 5-for-29 from the field in the second half, but the small Catholic school in Pittsburgh will head into the NCAA tournament with an eight-game winning streak.
Coach Keith Dambrot, who coached LeBron James for two years in high school, and the Dukes matched a program record for victories set in 1953-54, when Dambrot's father, Sid, played for Duquesne.
The last time Duquesne won the A-10 and went to the NCAA tournament was in 1977, when future NBA All-Star Norm Nixon and the Dukes beat Villanova in the title game.
Joe Bamisile led fifth-seeded VCU (22-13), which was trying to repeat as A-10 tournament champs, with 20 points.
Jimmy Clark III dropped in two free throws with 21 seconds left to make it a five-point game for Duquesne and Fousseyni Drame hit two more moments later to put the Dukes up 55-48.
A long 3 from Zeb Jackson with 9.9 seconds left gave VCU a glimmer of hope. The Rams fouled Jakub Necas as the Dukes struggled to inbound the ball, but he missed both shots.
Clark made two more from the line with 1.9 seconds left and finally Duquesne fans could celebrate at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Dae Dae Grant led the Dukes with 10 points, all in the first half, and was named the tournament's most outstanding player.
The Dukes were up 15 early in the second half and the ball was in play when the game had to be stopped because some Duquesne confetti colored red, white and blue -- intended for the postgame celebration -- fell from a section of the rafters. Most of it landed on press row courtside -- CBS play-by-play man Kevin Harlan had to pull some off himself and partner Dan Bonner -- with a bit making it onto the side of the court. The game was delayed about three minutes for cleanup.
Maybe the premature celebration for Duquesne tempted fate, because the Dukes went more than five minutes after the streamers fell without scoring. Duquesne started the second half 1-for-15 from the field
Bamisile made a pull-up jumper off a fast break with 6:49 remaining to cut the Dukes' lead to 42-39.
Duquesne finally found some offense to hold off the Rams, and Necas made a 3 from the wing with 4:35 left to push the lead to 49-41.
Jackson hit a 3-pointer for the Rams with 2:12 remaining to cut Duquesne's lead to 49-46 and after a forcing a turnover, Bamisile made two free throws to cut it to one with 1:34 left.
NEW YORK (AP) — Jalen DeLoach had 13 points and 10 rebounds, and top-seeded VCU beat second-seeded Dayton 68-56 on Sunday to win the Atlantic 10 Tournament for the first time in eight years.
Ace Baldwin added 16 points and seven assists, sending the Rams (27-7) to the NCAA Tournament with a nine-game winning streak and a title that has often alluded them during an otherwise impressive run of consistency.
VCU had played in the A-10 final six times from 2013-21, winning just once in 2015 when it beat Dayton.
DaRon Holmes II tried to carry the Flyers (22-12) to their first A-10 title since 2003 and first NCAA bid in six years. Holmes had 28 points and 16 rebounds, but didn't get enough help in the second half. The 6-foot-10 sophomore was named the tournament's most outstanding player, averaging 22 points in three games at Barclays Center.
The Rams and Flyers split two regular-season games, decided by a total of three points. The rubber match was more of the same.
The Flyers bolted to a 10-point lead early in the second half, but Baldwin tied it at 47 with a 3 with 11:50 left in the second half and the Rams slowly edged away from there.
VCU converted three straight second-chance opportunities into seven points in the final 3 1/2 minutes, with DeLoach's work on the offensive glass spurring the effort. Brandon Johns muscled in a layup that gave the Rams a 65-56 lead with 1:57 left.
A day after Dayton's Toumani Camara went 12 for 13 from the floor in the semifinals against Fordham, he got into foul trouble and went scoreless in the first half against VCU. He fouled out with six points and six rebounds.
The 6-9 Mustapha Amzil stepped up to pair with Holmes to wear out the Rams inside. The two bigs combined to shoot 10 for 14 from the floor and score 29 points as Dayton took a 36-30 lead at halftime.
BIG PICTURE
The Atlantic 10 is all but certain to be a one-bid league in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005.
Typically one of the strongest mid-major conferences, the A-10 put six teams in the NCAA field in 2014 to cap a run of three years in which it had a total of 15 bids.
Dayton was 28-2 and on its way to being one of the top seeds in the 2020 NCAA Tournament before March Madness was cancelled by the pandemic.
But the conference has slipped over the past couple of seasons, putting only two teams in the NCAAs the last two seasons. And last season the A-10 needed a championship game upset by Richmond over Davidson to get that second team in via its automatic bid.
UP NEXT
Dayton: The Flyers haven't been in the NCAA Tournament since a run of four straight appearances from 2014-17. They'll hope for an NIT bid.
VCU: The Rams are back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021 and 10th time since 2011.
WASHINGTON -- — Jacob Gilyard scored 26 points, Tyler Burton had 16 points and 12 rebounds and No. 6 seed Richmond beat top-seeded Davidson 64-62 on Sunday to clinch the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament and an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time in 11 years.
Richmond (23-12) was playing in the A-10 championship game — needing two 15-point comebacks in the early rounds — for the first time since winning in 2011. The Spiders are making their 10th trip to the NCAAs, the first since making the Sweet 16 in that 2011 season.
With Davidson's 27-6 record and resume, Richmond's win likely knocked out a bubble team.
The Spiders lost a home game to Davidson 87-84 on Jan. 14 when Michael Jones hit a game-winning 3-pointer with three seconds remaining. Jones had another chance to win this game, getting an inbounds pass with 1.7 seconds left, but his contested 3-pointer from the corner didn't hit the rim as time expired.
Richmond went six-plus minutes without a field goal down the stretch until Burton completed three-point plays on back-to-back possession to get the Spiders within 62-60. Davidson dribbled down the clock and missed a 3-pointer and Burton missed a baseline jumper at the other end but his airball went off a Davidson player.
After a timeout, Matt Grace powered into the lane and completed another three-point play — his first points of the game — to give Richmond a 63-62 lead with 19.1 seconds left. Foster Loyer had a good look at a 3-pointer at the other end but it rolled out and Gilyard, an 85.7% free-throw shooter, was fouled before making 1 of 2 free throws at 2.9.
Davidson called a timeout at 2.5 and Richmond called another after seeing how the Wildcats set up. Davidson made a half-court pass and called another timeout with 1.7 left, but Jones' shot was off.
Gilyard was 9 of 18 from the field, including a long jumper early in the second half to reach 2,000 career points, becoming just the fifth player in program history to do so.
Sam Mennenga scored 18 points and Jones finished with 17 for Davidson. Luka Brajkovic, the A-10 player of the year, had 13 points and 11 rebounds.
Mennenga made his fourth straight 3-pointer to give Davidson a 49-42 lead with 10:03 remaining but the Wildcats didn't make their next field goal until Brajkovic at 4:45. Richmond tied it on three different occasions during Davidson's field-goal drought but couldn't take the lead until the closing seconds.
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The St. Bonaventure University men's basketball team will return to the NCAA Tournament.
Hours after winning the Atlantic 10 tournament championship, the Bonnies learned their tournament opponent. The Bonnies are a nine seed in the 68-team NCAA Tournament and are scheduled to open Saturday against No. 8 LSU.
The Bonnies are in the East region, and the winner of the Bona-LSU game will advance to a second-round game Monday, and will face either No. 1 Michigan or the winner of the Mount St. Mary's-Texas Southern First Four game.
Tournament times and locations are to be determined. Tournament sites in Indiana are Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Hinkle Fieldhouse and Indiana Farmers Coliseum in Indianapolis; Mackey Arena in West Lafayette and Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
The Bonnies secured their spot in the NCAA Tournament by winning the Atlantic 10 tournament title Sunday in Dayton with a 74-65 win against VCU.
Kyle Lofton led St. Bonaventure (16-4) with 23 points against the Rams, while Osun Osunniyi had 14 points and 12 rebounds in the Atlantic 10 championship.
"This trip has been amazing," Lofton said. "As soon as we ran out on the court, you could hear, 'Let's go Bona,' and it gave me flashbacks to us being at the Reilly Center. But going to Indianapolis and the NCAA Tournament, it's like a dream come true. Since we were kids, we've been working for that and finally, we can live the dream."
Osunniyi was named the tournament's most outstanding player, while Lofton and teammate Jalen Adaway were named to the Atlantic 10 all-tournament team.
"They endured a lot of things this year and were able to come through," Bona coach Mark Schmidt said. "It's difficult to beat a No. 1 seed going into the tournament, but our guys played like the No. 1 seed."
The Bonnies earned the Atlantic 10's automatic bid, and the NCAA Tournament begins Thursday with the First Four. Schmidt said Bona will leave Dayton tonight for Indiana and the NCAA Tournament and will quarantine through tomorrow in preparation for LSU (18-9) and the tournament.
“We start watching tape tomorrow morning,” Schmidt said. “ We take off (Monday) because of quarantine and we’ll introduce (LSU) Wednesday ,and we’ll keep our same schedule that we’d have during the year, the same schedule we had this week.
“We have plenty of time, and LSU has plenty of time to scout us.”
The Bonnies have qualified for the NCAA Tournament eight times in program history, and on Sunday won their first Atlantic 10 tournament title since 2012.
Bona returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018, when it defeated UCLA in a First Four game in Dayton, Ohio. Bona’s win against UCLA was the first NCAA Tournament win for the program since 1970.
Schmidt, however, called the title bittersweet, following the death of Bona president Dr. Dennis DePerro, who died March 1 of Covid-19 complications.
Schmidt said the Bonnies will give a piece of the net from the Atlantic 10 championship to the DePerro family.
"We weren't leaving Dayton without a championship," Osunniyi said.
