Hooping it up on a Thursday at Moda
High Point players surround Chase Johnston as he is interviewed on TNT after his late heroics helped the Panthers upset Wisconsin 83-82 Thursday at Moda Center
There was plenty to watch in Thursday’s opening round of the Portland Regional at Moda Center.
Four competitive games, two projected NBA lottery picks, two major upsets, one scintillating finish and a layup for the ages.
For this senior scribe, it was a 13 1/2-hour day that begin at 9 a.m., leaving home for the half-hour drive to Moda. Beginning with the opener of the four first-round games — High Point vs. Wisconsin — at 10:50 a.m. and ending with the final horn of the nightcap — Gonzaga vs. Kennesaw State — at 9:35 p.m., it was almost 11 hours of tournament basketball and, together with eight blaring pep bands, sensory overload.
At least I developed my saddle sores in the friendly confines of a seat in the second press row at midcourt, behind TBS announcers Brad Nessler and Wally Szczerbiak. I could see, hear and feel all the action, which was considerable.
Here is what I saw, and how I saw it:
Guard Nick Boyd, here launching a 3, scored a game-high 27 points but it wasn’t enough to continue Wisconsin’s season
HIGH POINT (12) 83, WISCONSIN (5) 82:
First of all, did anyone else not know where High Point is, even though the Panthers were in the NCAA Tournament a year ago? The school of 6,500 students is located in High Point, N.C., a city of 120,000 between Winston-Salem and Greensboro. High Point came to Portland as Big South Conference regular-season and tournament champions with a record of 30-4, a 14-game winning streak, a No. 12 seeding and a KenPom rating of No. 89.
Wisconsin — a Big Ten school with an enrollment of nearly 52,000 — arrived with a 24-10 mark, having beaten five of its last six ranked opponents. The Badgers’ KenPom rating was No. 22.
A starting forward for the Badgers is 6-10 sophomore forward Austin Rapp, an Australian who was WCC Freshman of the Year in 2024-25 for the University of Portland. NIL money and the Big Ten’s prestige brought him to Madison, and in last week’s conference tournament he drained six 3-pointers in the second half of an upset of second-ranked Michigan.
During Wednesday’s media session, Rapp said this: “I have family and friends here. I loved my time in Portland. To come back and play on the big stage, kind of represent them a little bit, have my family come to town, it’s pretty cool.”
Nice that he enjoyed his season on The Bluff, and that his parents were able to be on hand Thursday. As for “kind of representing” the Pilots “a little bit,” if I were a UP fan, I wouldn’t be cheering for him.
Rapp said he filled out a tournament bracket “for (family) bragging rights. Of course, I had us winning. Upset-wise.”
Rapp, who scored 12 points with four rebounds in 33 minutes Thursday, was right about an upset. He was wrong, however, about the upsettee. The Panthers wrecked his bracket with a flourish.
High Point coach Flynn Clayman’s family has an Oregon connection. His wife, the former Katie Gruys, played basketball and competed in track and field at UO. Katie, now an assistant coach on High Point’s women’s team, was in the front row at Moda Thursday with their son, 19-month-old Quinn.
“She came because she didn’t want to miss our first game,” Flynn said. “She is going to fly right after the game to Nashville to play Vanderbilt.”
Boy, was the trip worth it. Here is hoping Katie had smooth plane connections in getting to Nashville before the 6 p.m. CT Friday tipoff.
By the way, I loved how Flynn phrased it: “Our first game.” He had that right.
It didn’t start well for the Panthers, who came out firing bricks from 3-point range. They were 1 for 10 from beyond the arc in the game’s first 10 minutes and trailed 15-5. They had a terrible time defending Wisconsin guard John Blackwell, who had 20 points at the break.
But High Point cut the deficit to 34-33 at intermission and gradually got its act together from distance, finishing 15 for 40 on 3-point attempts. The Panthers allowed Blackwell only two points in the second half, though the Badgers’ other guard, Nick Boyd, went for 20 of his 27 points over the final 20 minutes.
Wisconsin led 70-62 with five minutes remaining, but High Point hit back-to-back 3s to cut the margin to 70-68, and the battle was on. The Badgers led 82-78 when Chase Johnston buried a 3 with 55 seconds left to make it 82-81.
Of course Johnston did. It was the 6-3 senior’s 67th basket of the season — all from 3-point territory. And then the darndest thing happened. It was still 82-81 when Boyd missed a driving layup with 16 seconds left. High Point’s 5-10 guard Rob Martin — the game’s first star with 23 points and 10 assists — found Johnston sneaking the other way. Johnston converted a breakaway layup for what would be the winning basket with 11 seconds on the clock. If was the fifth 2-point attempt of the season and the first make for Johnston, who wears No. 99, evidently for religious purposes (Jesus’ parable of the sheep).
In the post-game press conference, Johnston was asked facetiously if he thought about stopping at the 3-point line and shooting to keep his streak alive.
“I was like, I got to put this in the hoop and win the game,” said Johnston, now the NCAA’s career record-holder with 415 made 3s. “I wasn’t really thinking about whether it was a 2 or a 3.”
High Point had faced no ranked teams this season. There was a reason, and the coach thinks it is a bad one. None of the Goliaths of college basketball deemed them appropriate to play.
“It is obvious to me that something needs to be done about non-conference scheduling,” Clayman said. “High Point and (Mid American Conference champion) Miami of Ohio are 2-1 in Quad 1 games. We couldn’t get games. They couldn’t get games. We won 22 of our last 23 games and we didn’t move up one spot in the metrics. Not one.
“(Wisconsin) is a fantastic team that beat five top-10 teams. If we can get games like this on neutral courts and some home games, I think we would know who are really the best teams.”
The Dean of Portland Sports is now on BlueSky.
Hawaii’s Dre Bullock (4) dunks for two of his team-high 21 points, but the Rainbow Warriors fell 97-78 to Arkansas
ARKANSAS (4) 97, HAWAII (13) 78:
High Point will get an opportunity for another trophy win in Saturday’s second round against John Calipari’s Arkansas Razorbacks, who pulled out Thursday’s only one-sided victory at Moda.
Calipari, 67, is 906-283 in 35 seasons as a head coach with UMass, Memphis, Kentucky and Arkansas, sixth on the career victories list. But he has only one national championship, with Kentucky in 2012. In his second season in Fayetteville, he has the kind of team that has a chance to get him another.
Arkansas came in 26-8 after winning the SEC Tournament, led by freshman guards Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas. The 6-3 Acuff, who reminds of the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson, is projected to be a top-five draft pick. He entered averaging 22.9 points and 6.5 assists. The SEC Player of the Year and SEC Tournament MVP averaged a record 30.3 points in three tournament games.
Arkansas freshman Darius Acuff Jr. (5) scored 24 points with seven assists in the Razorbacks’ romp past Hawaii
Hawaii arrived with a 24-8 record and a Big West Tournament title. The Rainbow Warriors got off to a poor start to the season in a 60-59 loss to Oregon in Eugene in the opener, but have one of the most experienced teams in the country with seven seniors, four of them starters.
“Some of them have children,” Calipari noted. “They are older. They are more equipped to go through this stuff. There are things they have experienced that an 18-year-old has not experienced.”
On Wednesday, said Hawaii’s Dre Bullock: “Honestly, we are not scared of anybody. Anybody we play, we are going to play the same Hawaii basketball.”
That wasn’t good enough Thursday. Arkansas jumped to leads of 11-0, 20-4 and 26-7. Hawaii competed, though, drawing to within 46-36 late in the first half, but the Razorbacks closed on an 8-0 run to make it 54-36 at the break. The Rainbow Warriors had their moments but could never cut the deficit to single digits the rest of the way.
The Razorbacks came in shooting 3-pointers at a .389 clip, but they couldn’t make them Thursday, hitting on only 4 of 21 from afar. Didn’t matter, because they ran a lob-pass clinic that culminated with a spectacular one-hand jam by 6-10 Trevon Brazile just before halftime.
“I think Meleek threw him a bad pass, and he got it from behind his head,” Calipari said. “I’m like, ‘How did you get that down?’ I just sat down, because everybody on the bench was looking at me. I’m like, ‘Don’t look at me.’ I can’t believe how he ever got that ball.”
Hawaii outscored Arkansas by 18 points at the 3-point line and still lost by 19. In the first half, the Razorbacks were 20 for 25 on 2-point attempts.
“What I was most happy about was we ended up with 26 assists,” Calipari said. “Our thing is, if we get 20, we win.”
Arkansas went without starting center Nick Pringle, who missed the game with a leg injury, and played only seven players. Those seven formed what was the quickest and most athletic team of the day.
“I have had some really fast teams,” Calipari said. “This team is right there — fast. We are long and we are athletic. It is what we are. But we are also skilled, because we don’t turn it over that much.”
The Razorbacks had 10 turnovers Thursday. Acuff scored 24 points with seven assists. Thomas collected 21 points, eight rebounds and five assists. All five starters scored in double figures.
If they start hitting 3’s, they will really be a load for any opponent to handle.
BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa, projected to the the No. 1 pick in the June NBA draft, bombs in two of his 35 points in the Cougars’ 79-71 loss to Texas
TEXAS (11) 79, BRIGHAM YOUNG (6) 71:
All eyes were on BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, the 6-9, 210-pound freshman phenom from Brockton, Mass., who might have his name called first in the NBA draft. Dybantsa came in leading the nation in scoring with a 25.3-point average and, after Thursday’s one-and-done in the NCAA Tournament, leaves as the No. 3 freshman single-season scorer in history. The only freshmen to score more points in a season were LSU’s Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Texas’ Kevin Durant.
On Wednesday, Texas coach Sean Miller was asked about Dybantsa.
“I would call him generational,” Miller said. “AJ is that position-less player. He can do it all. His ability to get fouled is maybe unlike I have ever seen … He can do it in and around the rim, driving, in that odd spot, 15 to 17 feet from the basket. He is a great player, a player we don’t oftentimes see in college. You can go a long period of time and not see somebody like him.”
Dybantsa’s coach, Kevin Young, spent five years as an NBA assistant with Philadelphia and Phoenix.
“I had several playoff series against LeBron (James),” Young said. “The thing that is so impressive about LeBron that AJ can learn from is the decision-making, the passing. (James) is so gifted in that area. They are very similar in transition as well. Imagine AJ when he puts on 20-some pounds of muscle, him coming downhill at you like LeBron does. I can promise you, you don’t want to be on the other end of that.”
BYU, however, was going without an important piece. Senior guard Richie Saunders has been out with an ACL tear since early February, and the Cougars, who started the season 16-1, had dropped seven of their last 10 outings.
Texas, meanwhile, was coming in with only a 19-14 record, having beaten North Carolina State 68-66 in a play-in game Tuesday night at Dayton. The Longhorns flew overnight and arrived in Portland about 6 a.m. Wednesday.
“One thing about young people — they are so resilient,” Miller said Wednesday.
The Longhorns, who had lost five of six before Dayton, certainly were Thursday. BYU led only once, at 21-20 eight minutes into the game. Texas ran off eight straight points and was in front 46-37 at intermission despite 20 points by Dybansta. The Cougars got eaten alive in the half by 7-foot sophomore Matas Vokietaitis, who had 15 points and 11 rebounds at the break.
“He basically manhandled our whole team in the first half,” Young said.
Texas led 66-51 with 12 minutes to play, but Dybantsa led a surge that brought BYU within range of a comeback victory. Vokietaitis missed seven straight free throws in the second half. The Cougars were with 72-68 when former Oregon State guard Jordan Pope hit the biggest shot of the game — a corner 3 to give Texas a 75-68 advantage with 1:21 left. BYU got it back to 75-71 before Tramon Mark salted the win away with four straight free throws down the stretch.
Dybantsa ended his college career with a 35-point showing, knocking down 12 of 12 from the foul line. He was 11 for 25 from the field and only 1 for 7 from the 3-point line. He grabbed 10 rebounds but committed five turnovers in a 40-minute performance against plenty of help defense and double-teams by the Longhorns.
Guard Robert Wright III added 14 points, and no other Cougars reached double figures.
“The key for us was not allowing everybody else (besides Dybantsa) to join in,” Miller said.
The Cougars finished 4 for 22 from 3-point land.
“That was our game plan, to take away the 3-point shot,” Miller said.
Vokietaitis finished with 23 points and 16 boards, nine off the offensive glass. A .712 foul shooter entering the game, he was 3 for 11 from the stripe.
“I am usually making free throws,” said the Lithuanian lug, who carries the look of a corn-fed Iowa farm boy. “I never miss that much. Maybe that was just a bad day.”
Pope contributed 11 points in 33 minutes, making 4 of 11 shots from the field, including 3 of 9 from beyond the arc.
Tyon Grant-Foster (7) drives as teammate Graham Dike (15) positions underneath in Gonzaga’s 73-64 win over Kennesaw State
GONZAGA (3) 73, KENNESAW STATE (14) 64:
This is the 28th straight NCAA Tournament appearance for Gonzaga, one of the truly great stories on college basketball. The Wildcats have twice made it to the championship game — in 2017 and ’21 — but have yet to win a title.
On Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Blackwell proposed that the tournament format be changed to a three-game series going into the Sweet Sixteen. Gonzaga coach Mark Few liked the idea, sort of.
“If we could go back to ’17, ’19, ’21 and ’22, I would love to have a three-game series,” Few said. “I think we’d be staring at three or four NCAA championships with the group we had.”
But: “That would take away from the magic of this tournament. That’s why everybody focuses on it. … the winner moves on is what is so captivating and makes this thing so special.”
Gonzaga entered as WCC champion with a 30-3 record, which included a 101-61 loss to Michigan and a shocking 67-60 defeat to the Pilots on the Bluff in its last visit to Portland on Feb. 4.
Kennesaw State is, like High Point, one of those “where are they from?” schools. The answer is Kennesaw, Ga., in suburban Atlanta, with an enrollment nearing 48,000. The Conference USA champions came in with a 21-13 mark but without leading scorer Simeon Cottle, dropped from the team after an investigation into point-shaving. The 6-2 senior was averaging 20.2 points in 17 games.
When the Owls met with the media on Wednesday, sophomore guard RJ Johnson offered a first impression of Portland.
“As soon as we got here, we saw something strange when we was on the bus,” he said. “We saw a man walking. It was just something to see. You don’t see that where we’re at.”
It leaves you to wonder what it’s like in Kennesaw. But that is for another story.
Gonzaga started Thursday’s game slowly, hitting only one of its first nine shots from the field on the way to a dreadful first half for both teams until the Zags finally found a little rhythm just before the break. They scored the final 10 points of the half to go ahead 33-27, finally hitting a 3 in the closing seconds after missing eight in a row to start the game.
“We were really soft on the offensive end,” Few said. “We weren’t drawing fouls. We weren’t creating any advantages. Weren’t getting the ball to the rim. We were just kind of settling.”
Gonzaga created some separation to take a 42-31 lead early in the second half, but Kennesaw State used an 11-1 run to close to within 43-42. A 17-4 spurt pushed the Zags ahead 60-46 with 6:30 left, but the Owls still weren’t done. Benefitting from a questionable flagrant foul call on Gonzaga center Graham Ike — and a few other calls that went Kennesaw State’s way — the Owls drew to within 67-62 with 2:21. They didn’t get a field goal the rest of the way, however, and the Zags achieved victory for the 17th straight time in the NCAA Tournament.
The 6-9 Ike led the way with 19 points and eight rebounds and got help off the bench from 6-7 freshman Davis Fogle, who scored 11 of his 17 points after intermission. Senior forward Jalen Warley chipped in 12 points, 12 rebounds and five assists.
The Zags won the boards 45-34, which helped offset 3 for-18 3-point shooting. They will need to shoot better than that to get by Texas in Saturday’s second round.
Saturday’s second-round slate at Moda: 4:10 p.m. Texas-Gonzaga; 6:45 p.m. High Point-Arkansas.
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