DALLAS -- Another NCAA Tournament prayer answered for Loyola-Chicago, and the Ramblers are set to bring Sister Jean to the Sweet 16.
Clayton Custer's jumper took a friendly bounce off the rim and in with 3.6 seconds left, and 11th-seeded Loyola beat Tennessee 63-62 in a South Region second-round game Saturday night.
Custer's winner came two days after Donte Ingram's buzzer-beating three-pointer for Loyola against Miami, surely to the delight of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the 98-year-old nun, team chaplain and primary booster watching from her wheelchair on a platform near the main television cameras.
"The only thing I can say, glory to God for that one," Custer said. "The ball bounced on the rim and I got a good bounce."
The Ramblers (30-5), who won the Missouri Valley tournament, broke the school record for victories set by the 1963 NCAA championship team. Loyola will play in the regional semifinals Thursday in Atlanta.
No. 3 seed Tennessee (26-7) took its only lead of the second half on three-point play by Grant Williams with 20 seconds remaining. After Loyola almost lost the ball on an out-of-bounds call confirmed on replay, Custer dribbled to his right, pulled up and let go a short jumper that hit the front of the rim, bounced off the backboard and went in.
A last-gasp shot from the Vols' Jordan Bone bounced away, and Custer threw the ball off the scoreboard high above the court as he was mobbed by teammates in the same spot that the Ramblers celebrates Ingram's dramatic winner.
The Ramblers fell behind 15-6 in less than five minutes before the Volunteers missed their next nine shots and fell behind for the first time on Custer's three-pointer with six minutes left in the first half.
Admiral Schofield scored 11 of those first 15 Tennessee points but didn't score again until a three-pointer nearly 32 minutes later that started a rally from a 10-point deficit in the final four minutes by the SEC regular-season co-champions.
Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes lost at American Airlines Center, home of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, for the first time in six NCAA games. The first four victories were during his 17 seasons leading the Texas Longhorns.
Schmidt, who leads the pregame prayer and gives the players feedback after, wasn't the only one pulling hard for Loyola.
Late-arriving fans waiting for crowd favorite Texas Tech in the late game joined the raucous Ramblers supporters wearing maroon-and-gold scarfs and standing almost the entire game in sections across the court from their team's bench.
Aundre Jackson, who grew up in the Dallas area, led Loyola with 16 points, and Custer had 10. Schofield scored 14 for Tennessee.
KENTUCKY 95, BUFFALO 75
BOISE, Idaho — Kentucky put an end to any upset talk on its watch Saturday, getting 27 points and a near-perfect shooting game from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in pulling away from 13th-seeded Buffalo.
Gilgeous-Alexander went 10 for 12 and made both of his three-point attempts to send fifth-seeded Kentucky (26-10) to the Sweet 16 for the second consecutive season.
It wasn’t a runaway until the last seven minutes.
Buffalo (27-9), which got here with a 21-point blowout over Arizona, twice trimmed a double-digit lead to five midway through the second half.
Gilgeous-Alexander answered both times — once with a three-pointer to extend the lead to eight, then again a few minutes later with a three-point play that started a 12-2 run and put the game away.
Hamidou Diallo also went off — going 9 for 12 and scoring all but four of his 22 points in the second half while the Wildcats were turning this one into a laugher.
Sports on 03/18/2018