Wake Forest Athletics
Auburn's Daniels Makes the Committee Look Good
3/21/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 21, 2003
By JIM O'CONNELL
AP Basketball Writer
Marquis Daniels had quite a Friday.
He carried Auburn to the second round of the NCAA tournament. He outdueled Saint Joseph's Jameer Nelson in a good old-fashioned game of can you top this? And he made the tournament selection committee look a lot smarter than people thought it was five days ago.
On Selection Sunday, critics pointed to Auburn as the team that didn't deserve to be in the field of 65. Daniels proved the 10th-seeded Tigers did indeed belong.
The 6-foot-6 swingman had 25 points in the 65-63 overtime victory over the Hawks. He also was the main defender against Saint Joseph's Pat Carroll, who was averaging 12 points but didn't score.
Daniels, fourth in the SEC in scoring at 17.9, and Nelson, who scored 32 points, matched big hoops down the stretch of regulation and in overtime of the East Regional.
"I know he wanted to win. I wanted to win," Daniels said. "It was a matter of stepping up and taking good shots. His shots were going. Mine were as well."
All you needed to see were the closing minutes of the overtime.
Nelson, who averaged 19.3 points, hit two 3-pointers as Saint Joseph's took a 63-59 lead. Auburn pulled within two on a dunk by Daniels, and the Tigers (21-11) took the lead for good on the senior forward's three-point play with 45 seconds remaining.
The Hawks' last chance for a win ended when Carroll's 3-point attempt missed everything with less than a second left.
"I've seen him play better offense, but this was the best defense I've seen," Auburn coach Cliff Ellis said. "He shut Carroll down."
Anyone who had wondered aloud about Auburn's credentials for an at-large bid, from a weak nonconference schedule to its 4-8 record against other NCAA teams, heard an answer from the Tigers, who won their seventh straight first-round game.
"We proved our point. We've done it all year," Ellis said, referring to the Southeastern Conference being considered the nation's top conference all season. "We beat a good team. That's enough of that."
There were other close games Friday to add to the eight that were decided by five points or less on Thursday.
Wake Forest joined Kansas as a No. 2 seed that barely got by, beating East Tennessee State 76-73, and Utah beat Oregon 60-58.
The two No. 1 seeds that played Friday enjoyed blowouts: Texas beat North Carolina Asheville 82-61 and Kentucky defeated IUPUI 95-64.
In other games Friday, it was: Syracuse 76, Manhattan 65; Purdue 80, LSU 56; and Oklahoma State 77, Pennsylvania 63.
In Tampa Fla., Wake Forest escaped with the win over East Tennessee State, much the same way Kansas did the night before in a 64-61 win over Utah State.
The team from the big conference had trouble with the little guard.
Tim Smith, a 5-foot-9 freshman, scored all the points in an 8-0 run that brought the 15th-seeded Bucs into a 72-72 tie. Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year Josh Howard made two free throws with 21 seconds left to give the Demon Deacons (25-5) the lead.
Zakee Wadood of ETSU and Justin Gray of Wake Forest each made one free throw and the Bucs had a chance for the win with 10 seconds left. Smith drove to the left corner and launched a 3-pointer that found nothing but air. The little man fell a little short of what would have been the biggest upset of the tournament.
