Daily Vanguard

March 20th, 2008

Historical ride ends, Vikings lose 85-61

 

For forty minutes Thursday morning, the Portland State Vikings had the opportunity to do something no other team in the country had done: defeat a number one seed in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

The Vikings could have made history and been the first No. 16 seed in 92 tries to defeat a No. 1 seed. They would have been the darlings of the national basketball scene.

Instead, the Kansas Jayhawks out shot and out muscled the Vikings on their way to a 85-61 victory, leaving Portland State behind as another victim in the wake of a basketball giant seeking a national championship.

“I don’t think it’s any secret Kansas is a great basketball team,” said head coach Ken Bone. “They showed it today, how strong they are in a lot of different areas, and we tried to stop them a few different ways, but we struggled in almost every one of those areas.”

Portland State was overmatched in nearly every facet of the game. Junior guard Brandon Rush had his way with the Vikings in the first half, hitting 6 of 11 shots for 15 points, and junior guard Mario Chalmers added 10 of his 16 points in the first twenty minutes, as the Jayhawks drained eight three-pointers to build a 49-26 halftime lead. Rush finished with a game-high 18 points.

Kansas head coach Bill Self was impressed with the way his team performed over the first twenty minutes.

“Well, I thought we played very well the majority of the first half and shot the ball great and got off to a great start,” Self said.

The hot start by the Jayhawks all but killed the Vikings’ hopes of moving on to the second round. Sophomore forward Tyrell Mara came off the bench to lead Portland State with five points in the first half, but Kansas’ length and athleticism made it difficult for any Viking to get off a good shot.

“They were always there,” said senior forward Deonte Huff. “Even if you beat one guy, another guy was there. So, yeah, they had great defense.”

 

 

Throughout the game Portland State struggled to convert scoring opportunities and ended up shooting 38 percent overall. Kansas, on the other hand, capitalized early and often. The Jayhawks turned 16 Viking turnovers into 24 points, shot 54 percent from the field and scored 34 points in the paint.

The Vikings kept the game respectable in the second half, scoring 35 points and holding Kansas to 36 points. Junior guard Jeremiah Dominguez finally got free to dazzle the crowd on a couple of drives to the basket, and sophomore forward Alex Tiefenthaler made the most of his eight second-half minutes, scoring 10 points off the bench. Dominguez finished with a team-high 11 points. In his last game as a Viking, Huff added nine points and three steals.

After the game, Bone was noticeably emotional as he talked about how he addressed his team in the final minutes of the game.

“It’s a long five months and we go through a lot,” Bone said. “And there’s a lot of up and downs, but at the very end I wanted them to know just how proud I was of what they’ve accomplished this year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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