Cal Sports Report

Four Pac-12 Teams in Sweet 16: USC, UCLA, Oregon Win; Colorado Loses

Pac-12 is 9-1 in NCAA tournament, with Oregon State joining Monday’s three winners next weekend

Jake Curtis

Four Pac-12 Teams in Sweet 16: USC, UCLA, Oregon Win; Colorado Loses
Four Pac-12 Teams in Sweet 16: USC, UCLA, Oregon Win; Colorado Loses /

The Pac-12’s surprising run in the NCAA tournament continued on Monday.

Three of the four Pac-12 teams that played second-round games on Monday won their contests convincingly and advanced to next weekend’s Sweet 16.

Sixth-seeded USC beat the pants off third-seeded Kansas 85-51, 11th-seeded UCLA blew out No. 14 seed Abilene Christian 67-47, and seventh-seeded Oregon crushed third-seeded Iowa 95-80. Oregon State, which won its second-round game on Sunday, joins those three winners in the Sweet 16.

And at least one Pac-12 team will advance to the Elite Eight since USC and Oregon play each other in the Sweet 16. 

The only one of the five Pac-12 NCAA Tournament teams that is not still alive is fifth-seeded Colorado, which dropped a 71-53 game to fourth-seeded Florida State on Monday evening.

The Pac-12 has more teams in the Sweet 16 than any other conference, and its 9-1 record in the NCAA tournament is easily the best of any major conference.

"You're finding out that the Pac-12 not being ranked all year was an absolute joke," UCLA coach Mick Cronin said two days earlier.

See statistics at the end of this story on how the major conferences have fared in the NCAA tournament.

USC 85, Kansas 51

USC handed Kansas its most lopsided loss ever in an NCAA tournament game.

The Mobley bothers helped heap the embarrassing 34-point loss on a proud Kansas team that finished second in the Big 12.

Isaiah Mobley, the 6-foot-10 older brother, had 17 points, eight rebounds, four assists and one block.  He made 4-of-5 three-point shots, and is 9-for-11 from long range over the past four games. He had made eight three-point shots in row before missing his final long-range attempt on Monday.

Freshman Evan Mobley, the Pac-12 player of the year, had just 10 points, but added 13 rebounds, five assists and three blocks.

As a team, USC shot 57.1 percent from the field, the best field-goal percentage ever against Kansas in an NCAA tournament game. The Trojans made 11 of their first 16 three-point shots before finishing the game 11-for-18 from beyond the arc. In fact, the Trojans had a better percentage from long range (61.1 percent) than they did from the foul line (8-for-15, 53.3 percent).

USC was equally dominant on the defensive end, limiting Kansas to 29 percent shooting from the field.

USC rode the outside shooting of Isaiah Mobley and its strong defense to a 40-21 halftime lead.

Now the Trojans will face Oregon, a team USC beat by 14 points in their only regular-season meeting.

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Florida State 71, Colorado 53

This was a complete reversal of the Buffaloes' impressive win over Georgetown in the first round.

After scoring 96 points against the Hoyas, Colorado (23-9) managed a little more than half of that total as they had trouble dealing with the length and quickness of a Florida State team that relies on its stubborn defense. Colorado made just 35.7 percent of its field-goal attempts, and committed 19 turnovers.

McKinley Wright IV, the Buffaloes' all-conference point guard who had 13 assists and no turnovers against Georgetown, had just one assist and five turnovers against the Seminoles (18-6), who limited Wright to 4-for-12 shooting and 10 points.

The Buffaloes needed a tip-in at the first-half buzzer by Wright to reach 20 points. They committed 11 turnovers in the first 20 minutes and were just 9-for-29 from the field (31 percent). However, Florida State did not do much offensively either, and Seminoles held only a 24-20 lead after an ugly first half.

Colorado got within a point at 36-35 with 11:54 left in the second half, but Florida State scored the next six points and began to pull away.

D'Shawn Schwartz led Colorado with 13 points, while Anthony Polite had 22 points for the Seminoles.

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UCLA 67, Abilene Christian 47

UCLA (20-9) dominated the team that had upset third-seeded Texas on Saturday. The Bruins, who entered the NCAA tournament on a four-game losing streak, next will play second-seeded Alabama in the third round.

Abilene Christian (24-5) was able to upset Texas by forcing the Longhorns into 23 turnovers, the most by Texas in eight years. But UCLA turned the ball over just eight times against the Wildcats' frenetic defense, and the Bruins had just three turnovers by the time they held a 23-point lead with 15:14 left in the second half.

The Bruins let their defense do the rest of the work against Abilene Christian, which shot just 29.8 percent from the field.

Johnny Juzang had 17 points for UCLA, giving him 67 points in three games in the tournament. Cody Riley added 12 points and 12 rebounds.

The Bruins took control early, using an 18-0 run to turn a 12-8 deficit into a 26-12 lead. UCLA was never seriously challenged thereafter.

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Oregon 95, Iowa 80

Iowa center Luka Garza, the national player of the year, finished with 36 points on 14-for-20 shooting, including 3-for-4 on three-pointers. But the Ducks had four players score 17 points or more, led by Chris Duarte's 23 points on 9-for-12 shooting. LJ Figueroa added 21 points, and Will Richards had 19 points while hitting 3-of-4 three-pointers and adding six rebounds and seven assists. Eugene Omoruyi had 17 points.

The Ducks (21-6) will play USC in the Sweet 16.

The Ducks were simply too quick and two athletic for the Hawkeyes (22-9). Oregon shot 55.9 percent from the field and made 11-of-24 three-pointers

The game was tied with two minutes left in the first half, but the Ducks scored the final 10 points of the half, then dominated the second half.  Oregon led by 21 points with 5:12 left in the game.

Garza scored 22 points in the first half, when he made 8 of 10 shots, had three old-fashioned three-point plays and made his only three-point shot attempt.  Nonetheless, Oregon led by 10 at halftime.

Despite playing their first game in the 2021 NCAA tournament, the Ducks scored 56 first-half points (a season high) and four players were in double figures before the second half started. Duarte and Richardson had 14 points apiece at intermission.

Iowa shot 51.5 percent in the first half, but Oregon shot 59.5 percent and led 56-46. 

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Records of the six major basketball conference in the NCAA tournament (with the number Sweet 16 representatives in parentheses).

Pac-12 – 9-1 (four)

SEC -- 6-4 (two)

Big East -- 4-2 (two)

ACC -- 4-5 (two)

Big 12 -- 7-6 (one)

Big Ten -- 7-8 (one)...

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Cover photo of USC's Cevez Goodwin by Marc Lebryk, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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