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Ox 51
03-22-2019, 05:10 PM
UC Irvine pulls the NCAA tournament's first big upset, toppling Kansas State

Jeff Eisenberg,Yahoo Sports•March 22, 2019

In a year in which UCLA underachieved and fired its coach, USC and San Diego State also missed the NCAA tournament and Cal and Stanford finished near the bottom of a historically weak Pac-12, UC Irvine coach Russell Turner hasn’t been shy about what that means.

He has told anyone who will listen the past few weeks that the Anteaters are California’s best team.

Thirteenth-seeded UC Irvine validated its coach’s big talk on Friday afternoon in San Jose with the most significant win in program history. The Big West champion Anteaters secured their school’s first-ever NCAA tournament victory, a 70-64 upset over fourth-seeded Kansas State.

Max Hazzard, the son of former UCLA legend Walt Hazzard, scored a game-high 19 points and buried five 3-pointers, the last of which gave UC Irvine a five-point lead with 90 seconds to play. Kansas State had the ball down two in the final minute, but a miscommunication between Barry Brown and Cartier Diarra resulted in a costly turnover, enabling Evan Leonard to ice the game for the Anteaters with four free throws in the final 18 seconds.