What happened in the NCAA Men's Tournament second round

Coach Nate Oats said the senior guard will be available for Thursday's game at North Carolina, signaling that he was held out of the rest of Saturday's game as a precaution. Huge news for Alabama as it seeks its second Elite Eight appearance in program history (2004).

MEMPHIS — Houston leads 82-71 with 1:38 remaining. A&M hasn't been able to cut it to less than seven over the last five minutes as both sides continue to slug it out in a foul-riddled game, with the physicality favoring the Cougars.

SPOKANE, Wash. — Just a monstrous first half for San Diego State at Spokane Arena. That’s almost a literal description, too, of how it achieved a 45-21 halftime lead over Yale. It was a cruel, clinical, unforgiving bludgeoning at both ends of the floor. It was the big bad in the closet kicking the door open and confirming that, yes, all your worst nightmares are actually true.

One of the best defensive programs in the country did what it could do, turning a confident, balanced offense into mush. Yale shot 32 percent from the floor and rebounded just one of its many misses, limited to one-tough-shot-and-out for 20 minutes straight. But that wasn’t the meanest part.

A day earlier, San Diego State noted that it took pride in winning games even when it wasn’t shooting well. On Sunday? It’s shooting well. To the tune of 52 percent overall, boosted by seven 3-pointers in the first half alone — from the team that came in ranked 309th in 3-point percentage. A four-point play from Darion Trammell, in fact, put the halftime lead where it is.

San Diego State is hard to deal with when you’re getting pummeled at one end. The Aztecs, at least for fledgling Cinderellas like Yale, are impossible to figure out when they have answers for everything.

SPOKANE, Wash. — San Diego State going into Sunday: 31.2 percent from 3-point range as a team. 309th nationally.

San Diego State on Sunday, so far: 6-for-10 from long distance. Up 18 on Yale.

SPOKANE, Wash. — The Jaedon LeDee show has gotten in the way of a fairy tale so far. San Diego State's All-America-level forward has 15 points in less than 12 minutes, and his back-to-back dunks have the Aztecs up 16 points on Yale already. The Bulldogs have gotten decent looks but no luck on rolls, and they've missed 12 of 17 shots so far. But, then, San Diego State will do that to you.

What a putback dunk by Houston's Jamal Shead, putting the Cougars ahead 59-50 in the second half.

MEMPHIS — Longwood coach Griff Aldrich talked after his team's 40-point loss to Houston about how the Cougars break other teams. Houston's patented suffocating defense deflates opposing offenses, which then lowers the intensity for opponents on the defensive end.

We'll see if Texas A&M has hit that point or has enough resiliency to bounce back from a 57-48 Houston lead with 13:30 remaining. The Aggies have missed their last four shots and haven't scored in two-and-a-half minutes, while the Coogs have hit 5 of their last 7. Both teams are battling foul trouble, but Buzz Williams may need to trust his starters or risk Houston pulling away.

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Yale magic? It has run into a concrete wall that also, apparently, now makes 3s. San Diego State has been San Diego State to open this round of 32 game at Spokane Arena on the defensive end and on the glass, and it's also made a trio of shots from long-distance in the early going. Jaedon LeDee's second triple created a 13-3 Aztecs lead out of the gate. Yale missed its first five shots from the field to slip into the early hole.

MEMPHIS — J'Wan Roberts is on the floor to start the second half for Houston.

Oakland’s Jack Gohlke is out of the NCAA Tournament, but his newfound fame has resulted, apparently, in a Buffalo Wild Wings deal.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The Connecticut men’s basketball team is now just four wins away from repeating as national champions.

The top-ranked Huskies cruised to a 75-58 victory over No. 9 Northwestern on Sunday night to advance to the Sweet 16, where they will play the winner of San Diego State-Yale. Dating back to last season, UConn has now won 29 of its last 30 games against nonconference opponents and all 29 wins came by double digits.

Last season, the Huskies won their six games in the NCAA Tournament by an average of 20.0 points, the fourth-largest average margin of victory since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Through two games this year, UConn is beating its opponents by an average of 28 points.

Talk about dominant.

UConn’s big three of Tristen Newton, Cam Spencer and Donovan Clingan accounted for 45 points. Clingan finished with a 14-14 double-double to go along with an astonishing eight blocks. The Huskies were in such control of Sunday night’s game that there was zero doubt about its outcome … even though UConn shot 3-of-22 from beyond the arc (14 percent). It didn’t matter one bit, especially with the ease in which its players could score inside. Fifty-two of UConn’s 75 points came in the paint.

Connecticut is trying to become the first team since Florida in 2006 and 2007 to win back-to-back national championships.

SPOKANE, Wash. — With a fraction less than 45 seconds to go, Mark Sears fell to the Spokane Arena floor (again) and then got up (again).

Alabama’s leading scorer shared a smile with a game official. He began to make his way to the free-throw line and stopped to stretch a left calf muscle that was tightening up on him. He hit the first freebie, then stretched his calf once more. After making the second free throw, Sears did what an unruly, unkempt and borderline lawless second-round NCAA Tournament game demanded of both sides: He just kept going.

A 72-61 win ultimately propelled the No. 4 seed Crimson Tide into the West Region round of 16, and it ultimately proved to be a case of Alabama being born in the chaos and No. 12 seed Grand Canyon trying to adopt it for an afternoon. One team knew how much it would take to survive the maelstrom. The other team was the Lopes, who didn’t score for the final 4:05 and thus collapsed shy of the finish line.

The only question is whether there is enough ice and pain medication in the state of Alabama to get the Crimson Tide right before a Thursday night Sweet 16 game against top-seeded North Carolina. “Character win, I think,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said. “We had a chance to fold. A lot of things didn’t go our way. A lot of foul trouble. Our guys started to show a little frustration, and I thought we pulled it together and showed a lot of mental toughness.”

Grand Canyon actually had turned the action on its head after trailing by eight at halftime, with an 8-0 burst creating a 58-55 lead with six minutes to go. But Alabama answered with its own 7-0 run and didn’t trail after that. A Mouhamed Dioubate three-point play put the Crimson Tide ahead for good and a Dioubate drive capped the run and forced a Grand Canyon timeout with 4:48 left.

“I was just playing hard and I got lost in the game, honestly,” Dioubate said.

Or as Sears put it: “He won us the game, the last five minutes. We don’t win this game without him.”

While the Lopes self-inflicted plenty of wounds — missing 14 free throws, missing 18-of-20 3-pointers — the end result was Alabama holding an opponent to a measly .859 points per possession in a game.

Alabama, the team with a turnstile defense, got in the gaps and forced 14 turnovers that turned into 18 points. Alabama, after shutting Charleston down for the first 30 minutes in the first round, may find a way to be balanced at the most important time of the year. Oats, in fact, didn’t even know his team pitched a shutout in the final four minutes or so until he was informed on the postgame dais.

“Our defense is getting better as the year goes on,” Oats said, “and this might be our best defensive game of the year.”

We'll see if it travels down the West Coast later this week.

"You don't have to be very smart to figure out what our problem is. Everybody on our team is in foul trouble, but sometimes you've just gotta figure it out. We've got Band-aids and Ace bandages and splints and all that stuff. We're just throwing guys out there. I mean, we got a guy at center who never played basketball until he was 15 years old. But we'll figure it out."

BROOKLYN — Boo Buie comes off the floor to an ovation from the Northwestern crowd and shares an emotional hug with coach Chris Collins, after UConn's defense harassed the Wildcats' star guard into a nightmare game where he missed his first ten shots and finished 2-for-15 from the floor. The unfortunate reality of the tournament is that it ends this way for 63 of the 64 teams, but 'Cats fans here are showing appreciation for Buie's career in purple by chanting "thank you Boo" as the clock winds down on UConn's win.