In what is known as the First Four round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament on Tuesday, four teams competed in Dayton, Ohio — a play-in round to face a No. 1 seeded team later in the week. Alabama State's Amarr Knox hit the dramatic game-winning shot with 2.7 seconds left in the game and lifted the Hornets to a stunning win over Saint Francis.
At first, it seemed to be a premonition for the rest of the week — more nail-biting finishes when 16 games would be played on Thursday and Friday. That's why the tournament is referred to as The Big Dance, after all — it's for Cinderella stories.
But, instead, the buzzer-beater basket appears to be an endangered species.
The face-off between two-time defending champion Connecticut and ninth-seeded Oklahoma had the makings of a heart-stopping finish on Friday night, in Raleigh, North Carolina. With 5:43 left, the game was tied, 54-all, heading down the stretch.
But the Huskies outscored the Sooners, 13-5, in the ensuing minutes to stretch their advantage.
"The thing about this team is that we're really battle-tested," said UConn coach Dan Hurley after the game. "We've had to fight so hard all year that we showed a lot of toughness down the stretch."
Dramatic result or not, UConn advanced to Sunday's game against the University of Florida, another one of the four No. 1 seeds and the last team to win back-to-back championships before UConn.
The buzzer-beater is lacking in the women's tournament, too. It began its slate of 16 first-round games on Friday.
Looking at the game's final score, 79-78, won by the fourth-seeded University of Kentucky over No. 13 Liberty University, it's reasonable to think there could have been a dramatic finish, a big splash at the end.
But a pair of free throws by Kentucky's Georgia Amoore, who scored 34 points, with seven seconds left in the game actually put the Wildcats up by four. A desperation 3-pointer made by Liberty's Emma Hess with two seconds left cut Kentucky's final margin to one.
"We might be the higher seed, but Liberty had nothing to lose," said Amoore. "They want to come out. They want to win. They had all the energy."
Kentucky's narrow victory was in contrast to the pair of No. 1 and 2 seeds in the women's bracket — they won by, on average, 46 points on Friday.
There have also been huge wins among the four No. 1 seeds in the men's tournament, who won their first round games by an average of 32 points.
The buzzer-beater wasn't the only part of the Alabama State Hornets' victory that proved too good to last.
The team quickly traveled from Dayton to Lexington, Ky., for a Thursday afternoon contest against the No. 1 Auburn Tigers, one of this season's college basketball juggernauts. They lost by 20 points.
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