, who won the Missouri Valley tournament, broke the school record for wins set by the 1963 NCAA championship team. Loyola will play the Cincinnati-Nevada winner in the regional semifinals Thursday in Atlanta.No. 3 seed Tennessee (26-7) took its only lead of the second half on three-point play by Grant Williams with 20 seconds remaining. After Loyola almost lost the ball on an out-of-bounds call confirmed on replay, Custer dribbled to his right, pulled up and let go a short jumper that hit the front of the rim, bounced off the backboard and went in.A last-gasp shot from the Vols' Jordan Bone bounced away, and Custer threw the ball off the scoreboard high above the court as he was mobbed by teammates in the same spot that the Ramblers celebrates Ingram's dramatic winner,,.The Ramblers fell behind 15-6 in less than 5 minutes before the Volunteers missed their next nine shots and fell behind for the first time on Custer's 3-pointer with 6 minutes left in the first half.Admiral Schofield scored 11 of those first 15 Tennessee points but didn't score again until a 3 nearly 32 minutes later that started a rally from a 10-point deficit in the final 4 minutes by the SEC regular-season co-champions.Tennessee coach Rick Barnes lost at American Airlines Center, home of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, for the first time in six NCAA games. The first four wins were during his 17 seasons leading the Texas Longhorns.Schmidt, who leads the pregame prayer and gives the players feedback after, wasn't the only one pulling hard for Loyola.Late-arriving fans waiting for crowd favorite Texas Tech in the late game joined the raucous Ramblers supporters wearing maroon-and-gold scarfs and standing almost the entire game in sections across the court from their team's bench.Aundre Jackson, who grew up in the Dallas area, led Loyola with 16 points, and Custer had 10. Schofield scored 14 for Tennessee.UP NEXTLoyola-Chicago is headed to the round of 16 for the first time since 1985, when it lost to Patrick Ewing and Georgetown. That was also the last time the Ramblers made the NCAA Tournament.---More college basketball: https://collegebasketball.ap.org , https://twitter.com/-Top25 and https://www.podcastone.com/ap-sports-special-events)
Mar 16, 2018 Loyola-Chicago hit the biggest shot of the first full day of the NCAA Tournament and will be looking to build off that momentum Saturday when the Ramblers face No. 3 seed Tennessee in a South Regional game in Dallas.Donte Ingram buried a go-ahead 3-pointer from the top of the key with 0.4 seconds remaining to upset Miami and send the No. 11-seed Ramblers into the second round."As a kid, this is what you grow up seeing, hoping that you can be in that moment," Ingram said. "For me to be in this position with these guys, with this coaching staff, I wouldn't want it any other way, and I'm just obviously blessed to hit that shot, and I'm happy that we can get on and advance to Tennessee." The Volunteers advanced with a 73-47 blowout of Wright State on Thursday. Tennessee's star tandem of Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield combined for 29 points and 21 rebounds, and the Vols' stingy defense held Wright State to 31.7 percent shooting, including just 4 of 21 from 3-point range."Defensively, we were really pretty good today against a team that's not a very easy team to guard," Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said. "Offensively, we missed some easy ones early, but we settled in and got our offense going." Tennessee (26-8) was picked to finish 13th in the 14-team SEC by the media in the preseason. The Volunteers exceeded those expectations and won a share of the SEC regular-season title, despite not having a bevy of well-known players."Overall we've got a group of guys that have embraced that talent of working hard," said Barnes, who is in the NCAA Tournament for the 23rd time. "We've tried to create our own standard, our own identity in terms of how hard we think we can play on defense and on offense when we stay together and execute -- I mean, we missed some shots at the beginning of the game that we need to knock down, but that's part of the game, and you expect some of that, especially in the opening game of this tournament. But we settled in, and again, I think our players are probably a little bit better certainly than people thought at the beginning of the year." Loyola-Chicago (29-5), champion of the Missouri Valley Conference, has won 11 in a row. The Ramblers opened the season with an 84-80 win over Wright State and also count a win over Florida under their belt.Clayton Custer scored 14 points to lead four Ramblers in double figures against the Hurricanes.Custer says he and his teammates aren't feeling any pressure."We're in the situation where we can go out there and play free and play the way we've been playing all year," Custer said. "And I think we're a scary team if we're playing free and like we have nothing to lose. I think that's a big part of what we've been doing." Loyola-Chicago is fifth in the nation in points allowed, surrendering just 62.2 points per game.
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