Another virtuoso offensive performance showed the world why sixth-seeded Creighton was a preseason top-10 team — and what its potential is now.

Ryan Kalkbrenner dropped 22 points, Baylor Scheierman added 21 points on 5-of-7 3-point shooting and Creighton shot 58.2 percent to take down 15th-seeded Princeton 86-75 in the NCAA Tournament’s South Region semifinals on Friday in Louisville.

“It’s been amazing, you know, it’s been a dream come true,” said Scheierman, in his first season with Baylor after transferring from South Dakota State. “This is why I came to Creighton in the first place, to make a run with this group of guys. It’s just been an incredible experience and I’m looking forward to continuing that on Sunday.”

Creighton made its second Elite Eight in program history — the first came in 1941, when the tournament had just eight teams — and will vie for its first trip to the Final Four. The Bluejays (24-12) will face fifth-seeded San Diego State in the Elite Eight on Sunday.

The high-octane Bluejays made 32 of 55 shots, including Kalkbrenner’s 9 of 12 and Scheierman’s 8 of 11. Scheierman added nine rebounds as the Bluejays outrebounded Princeton 37-26 and never trailed by more than four points.

Trey Alexander scored 19 points, Arthur Kaluma had 10 and Ryan Nembhard put up nine points and eight assists for Creighton.

Princeton (23-9) was vying to become the second No. 15 seed ever to make the Elite Eight, but the Tigers couldn’t match the feat of New Jersey neighbor Saint Peter’s last year.

“That (Princeton) is one heck of a basketball team,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said on the TV broadcast. “Incredibly hard to prepare for even when you have three or four days to do it. But really proud of these guys. I thought we dug in a little bit better defensively in the second half.”

Ryan Langborg led the Tigers with a career-high 26 points on 11-of-17 shooting, and Tosan Evbuomwan supplied 24 points, nine assists and six rebounds.

Creighton made eight shots in a row en route to a 10-for-13 start from the floor and a 24-16 lead. Then the Tigers’ Caden Pierce waltzed in for an open dunk, which began to turn the tide for Princeton.

Evbuomwan made his first of two 3-point attempts after he had made nine all season prior to Friday. He scored or assisted on 13 of Princeton’s 19 made field goals in the first half.

Langborg’s 3-pointer with 5:51 left in the half put Princeton back on top, and Evbuomwan assisted Blake Peters on a triple 56 seconds later for a 37-33 lead.

Scheierman soon responded with a 3-pointer to start a 12-5 Creighton run to end the half, with Kalkbrenner scoring the Bluejays’ last seven. Creighton led 47-43 at intermission after shooting 62.1 percent to Princeton’s 51.4 percent.

Kalkbrenner threw home an alley-oop dunk and added a free throw early in the second half. Creighton grew the gap as wide as 68-52 with 12:28 remaining.

The Tigers used a 1-3-1 zone to plug the dam. Evbuomwan made his second 3-pointer during an 8-0 spurt, but he also picked up his fourth foul at the 7:48 mark.

Creighton had a response each time Princeton drew within eight points. Kaluma leapt to save a ball headed out of bounds and hurled it to Kalkbrenner, who fed Alexander for a 3-pointer that made it 76-65 with 4:23 to go.

Princeton got within seven once thanks to four straight points by Evbuomwan. However, Kalkbrenner dropped in a layup and added a wide-open, two-handed dunk with 1:14 left to ice the game.

–Field Level Media

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Nijel Pack scored 26 points to lead fifth-seeded Miami past top-seeded Houston 89-75 in the Midwest Region semifinals on Friday night as the last of the NCAA Tournament’s No. 1 seeds was eliminated.

The fifth-seeded Hurricanes (28-7) advanced to the Elite Eight on Sunday, when they will play the winner of Friday night’s second game between No. 2 Texas and No. 3 Xavier.

The 89 points were the most Houston has given up all season. The previous high was 77.

The Cougars (33-4) came into the game ranked second in Division I at 56.6 points allowed per game, but Miami stormed past that mark with 12:53 left in the game.

Houston was the last remaining No. 1 seed in this year’s tournament. With Alabama’s 71-64 loss earlier in the evening to San Diego State in the South Region semifinals, this is the first season since seeding began in 1979 that no No. 1 seeds reached the Elite Eight. Texas is the final No. 2 seed in the field.

Pack was familiar with playing at Sprint Center thanks to his two years at Kansas State, before he transferred to Miami before this season.

“It’s a blessing to be back in this arena. My teammates found me early and got me going. They kept feeding me and telling me to shoot the ball. I tried to have confidence that it would keep going in,” said Pack, who hit 8 of 12 from the floor overall, including 7 of 10 from long range.

Miami coach Jim Larranaga said he didn’t “know how far some of those shots were. People ask me what I say to him when he misses one of those long shots. I say, ‘Keep shooting.’ ”

Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said his team wanted to make Pack take those long-range shots.

“The Pack kid … some of the shots he made were shots you hope he takes. The problem was he made them. Some of those were howitzers,” Sampson said.

Miami had five players score in double figures. Isaiah Wong had 20 points, Jordan Miller 13, Norchad Omier 12 and Wooga Poplar 11. Omier grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds.

Houston was led by Jarace Walker with 16 points. Jamal Shead added 15, and Marcus Sasser and Tramon Mark each had 14. Walker added 11 rebounds and four blocks.

“Obviously, they were the better team tonight. Unfortunately, one off night and you go home in this tournament,” Sampson said.

Miami scored the first five points of the second half to open its largest lead to that point at 47-36. However, Shead’s first seven points of the game helped Houston climb back to within 49-45.

After Houston trimmed the deficit to two, Miami stretched the lead to 70-53 on a 19-4 run, featuring three 3-pointers from Pack.

The Cougars could get no closer than 11 points the rest of the game.

“We just never could get a foothold. We kept climbing and we’d get ahead of them, but we just couldn’t put stops together,” Sampson said. … “They’re good. I don’t think there’s a lot of difference between the two teams, but tonight there was.”

Miami took a 42-36 lead into halftime. Houston owned the nation’s best field-goal percentage defense (36.1 percent), but the Hurricanes shot 46.9 percent (15-for-32) before the break, including 42.9 percent (6-for-14) from 3-point range.

Miami ended the night at 51.7 percent from the floor, 44 percent (11 of 25) from long distance. Houston shot 37.5 percent overall, including 29 percent (9 of 31) from beyond the arc.

–David Smale, Field Level Media

LOUISVILLE — Underdog San Diego State kicked No. 1 overall seed Alabama out of the NCAA Tournament to advance to the Elite Eight on Friday night in Louisville.

A 71-64 win sends the fifth-seeded Aztecs into the South Region final on Sunday against sixth-seeded Creighton, which downed 15th-seeded Princeton 86-75 in the Kentucky nightcap.

“San Diego State is a very good team,” Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats said. “When you get to the Sweet 16, you know all the teams are good at this point. You know, they’re tough, physical, veteran group. It’s a huge accomplishment to get to the Sweet 16.”

Alabama All-American Brandon Miller was almost entirely erased in the second half, shooting 1 of 10 and finishing with nine points and six turnovers.

“I think we came in this game prepared as much as we can possibly,” Miller said. “I think our shot-making could have been better. Our shot choices could have been better.”

San Diego State’s Darrion Trammell had a game-high 21 points, making nine of his 16 attempts from the field and 3 of 5 from 3-point range.

San Diego State’s relentless, stranglehold defense and balanced offensive attack combined to quiet the Crimson Tide, who made 3 of 27 3-point attempts and just 14 of 28 layups, a testament to the Aztecs’ static-cling.

Alabama (31-6), now 1-9 all time in the Sweet 16, was led by Mark Sears’ 16 points and 10 rebounds. Miller (3 of 19), Sears (4 of 11), and Jahvon Quinerly (4 of 13) couldn’t catch fire and the Crimson Tide shot 32.4 percent for the game.

Matt Bradley hit two free throws with 45 seconds left that allowed San Diego State (30-6) to exhale slightly after consecutive empty possessions. Bradley’s pair put the Aztecs up by four, and San Diego State got the ball back after a review upheld the out-of-bounds call on the floor with 34.5 ticks remaining.

San Diego State’s Micah Parrish made 3 of 4 free throws in the closing seconds to seal the win.

Alabama gathered a missed free throw and Sears rebounded a missed 3-pointer all alone for a layup and a 66-64 score, pushing closer after the previous possession was decided on a held ball out of a trap in front of the Alabama bench gave possession to the Crimson Tide and Sears converted a three-point play to make it 66-62 San Diego State with 1:08 left.

San Diego State challenged every touch from Miller, who picked up two fouls in the first five minutes of the game and never had his rhythm.

Bradley drained a jumper from 15 feet for a 66-57 lead with 2:12 left in the game. Bradley scored in the lane with 3:09 left to stake the Aztecs to what was their biggest lead of the game — nine points — but a lob to Alabama 7-footer Charles Bediako, the Crimson Tide’s first fast-break points of the game, made it 64-57 when San Diego State took a timeout 50 seconds later.

San Diego State owned the pace and won the clash of styles in the first half, choking Alabama’s perimeter shooting and holding Miller to four points on 2-of-9 shooting. The Crimson Tide made 1 of 11 from 3-point range in the first half and trailed 28-23 at the break.

Alabama heated up early in the second half and led 48-39 with 11:40 to play before San Diego recovered to grab the first-ever Elite Eight berth for a Mountain West Conference team.

“When they came out energized the second half, they built a lead,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said. “We took a timeout I think right by the 12-minute mark, and then Darrion came out of the timeout and hit a three and a two, and he changed the momentum.”

–Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media

UConn was unceremoniously sent home in the first round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, so the Huskies were flying well under the radar when this year’s version of March Madness began.

Three games later, nobody is taking the fourth-seeded Huskies lightly. They have won those games by an average of 20.7 points to crash the West Region final and will battle third-seeded Gonzaga on Saturday night in Las Vegas for a spot in the Final Four.

The fabulous run has UConn (28-8) in the Elite Eight for the first time since winning the national title in 2014. Taking the next step won’t be easy, as the Bulldogs (31-5) have won 12 straight games to reach the Elite Eight for the fifth time in the past eight NCAA Tournaments.

But after thrashing Arkansas 88-65 in the Sweet 16 for their 12th win in 14 games, the Huskies are playing as well as any team in the tournament. And the journey began after that embarrassing 70-63 loss to New Mexico State 12-plus months ago.

Coach Dan Hurley met with Adama Sanogo, Jordan Hawkins and Andre Jackson Jr. and apologized for not putting more talent around them. He promised it would be different in March 2023.

“We were in Coach’s office, and he really just told us things are going to change now,” Jackson recalled. “And he just told us we’re all captains. And we hold part of that on our shoulders, too — we’re going to take part of that blame when you feel that pain.

“We really, from that moment on, from that day on, we just really held each other to a higher standard and just told each other we’re going to push for a national championship.”

Sanogo, UConn’s star, has team-best averages of 17.3 points and 7.5 rebounds. He is averaging 23.3 points and 9.7 rebounds and shooting 75 percent from the field (33 of 44) in the NCAA Tournament.

Hawkins had a team-best 24 points against Arkansas to raise his season average to 16.1. He has knocked down a team-high 98 3-point baskets. Jackson is a playmaker who averages 6.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game.

Together, they helped the Huskies become a dangerous team.

“We’re playing our best basketball right now because we know we have a good team,” Sanogo said. “We play for UConn. UConn is the place, people care about you, people want to see you do good. We know it’s awesome, and every time we play, we want to show people wrong.”

Gonzaga coach Mark Few doesn’t need much convincing.

“I think they’re playing probably better than anybody in the tournament right now,” Few said. “I’ve got to see them several times. They’ve just done a fabulous job of roster building. The pieces they have fit really, really well.”

The Bulldogs rallied from a 13-point halftime deficit to post a 79-76 win over second-seeded UCLA in the Sweet 16. Julian Strawther’s go-ahead 3-pointer with 7.2 seconds left was the big shot.

“Nothing was going our way,” Strawther said. “We weren’t playing our brand of basketball at all through that whole first half. We flipped that switch. And there’s not a lot of teams in the country who could bond together and make a run like that.”

Gonzaga star Drew Timme put on a show with 36 points and 13 rebounds. He set an NCAA Tournament record with his 10th career 20-point outing.

The Bulldogs outrebounded UCLA 50-26 and collected 16 on the offensive end. Things might be tougher against the Huskies, who outrebounded Arkansas 43-31.

“It’s going to be a battle,” Timme said. “We’ll have to play hard and gritty, and we’re going to have to get dirty and nasty, do whatever it takes to win because they have a hell of a duo, big-man punch. It’s going to be a war.”

UConn has won three of the previous five meetings with Gonzaga, including a 67-62 victory to reach the 1999 Final Four en route to winning the national championship.

–Field Level Media

NEW YORK — The college basketball world did not harbor high expectations for either Florida Atlantic or Kansas State entering the NCAA Tournament, most prognosticators focusing more on the top seeds and the brand names.

But March has a way of creating new legacies.

Following dramatic victories Thursday in the Sweet 16, third-seeded Kansas State (26-9) and ninth-seeded Florida Atlantic (34-3) will meet Saturday in the East Region final with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

“I’ve always heard that it’s probably the hardest game to win,” Kansas State first-year coach Jerome Tang said. “Both teams know that they’re right there.”

Playing in his native New York, All-American guard Markquis Nowell starred for Kansas State against seventh-seeded Michigan State. He finished with 20 points and an NCAA Tournament-record 19 assists, including lobbing the go-ahead alley-oop dunk to Keyontae Johnson in overtime to lift the Wildcats to a 98-93 win.

Nowell needed to be helped off the court early in the second half with a right ankle injury, but he quickly returned. By Friday it was being described as a “tweak.” Nowell told reporters his ankle is 85-90 percent good to go.

While Florida Atlantic is making its second NCAA appearance and won tournament games for the first time in program history, Kansas State is making its third trip to the Elite Eight since 2010, under three different coaches. The Wildcats are aiming for their first Final Four since 1964.

Still, there were some lean years in the tough-as-nails Big 12 before Tang took over and recruited players like Johnson out of the transfer portal.

“My goal was to try to change a program,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who had a team-high 22 points Thursday, leads Kansas State with 17.7 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. Nowell averages 17.2 points, 8.1 assists and 2.5 steals.

The Owls are studying up on the Wildcats’ floor general.

“On-ball pressure is a big key,” Florida Atlantic guard Bryan Greenlee said, “and also the help-side defense, and making sure that the rest of the defenders see their man and don’t get back-door cut and different things like that that just give him an opportunity to find open people.”

Thursday’s nightcap, while not nearly as high-scoring, still provided some theatrics. The Owls trailed most of the game up until 12:08 left, when they embarked on a lengthy 18-2 run to overtake fourth-seeded Tennessee and win 62-55.

It marked the Owls’ 10th straight win, a streak that began Feb. 23. In those 10 games, six different players have led them in scoring, which coach Dusty May felt was a testament to Florida Atlantic’s balanced offense.

“Extremely excited to still be playing, surviving and advancing,” May said. “Like much of the year, (Thursday) night is a great example of different guys stepping up for our team in a cumulative effort.”

Case in point: Michael Forrest, who averages 8.5 ppg but went scoreless in the Owls’ first two tournament wins over No. 8 Memphis and No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson. Forrest scored eight straight points, including back-to-back 3-pointers, to fuel the pivotal 18-2 run.

Forrest said his teammates sensed he was putting too much pressure on himself and helped keep him upbeat. Before the Tennessee game, he found another way to unwind.

“I took a little walk to Central Park and went there and just relaxed,” Forrest said. “That’s really been the biggest difference, just being able to relax and just release from all the city stuff.”

Johnell Davis leads Florida Atlantic with 13.9 points per game and scored a game-high 15 on Thursday. Alijah Martin averages 13.0 ppg and Vladislav Goldin adds 10.2 points and a team-high 6.4 rebounds per game.

“(May) has a terrific team,” Tang said. “And I’m telling you, if you just took the names off the front of the jerseys and you line them up against anybody in America, you’d say they’re a high-major team. They are a high-major team, but they’re high-major competitors, too.”

–By Adam Zielonka, Field Level Media