College Basketball, Ncaa Regional Final | featured news

The regional finals are set after two days of games that separated the contenders from the pretenders, the upstarts from the just starting to get serious....

Connecticut, the No. 1 seed in the West Regional, beat Missouri 82-75 on Saturday for the first team to qualify of the Big East's four that reached the regional finals.

The second berth was assured as soon as the East Regional semifinals were over on Thursday. Villanova earned the trip to Detroit with a 78-76 victory over top-seeded Pittsburgh in the final.

Dante Cunningham scored 14 points with 11 rebounds and third-seeded Villanova beat Duke for the first time in more than 50 years, taking advantage of the Blue Devils’ poor shooting to win 77-54 Thursday night and advance to the NCAA regional final.

Hasheem Thabeet scored 15 points and had 15 rebounds, and Connecticut overcame a sluggish first half to defeat Purdue 72-60 in the NCAA West Regional semifinals on Thursday.

Levance Fields took the big shots himself, hitting a 3-pointer with 50.9 seconds left, then scoring off his steal as the top-seeded Panthers reached the regional finals for the first time in 35 years with a 60-55 win over Xavier on Thursday night.