Buzzer-beaters reign supreme on a chaotic Saturday

What do Wolverines, Black Knights, and the Mean Green have in common besides sounding like original series Scooby Doo villains?

If you’re anything like me — meaning you stayed home all day to watch college basketball, only leaving the safety and comfort of your screens and couch cushions to walk to 7-Eleven for a big fat soda — you know that teams named after all three of those teams won in exciting fashion today.

Indeed, on a hectic Saturday where favorites around the country were on the menu, the Utah Valley Wolverines, Army Black Knights, and North Texas Mean Green all managed to deliver their own sensational finishes:

How Green Was My [Utah] Valley

Things haven’t been entirely successful in Utah Valley’s first post-Pope season, and the absence of impact players like Jake Toolson and Ben Nakwaasah has certainly been felt. Riding a three-game losing streak into today’s matchup with UT Rio Grande Valley, the Wolverines were on a mission to bounce back after two consecutive WAC beatdowns.

Fortunately for them, senior guard TJ Washington put on a stellar show, putting up 25 points on a hapless Vaqueros defense. Despite all of that, the moment of the game belonged to a different Wolverine, as Isaiah White provided all those on hand in Orem with some clutch heroics:

Good Knight, and Good Luck

Army has fallen almost 80 spots on KenPom since the season began. Saint Louis is the only team in the country that shoots free worse than they do. Yet in a conference where it seems as if the Colgate Raiders play on a level far above that of the remainder of the league, the Black Knights have created opportunities for themselves at the expense of their similarly troubled Patriot League contemporaries.

This afternoon, losing by two points to Loyola (MD), Josh Caldwell got off an open corner three with time winding down. The ensuing shot took perhaps the friendliest bounce to ever bounce:

The [Mean] Green Mile

At the conclusion of Saturday’s matchup with the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, North Texas’ Javion Hamlet ran the length of the basketball court, approximately a mile or something like that, in order to deliver a floater that gave the Mean Green their first win in Ruston, Louisiana, SINCE HARRY S. TRUMAN WAS PRESIDENT.