DAYTON, Ohio – The team with the losing record pulled off the most fantastic 5-minute finish in NCAA tournament history.

The most surprising thing? Western Kentucky didn’t even think it was all that extraordinary.

It was, in every way.

With a president and a prime minister sitting in the front row behind the basket, the Hilltoppers turned up their full-court press and overcame a 16-point deficit in the last 5 minutes on Tuesday night. Their 59-58 victory over Mississippi Valley State christened it as the tournament of comebacks.

Who better to do it than the longest of long shots?

“Wow,” coach Ray Harper said, his face still flush with March emotion. “I don’t know where to begin.”

With the comeback, of course. There’s never been one quite like it.

T.J. Price’s three-point play with 33 seconds to go completed the Hilltoppers’ unprecedented rally in front of President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who headed out at the buzzer.

The NCAA called it the biggest deficit overcome in the final 5 minutes of a tournament game. The previous best: Illinois overcame a 15-point deficit in the last 5 minutes to beat Arizona 90-89 in overtime in a regional final in 2005.

Madness indeed.

“It’s a crazy feeling,” said Derrick Gordon, who had 11 points. “That’s the president of the United States coming to watch our game. We wanted to put on a show. Things didn’t work our way for the first 35 minutes, but we came away with the W.

“I’m sure he liked what he saw.”

He saw the only squad with a losing record in the 68-team field get out of its own way long enough to do something special. The Hilltoppers (16-18) shot only 30 percent from the field, turned the ball over an incredible 28 times and won.

The Hilltoppers have rallied from double-digit deficits in each of their last three games, including two in the Sun Belt Conference tournament. Their latest comeback was the biggest of them all.

“We’re used to doing it,” Gordon said. “We did it all throughout the Sun Belt tournament. No matter how much we were losing by, we were just going to keep on fighting until the buzzer went off. That’s something that teams don’t know about us.”

Western Kentucky moves on to play Kentucky- the top seed in the South Regional- on Thursday in Louisville, an all-Bluegrass game for the second round.

MVSU (21-13) caught the president’s eye while pulling ahead, but couldn’t close it out. Kevin Burwell scored 20 points and locked eyes with the president after swishing a 3-pointer while the Delta Devils built their big lead. Obama smiled back.

“Like I said yesterday, we were just trying to put on a show for him,” Burwell said. “In the heat of the moment, I just pointed at him a couple of times. That was it.”

Obama- an avid basketball fan who fills out an NCAA bracket each year- spent a lot of time explaining the nuances of the game to Cameron. Obama has picked Kentucky as one of his Final Four teams.

A smaller school from a corner of the commonwealth became the star of the First Four.

The Hilltoppers were the losers’ favorite in the bracket- the first team since Coppin State in 2009 to make it to the tournament with a losing record.

And that didn’t even begin to tell their story.

A team featuring seven freshmen lost 11 of its first 16 games. The low point came on Jan. 5, when Louisiana-Lafayette somehow managed to get six players on the floor for the winning shot in overtime. And that wasn’t the worst indignity that day. Only 2,137 fans took advantage of a $ 1 ticket promotion, showing that very few considered the Hilltoppers worth a buck.

The next day, coach Ken McDonald was fired, replaced by Harper, an assistant. The Hilltoppers responded by losing their next three games.

Slowly, they grew form a young, bad team into one that found its stride at tournament time. They won four games in four days for the Sun Belt’s automatic berth.

And here they were on Tuesday, making an even bigger comeback in the NCAA tournament before an audience that seemed to add to both teams’ jitters at the outset.

There was no avoiding the guest list. During the first timeout, photographers from the White House press corps went on the court to snap photos. The two referees on that side of the court shook the president’s hand.

MVSU led most of the way and seemed to have everything in control until Western Kentucky went to a full-court press.

“I thought it was just our guys got rattled, got excited, and got a little bit beside themselves,” coach Sean Woods said. “Normally in a situation like that, maybe it’s one guy or two. But when it’s all five, it was like a snowball effect.”

Burwell had a chance to tie the game with a 3 in the closing seconds. Cor-J Cox had a putback at the buzzer that left the Delta Devils a point short.

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: WKU sets NCAA record with 59-58 win over MVSU (Yahoo! Sports).

WASHINGTON – Basketball fan-in-chief President Barack Obama is giving British Prime Minister David Cameron a front-row seat to March Madness, taking his European partner to an NCAA tournament basketball game in Ohio, an election swing state.

Obama and Cameron are attending a “First Four” matchup in Dayton, Ohio, between Mississippi Valley State and Western Kentucky on Tuesday night, a gesture of goodwill during Cameron’s official visit to the United States and a way for an incumbent president to reach sports fans in an election year.

The White House said the trip to the NCAA tournament game was intended to showcase the special relationship between the two key allies during Cameron’s three-day visit. Obama and Cameron will discuss the upcoming NATO and G-8 summits on Wednesday, followed by a state dinner at the White House.

Obama and Cameron were scheduled to appear in a live halftime interview on truTV, which was airing the game, with sportscaster Clark Kellogg. Kellogg interviewed Obama at halftime of a Duke-Georgetown game in 2010 and spoke with the president later that year during a White House game of “HORSE” aired on CBS during the NCAA tournament.

Obama was also maintaining his tradition of discussing his NCAA tournament bracket picks on ESPN, the sports network he watches on a daily basis. The president’s selections for the men’s tournament were being released Wednesday morning.

Republicans panned the trip, saying many Americans would prefer Obama to focus on more pressing issues.

“While showing off our amazing college basketball teams is great, many Americans struggling to find jobs, dealing with soaring gas prices, or concerned with our rising deficit and debt would probably like the president spend at least as much time dealing with those issues,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Obama’s quick trip to Ohio gives him a chance to connect with basketball fans and generate attention in Ohio, which he carried in the 2008 election and is considered one of the top toss-up states in 2012. The trip comes one week after Republican front-runner Mitt Romney captured Ohio’s GOP primary.

It also lets Obama lavish praise and attention on Cameron at a time of weighty foreign policy challenges in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. Britain has been an important U.S. ally in Afghanistan and the bombing campaign in Libya that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi.

Cameron is frequently spotted running near his official Downing Street residence, flanked by his security detail, and follows sports like tennis and cricket. But he’s not much of a basketball fan; British Ambassador Peter Westmacott told reporters in Washington on Monday that Cameron was “busy briefing himself on March Madness.”

Basketball has been a big part of Obama’s life. At his Hawaii high school, Obama frequently carried a basketball along with his school books and bonded with his teammates on the court. His brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, played college basketball at Princeton and is now head coach at Oregon State.

The president regularly plays pickup basketball and keeps close tabs on his favorite NBA team, the Chicago Bulls. In a recent interview, the president said he gets League Pass on his iPad, letting him watch out-of-market NBA games on his tablet computer.

Obama kicked off the basketball season with a Veterans Day game between Michigan State and North Carolina on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson in November, enjoying a game on the aircraft carrier that took Osama bin Laden’s body to a burial at sea after the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.

The president said in an interview last month with journalist Bill Simmons that the “mythology of sports” is deeply embedded in the U.S., allowing viewers to discern who is winning and who is losing- a principle that could easily be transferred to politics.

“People- for all our differences politically, regionally, economically- most folks understand sports. Probably because it’s one of the few places where it’s a true meritocracy,” Obama said. “Ultimately, who’s winning, who’s losing, who’s performing, who’s not- it’s all laid out there.”

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Associated Press writer Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

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Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ – Ken- Thomas

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more NCAA basketball news see: Obama, Cameron to attend NCAA tournament game (Yahoo! Sports).

CBSSports.com wire reports
March 6, 2012

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — South Dakota State senior Griffan Callahan didn’t like the looks on his teammates’ faces at halftime against Western Illinois.

The Jackrabbits were trailing, and they couldn’t seem to make a shot.

“I told them just to not give up and stay positive,” he said. “Our shots weren’t falling, and some of the guys were down. We can’t have that in the locker room. I told them we’re going to win this.”

Callahan made good on his promise, making two free throws to force overtime and then hitting the winning 3-pointer in a 52-50 victory in the Summit League championship game Tuesday night.

Those locker-room frowns were turned upside down as the Jackrabbits celebrated earning the Summit’s automatic NCAA tournament bid. They’ll make their first NCAA appearance since becoming full-fledged Division I members four years ago.

“I haven’t had many times in my life where I felt I was just dreaming,” said Scott Nagy, who has been SDSU’s coach since 1995.

“I was looking for my wife and my dad,” he said, choking up, “because they went through it with me. It was hard on them, too. I’m so pleased for them, too.”

Callahan made the go-ahead 3-pointer with 1:30 left, and the Jackrabbits (27-7) survived some nervous moments.

“I knew it was going in because I knew it was Griff,” Nagy said. “When we’ve made big shots this season, it’s been Griffan Callahan who’s made the shot. When he took that, just deep down I knew it was going in.”

Western Illinois had a couple opportunities to tie or take the lead. The Leathernecks turned it over when Ceola Clark lost control of the ball and committed a shot-clock violation. The same thing happened to SDSU on the other end, with Nate Wolters unable to get his shot from the baseline off before the clock ran out.

Tommie Tyler had the last chance after the Leathernecks got the ball back with 10 seconds left, but he couldn’t get his short shot to fall. Terell Parks rebounded but was stripped by SDSU’s Brayden Carlson, who held the ball a moment before the buzzer sounded and SDSU’s students rushed the court.

A Sioux Falls newspaper columnist wrote that it would be the high point in South Dakota sports history if the Jackrabbits made it to the NCAA tournament.

All but a handful of the 6,526 at Sioux Falls arena — 50 miles from SDSU’s campus in Brookings — were wearing the school colors. Most of them were standing the last 10 minutes of regulation and through overtime.

Summit tournament MVP Nate Wolters said no one deserves the NCAA bid more than Nagy, who coached the Jackrabbits during their Division II days.

“He’s been through it all,” Wolters said. “It’s unbelievable, being in Division II and making the transition. To have this kind of year and this finish — well, we’re not finished yet. I’m still soaking it in and probably will enjoy it for a couple days. It should be fun, a first in school history.”

Western Illinois (18-14) lost in its first Summit final since 1997 and was denied its first NCAA berth.

“It didn’t work out,” Tyler said, “but we played our hearts out. They’re a great team.”

Wolters led the Jackrabbits with 14 points and Callahan added 10. Parks led Western Illinois with 19 points.

Western Illinois, picked to finish ninth in the preseason, came to Sioux Falls as the No. 4 seed and upset No. 1 Oral Roberts in the semifinals.

The Leathernecks were the lowest seed since 2006 to make it this far. Before this year, the Leathernecks hadn’t won a Summit tournament game since 1999.

Wolters, who scored 31 points against Southern Utah on 10-of-17 shooting, was just 5 of 22 from the floor.

“He’s one of the best in the country,” Nagy said. “He struggled tonight, but big deal. He’s allowed to struggle once in a while.”

Each team endured long rough patches offensively. South Dakota State’s slump bridged the first and second halves and allowed the Leathernecks to build a 12-point lead. Western Illinois struggled late and let the Jackrabbits come back to force overtime.

The Jackrabbits won despite shooting 35 percent, while Western Illinois shot 40 percent.

There were nine lead changes and four ties early before the Leathernecks held the Jackrabbits scoreless for 6 1/2 minutes and rolled off 10 straight points.

Wolters ended SDSU’s 10:06 stretch without a field goal when he banked in a runner, and he scored again a few minutes later to start a 9-2 spurt that pulled the Jackrabbits to 44-42 with 3 1/2 minutes left in regulation.

The Leathernecks made just one field goal in the last 7:40 of regulation, giving the Jackrabbits ample opportunity to come back.

Callahan’s two free throws made it 44-all with 15.3 seconds left.

The Leathernecks tried to win it on a last shot. Clark let the clock run down under 5 seconds before he ducked under Wolters at the left wing and put up a shot that glanced off the rim just ahead of the buzzer.

“We weren’t good tonight,” Nagy said, “but a lot of that had to do with Western Illinois. We stayed in the game because we defended… Griff made huge plays for us late. He was the senior we needed.”

MySportNews іѕ a sports news digest publication that compiles real time, on demand sports news, articles, аnd resources. This article was distributed by Syndicated Sports news wire and aggregation service, For more college basketball news see: S. Dakota State wins in OT for first NCAA berth.