Louisville’s Darius Perry, right, and Tennessee’s Grant Williams fight for control of the basketball during the first half of an NIT Season Tip-Off semifinal Wednesday night in Brooklyn, N.Y. Tennessee beat Louisville 92-81.NEW YORK – Kansas and Tennessee were tested in the semifinals of the NIT Season Tip-Off men’s basketball tournament. Both passed, and now they will face off in the championship game Friday night.
Dedric Lawson had a double-double with 26 points and 12 rebounds to lead No. 2 Kansas to a 77-68 win over Marquette in the second semifinal Wednesday night. Earlier in the evening, No. 5 Tennessee topped Louisville 92-81.
Five Tennessee players scored in double figures, with the Volunteers led by Grant Williams’ 24 points.
Admiral Schofield added 20 points for the Vols (4-0), who shot 54 percent from the field. The win was the 664th of Tennessee coach Rick Barnes’ career. It moved him past John Wooden on the all-time Division I wins list.
“It means I’ve been around a while,” said Barnes, who is in his fourth season leading the Vols and also has been a head coach at George Mason, Providence, Clemson and Texas.
With Tennessee ahead 77-70 with 6:51 left, Louisville coach Chris Mack got called for a technical foul when he expressed unhappiness with a contact foul called on junior forward Dwayne Sutton. The Cardinals never recovered, trailing by as many as 15 points down the stretch.
“I complained during the game, so I’m not going to again complain now,” Mack said. “I thought when Dwayne got the ball it was completely clean. It’s basketball. I shouldn’t have received the technical. That’s my fault. It’ll be the last one of this year.”
Jordan Nwora had 23 points and 10 assists to lead Louisville (3-1).
Lamonte Turner had 13 points with two steals for the Vols, while Jordan Bone and John Fulkerson added 11 apiece, with Bone dishing out a team-best six of Tennessee’s 22 assists. Turner had four assists, as did Schofield and Williams, who grabbed nine rebounds and blocked three shots.
In the second semifinal, Marquette (3-1) led by as many as 12 points in the first half before taking a 47-38 lead into the break. Then came the Jayhawks’ run.
“Coach got on us,” Dedric Lawson said of Bill Self’s halftime message. “I won’t tell you the word he used, but Coach got on us about being tough and going out there and defending our man. We had a couple adjustments in the second half, and that helped us out in the 22-0 run.”
Marquette went 0-of-10 from the field to start second half as Kansas (4-0) regained the lead in commanding fashion. The Golden Eagles finally scored a basket nine minutes into the second half on Joey Hauser’s 3-pointer to make it 60-50. His brother, Sam Hauser, led the Golden Eagles with 20 points, while Markus Howard had 18.
“It definitely brought some awareness for us to see what we can do defensively, because that was a great offensive team that had great shooters, a great point guard and a great wing that could make shots,” Lawson said. “I think that was a pretty good offensive team, so to hold them to all those stops was pretty good for us going forward.”
The Jayhawks got 16 points from Lagerald Vick, while Devon Dotson chipped in with 10 points, four assists and three steals.
While Kansas could vault itself into the top ranking with a win against Tennessee after No. 1 Duke’s loss to No. 3 Gonzaga on Wednesday at the Maui Invitational, Self sees Friday’s matchup as a litmus test for a team ripe with underclassmen.
“We need this game more than Tennessee needs this game,” Self said, “because we’re young and we’re not as tough as we need to be, and we’ll have to be tough on Friday with the way they play or they could certainly make us look really bad. So I think it’s a great game for our guys to see where we’re at, without question.”
Tipoff is set for 9 p.m. at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, with ESPN televising the game.