SEATTLE (AP) – It was a game of inches. Not surprisingly, Rick Pitino and a couple of his scrappy guards got it done for Louisville.
Freshman Quentin Snider made the winning free throws Friday and Terry Rozier closed it out with a steal, helping the fourth-seeded Cardinals to a 57-55 victory over 13th-seeded UC Irvine and the tallest player in the tournament, 7-foot-6 Mamadou Ndiaye.
“He looked eight feet to me,” said Pitino, whose team moves on to play Northern Iowa on Sunday for a trip to the Sweet 16.
With the game tied, Snider snagged a rebound in the corner off a long miss by Luke Nelson and drew a foul when Will Davis II crashed into him.
Snider made the free throws with 8.9 seconds left, and the Anteaters (21-13) never got a final shot, thanks to Rozier’s pick of Alex Young.