PROVIDENCE, R.I. — McNeese State men’s basketball coach Will Wade, with his boombox-toting team manager in tow, gave this edition of March Madness its first bracket-busting upset.
The Midwest Region’s 12th-seeded Cowboys used a stifling first half to build a 24-point lead, then held off a late charge by No. 5 seed Clemson for the program’s first NCAA Division I tournament victory, a 69-67 win in the round of 64 on Thursday at Amica Mutual Pavilion.
“We have broken every record in the book,” said Wade, who had already secured the first back-to-back appearances in the D-I tourney for the Cowboys, whose only other times reaching were in 1989 and 2002. “This was the last one to get. We want to keep this going.”
Wade, a 42-year-old Nashville native and a former student manager and graduate assistant at Clemson, and the Cowboys (28-6) advance to face fourth-seeded Purdue (23-11) on Saturday in Providence. The Big Ten’s Boilermakers, who were national runners-up last season, beat 13th-seeded High Point 75-63 on Thursday.
McNeese State’s Brandon Murray scored 14 of his 21 points in the first half, when the Southland Conference program from Lake Charles, Louisiana, held the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Tigers (27-7) — who reached the NCAA Elite Eight a year ago — to 13 points. After falling behind by as many as 24 points in the second half, though, the Tigers rallied, erasing most of a 12-point deficit in the final minute before running out of time.