CHICAGO — Zach Edey draped the net around his neck and had no plans to relinquish it until whenever coach Matt Painter asked for it.
He wanted to soak up every last drop of this moment.
Edey scored 30 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, and No. 5 Purdue hung on to beat Penn State 67-65 in the Big Ten Tournament championship game Sunday.
The Boilermakers (29-5) led by as much as 17 in the second half, only to have the lead shrink to one in the closing seconds. They came away with their second title to go with one in 2009. Not long after, Purdue was named a No. 1 seed in the East Region of the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s a great feeling,” said Edey, who was wearing a tournament championship cap and T-shirt to go with the net dangling from his neck. “Obviously we’ve got two nets, we’ve got two hats with the netting on them, we’ve got two trophies. It rewards the work that you’re putting in and validates all of it.”
Purdue won the Big Ten regular-season championship by three games and looked like it was well on its way to an easy victory in the conference tournament final. But Penn State (22-13) made things interesting down the stretch, particularly in the final minute.
Purdue led 66-60 when Myles Dread nailed a 3 with 16 seconds remaining. Evan Mahaffey then stole Brandon Newman’s inbound pass and fed Camren Wynter for a layup that made it a one-point game with six seconds remaining.
Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer then made a free throw before missing the second. Penn State’s Andrew Funk got the rebound, but after a timeout, Wynter got called for traveling just before the final buzzer.
“We’re fighters, man,” Penn State star Jalen Pickett said. “We got down, but we didn’t want it to end. We wanted to raise that trophy at the end, and we just kept fighting. Made our way back. We started pressing a little bit, causing them problems. That’s us gonna be us. We’re going to try and figure something out and we’re not going to give up until the end.”
American Athletic Conference — Memphis 75, No. 1 Houston 65: Kendric Davis scored 31 points, including 14 in a big run before halftime, and Memphis beat short-handed No. 1 Houston 75-65 in the American Athletic Conference Tournament championship game in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday.
DeAndre Williams had 16 points and 13 rebounds for coach Penny Hardaway and the Tigers (26-8), who got the league’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid. They are going to March Madness for the second year in a row.
Houston (31-3) was without AAC player of the year Marcus Sasser, who strained his groin in the first half of Saturday’s semifinal game. The senior guard’s status will remain a question mark for the Cougars, who received their first No. 1 NCAA seed since 1983 during the Phi Slama Jama era.
Southeastern Conference — No. 4 Alabama 82, No. 18 Texas A&M 63: Brandon Miller scored 23 points and grabbed 12 rebounds as fourth-ranked Alabama smothered No. 18 Texas A&AM Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee, for the Crimson Tide’s second Southeastern Conference Tournament championship in three seasons.
The Crimson Tide also capped their second SEC double dip in three seasons after picking up their regular-season trophy before Friday’s quarterfinals. The Tide (29-5) extended the program record for wins while adding its eighth tournament title in its 15th appearance; both are second only to Kentucky in the SEC.
Miller, the tournament MVP and AP All-SEC player and newcomer of the year, posted his ninth double-double of the season. The second-seeded Aggies (25-9) dropped to 0-3 in the tournament finale, losing for a second straight year.
Atlantic 10 Conference — Virginia Commonwealth University, 68, Dayton 56: Jalen DeLoach had 13 points and 10 rebounds, and top-seeded VCU beat second-seeded Dayton Sunday in New York to win the Atlantic 10 Tournament for the first time in eight years.
Ace Baldwin added 16 points and seven assists, sending the Rams (27-7) to the NCAA Tournament with a nine-game winning streak and a title that has often alluded them during an otherwise impressive run of consistency.
VCU had played in the A-10 final six times from 2013-21, winning just once in 2015 when it beat Dayton.
Ivy League Conference — Princeton 74, Yale 65: Tosan Evbuomwan scored 21 points, Caden Pierce added a double-double and host Princeton beat Yale Sinday to win the Ivy League Tournament and earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
No. 2 seed Princeton’s victory ends top-seeded Yale’s three-year run as league champion. The Tigers will be making their 26th appearance in the Big Dance and their first since 2017. Yale beat Princeton 66-64 in last season’s championship game.
Pac-12 Conference — No. 8 Arizona 61, No. 2 UCLA 59: Courtney Ramey made a 3-pointer with 16.7 seconds left to put Arizona in front and the eighth-ranked Wildcats beat No. 2 UCLA in Las Vegas on Saturday night in the Pac-12 Tournament championship game.
The Wildcats (28-6) boosted their case for a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. UCLA (29-5) still hopes to land the No. 1 seed in the West and return to Las Vegas in two weeks for the regional.
It was the second year in a row Arizona beat UCLA in the Pac-12 title game.
Big 12 Conference — No. 7 Texas 76, No. 3 Kansas 56: Dylan Disu overcame early foul trouble to score 18 points, Marcus Carr and Sir’Jabari Rice added 17 apiece, and Texas silenced a heavily pro-Kansas crowd in Kansas City on Saturday night in the Big 12 Tournament title.
After going more than two decades without a Big 12 tourney championship, the Longhorns (26-8) have won two of the past three.
With interim coach Rodney Terry leading the way, the Longhorns built a 39-33 lead by halftime, extended it to 20 down the stretch and coasted toward a shower of confetti during a net-cutting celebration.
Jalen Wilson scored 24 points and Joseph Yesufu, pressed into the starting lineup due to injuries, finished with 11 for the Jayhawks (27-7), who had won 13 of their previous 16 trips to the Big 12 finals.
Kansas was once again without Hall of Fame coach Bill Self, who went to the emergency room on the eve of its quarterfinal for an undisclosed medical procedure. Self’s longtime assistant and acting coach, Norm Roberts, called the shots.
Big East Conference — No. 6 Marquette 65, No. 15 Xavier 51: Tyler Kolek and Marquette raced out to a hefty lead and never looked back, beating Xavier in New York to win the Big East Tournament for the first time.
Kolek, the Big East Player of the Year and tournament MVP, had 20 points and eight rebounds as the top-seeded Golden Eagles (28-6) dominated a Big East final on Saturday that brought a Midwestern flavor to Madison Square Garden. David Joplin finished with 12 points.
Adam Kunkel scored 12 points to lead the Musketeers (25-9), who had a five-game winning streak snapped.
Atlantic Coast Conference — No. 21 Duke 59, No. 13 Virginia: Jeremy Roach scored 23 points and Duke locked down defensively to beat Virginia in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday, securing a title in Jon Scheyer’s debut season as the successor to Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Freshman Kyle Filipowski added 20 points and 10 rebounds as the tournament’s most valuable player for the fourth-seeded Blue Devils (26-8), who completed a final-month surge to the top of the ACC to claim a league-record 22nd championship. It also marked the ninth straight win for Duke.
Reece Beekman scored 12 points for Virginia (25-7).
Mountain West Conference — No. 20 San Diego State 62, Utah State 57: Matt Bradley scored 16 points and Jaedon LeDee added 13 to lead San Diego State to a victory Saturday over Utah State in Las Vegas in the Mountain West Tournament championship game.
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