North Texas upsets Purdue for first NCAA Tournament win in program history

With 5.8 seconds on the overtime clock, Javion Hamlet stood on the opposite end of the court as free throws were being shot. His North Texas team was going to win.

But he had a few minutes to shout where everyone could see. He looked up at the Purdue fans as they were streaming out. Then he went over to the North Texas fans to celebrate. His performance had carried the Mean Green to a 78-69 upset win at Lucas Oil Stadium, and he was soaking up the moment of stardom.

It was the first NCAA Tournament win in the history of North Texas basketball. Hamlet had 24 points and 11 rebounds. Mardrez McBride had 16 points, each bucket more clutch than the last. And more importantly, every time that Purdue had a run, North Texas had one to answer.

After leading for more than 30 minutes, North Texas allowed Purdue all the way back before pulling away in the final minutes, not unlike the conference tournament games it won to get to this point.

North Texas scored the first seven points of the overtime. It started with a Thomas Bell 3-pointer. Center Zachary Simmons scored his first two points. Then Hamlet hit a patented floater. All of a sudden, the Mean Green put themselves in position to win.

The lead was precarious at times. Midway through the second half, Purdue hit an and-one to bring the North Texas lead within one.

As the foul sent the teams to timeout late in the second half, a once dormant Purdue crowd came to a roar. At that moment, it seemed that a valiant effort for the 13-seeded Mean Green might have hit its natural end point.

But as they did all night when faced with a run, they responded. Hamlet got to the basket, the first of eight straight points.

It was the second stretch in the game in which Hamlet scored eight consecutive points while no one else on the court could get one. The first extended a three-point lead in the first half. The latter two shots of that run came as the shot clock expired.

The clutch shooting sent contingent of green-clad fans in the cavernous football stadium into a roar. They were severely outnumbered by the hometown Boilermakers crowd, which only had an hour drive north. But as North Texas kept its stranglehold on the lead, in so doing it kept the fans quiet.

Simmons really struggled. He committed two early fouls and sat the final 13 minutes of the first half. When the second half started, he was overmatched. Ten of the first 12 rebounds of the second half went to Purdue. He also committed two consecutive turnovers at the four-minute mark of the second half.

But he stepped up in the overtime, knocking home a floater for his first two points of the game. Then he swatted away a Trevion Williams shot to get his team possession.

This was just the first win of the NCAA Tournament for the Mean Green. But it was the fifth-consecutive win-or-go-home contest.

With 13 minutes left of the first round of the Conference-USA Tournament, North Texas was tied with a three-win Middle Tennessee team. From that point, it’s reeled off five consecutive wins, each more heart-stopping than the last.

And on Friday night, it came into a de facto road gymnasium and sent the fans streaming to the exits with less than a minute to go. The game was played with a 12-point stretch the whole way. North Texas never led by more than 11 and Purdue’s largest lead was 3-2.

After the game ended, Purdue star Trevion Williams had to be basically helped off the court amid the emotion of the loss. On the other side of the court, the North Texas team got as close at it could to its faithful, jumping and celebrating the 30th ever 13th seed to win an NCAA Tournament game.