By Dylan Butler
How sweet it is.
Former Cardozo standout Royal Ivey, one of five seniors on the Texas men’s basketball team, scored a team-high 17 points to lift the Longhorns to a 78-75 win over North Carolina Saturday night in a second-round game in the Atlanta Regional in Denver.
Ivey and No. 3 Texas advance to the Sweet 16 to face upset-minded Xavier, which defeated second-seeded Mississippi State. Tip-off is slated for 7:27 p.m. Friday in Atlanta.
The winner takes on either top-seeded Duke or No. 5 Illinois Sunday for a berth in the Final Four.
“I don’t think we've proved anything right now,” Ivey said after the game. “We all thought we’d get at least this far in the tournament.”
Ivey, who went 9-for-10 from the foul line and also had four assists and five rebounds, is one of four Queens natives still alive in the NCAA tournament. The point guard from Hollis had 15 points and five assists in the Longhorns’ 66-49 win over Princeton in the first round last Thursday.
Taliek Brown and Charlie Villanueva are also in the Sweet 16 after the UConn Huskies defeated DePaul, 72-55, Saturday in Buffalo.
Brown, a senior point guard from LeFrak City who was a standout at St. John’s Prep, had 11 points, six rebounds and four assists, while Villanueva, a Woodhaven native who played at Newtown, had five points and four rebounds in 16 minutes off the bench.
In a 70-53 in a win over Vermont, Brown had 14 points, seven assists and seven rebounds, while Villanueva had one point and three rebounds.
UConn will face No. 6 Vanderbilt in the Phoenix Regional semifinal Thursday at 7:10 p.m. The winner faces either Syracuse or Alabama for a berth in the Final Four.
Mark McCarroll, a former Christ the King standout from Jamaica, had six points and two rebounds for No. 3 Pittsburgh in a 59-55 win over sixth-seeded Wisconsin Sunday in Milwaukee.
The Panthers will take on second-seeded Oklahoma State at the Continental Airlines Arena Thursday at 7:27 p.m.
Uka Agbai, a fifth-year senior out of Archbishop Molloy, had eight points and three rebounds for No. 6 Boston College in a 57-54 loss to Georgia Tech Sunday in Milwaukee.
In the Eagles’ 58-51 first-round win over Utah Friday, the Queens Village native had 10 points, two rebounds and two assists.
In his final career game, Reggie Brown from Flushing, another former Archbishop Molloy standout, had nine points in Richmond’s 76-64 loss to Wisconsin Friday in Milwaukee.
Jamaica native Daon Merritt, who played his high school ball at St. Raymond’s in the Bronx, had two points and two assists off the bench for the 11th-seeded Spiders.
Christ the King grads Clare Droesch and Shay Doron are the only players from Queens still competing in the women’s tournament. The junior forward from Belle Harbor had five points, four assists and three rebounds for Boston College in a 63-48 win over Ohio State in the second round Monday in Columbus, Ohio.
The Eagles will face either Minnesota or Kansas State in the Mideast Regional semifinal Sunday in Norfolk, Va.
Droesch had 11 points, 11 rebounds and five assists in the Eagles’ 58-56 first-round win over Eastern Michigan Saturday.
Doron, a freshman guard from Great Neck, had 19 points, three rebounds and three assists off the bench for Maryland in an 86-85 win over Miami Sunday in Baton Rouge, La.
After advancing to the second round, the Terrapins were scheduled to take on fourth-seeded LSU Tuesday night.
Former Christ the King teammates Amanda LoCascio and Corrine Turner each saw their freshman season at George Washington come to an end Saturday when the eighth-seeded Colonials fell to No. 9 DePaul, 83-45, in Tallahassee, Fla.
LoCascio, a point guard from Maspeth, had four assists and two rebounds and Turner, a forward from Glen Cove, had two points and two rebounds.
Former St. Francis Prep standout Vicki Wancel’s collegiate career came to an end Saturday as Marist fell to Oklahoma, 58-45, in Tempe, Ariz.
The Flushing native had one rebound in three minutes for the Red Foxes.
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
