Prairie View A&M defeats Lehigh 67-55 in the First Four for its first March Madness win

DAYTON, Ohio – Dontae Horne scored 25 points and Cory Wells had 19 points and 11 rebounds as Prairie View A&M earned its first NCAA Tournament victory, 67-55 over Lehigh on Wednesday night in the First Four.

“Definitely gratifying,” coach Bryan Smith said. “A heck of a basketball game. We’re definitely excited to survive and advance and move on to the first round on Friday night.”

Lance Williams added 10 points for the Panthers (19-17), making their third tournament appearance after going 5-27 last season. They advance as the No. 16 seed in the South Region to face top seed and defending national champion Florida.

“As basketball players you watch every NCAA Tournament, and just to think that you’re here now and you’ll be playing the team who just won last year," Wells said. “We’re going to go out there and compete regardless.”

Horne also had seven rebounds and four steals. Horne, Wells and Williams each played all 40 minutes.

Lehigh leading scorer Nasir Whitlock, the Patriot League Tournament MVP, went scoreless for more than 26 minutes and finished with five points. He was 2-of-15 shooting.

The last time Whitlock did not reach double figures was Nov. 9, when he had two points in a 69-47 loss at West Virginia.

“Definitely not the way I think anybody up here thought it was going to go,” Whitlock said. “But that’s just basketball. Sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. Today is one of those days where I thought we couldn’t really get too much going.”

Hank Alvey led Lehigh (18-17) with 23 points and 15 rebounds. He was the only scorer in double digits for the Mountain Hawks.

Prairie View A&M has won eight straight, including a 72-66 victory over Southern in the SWAC championship game.

Lehigh, in the tournament for the sixth time, won the Patriot League Tournament by beating Boston University 74-60 in the title game. The lone NCAA Tournament victory for the Mountain Hawks was an upset of Duke in 2012.

Andrew Urosevic hit consecutive 3-pointers, the second benefiting from a kind bounce, to give Lehigh its largest lead at 23-15. But just when it appeared Lehigh might start to pull away, Wells scored five straight points — including a 3 — to help the Panthers get back into the game.

Lehigh led 29-27 at halftime despite Whitlock, who averages 21 points per game, being scoreless. The Mountain Hawks were 3 of 13 from 3-point range in the opening half.

Whitlock missed his first nine shots before connecting on a 3 with 13:12 remaining.

“We’ve got a great player in Nasir Whitlock, but he had somebody blanketed in front of him all night long,” Lehigh coach Brett Reed said. “It was harder for him to get angles and opportunities to really finish at the rim or get the separation that he needed.”

With the Mountain Hawks' top scorer held in check, the Panthers extended their lead to 51-41 on a jumper by Wells with 8:34 left.

“I think the first time we were here in 2019, we got off to a great start,” Smith said. “I think we were up by 11 on Fairleigh Dickinson at halftime, but we didn’t finish. The main thing was to finish, and I think we did that. I think we defended. We flew around.”

The Panthers mostly credited Williams for shutting down Whitlock.

“We had to shout out to Lance Williams, our pit bull,” Horne said. “Lance don’t care about stats. He don’t care about scoring. He did his job tonight. He's (Whitlock) averaging 21, so that says a lot about Lance’s defense.”

Up next

Prairie View A&M faces Florida on Friday night in Tampa, Florida.

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AP March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness