Destiny Harden’s instructions were simple.
There were six seconds left when No. 9 seed Miami called a timeout. No. 1 Indiana had just tied the game 68-68 in the famous Assembly Hall. The Hurricanes, vying for their first trip to the Sweet 16 since 1992, needed to draw something up to finish this off in front of a raucous crowd.
In the heat of the moment in the final huddle, associate head coach Fitzroy Anthony told Harden exactly what to do.
“He told me face-up and win the f—ing game, excuse my language,” Harden later told the ESPN broadcast.
Harden took Anthony’s advice literally. She received the inbound pass in the paint, faced up and sank a jumper that gave the Hurricanes a 70-68 lead with 3.3 seconds remaining. Jasmyne Roberts then clinched the biggest win in program history when she stole the ball from Hoosiers guard Chloe Moore-McNeil as the clock ticked down.
“I always tell my team, ‘Act like you’ve been there before,’ but we haven’t,” Miami head coach Katie Meier said. “So we kind of acted foolish and we are really happy and we enjoyed it.
“That was a big moment for us and it was fun, and it was time to just let the pure joy spill out.”
This March has been exceptionally mad in both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. It was a rough week for Duke — both the men and women were upset in the second round. And for Indiana, too, which probably has a newfound sour taste in its mouth for Miami, which beat both their men’s and women’s teams in the last 24 hours. (It was just the 10th time ever that the men’s and women’s teams from one school knocked out both teams from another school in the same year.)
On the men’s side, No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickenson shocked No. 1 Purdue in the first round, while another No. 1 seed Kansas lost to No. 8 Arkansas by a point in the second round. It’s only the fourth time ever that bluebloods Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina (the Tar Heels didn’t even make the tourney and opted out of the NIT) did not make it to the Sweet 16.
On the women’s side, it’s the first time since 1998 that two No. 1 seeds were knocked out in the first two rounds. On Sunday, No. 8 Ole Miss stunned No. 1 Stanford on its home floor — 24 hours later, Miami did the same thing to Indiana.
Which teams are left to contend for a national championship? As far as Cinderella goes, Florida Atlantic and Princeton are still grinding through the men’s tournament, while Ole Miss, Miami and Colorado are striving to break more brackets in the women’s tourney.
When the Cardinal lost on Sunday, they became the first No. 1 seed to miss the Sweet 16 since 2009 and just the eighth No. 1 seed ever to lose in the first or second round of the women’s tourney. Indiana has now joined them in that category.
With their win, Miami moves onto the second weekend of the tournament for only the second time in program history. To get there, the Canes had to come back from a 17-point deficit in their first game against Oklahoma State on Saturday, then take out Indiana in a packed Assembly Hall on Monday. The Hoosiers, who won the Big Ten regular-season title for the first time since 1983 this season, never led in the game. They made runs, outscored the Canes 19-8 in the third quarter and tied things up four times in the fourth, but couldn’t get enough shots to fall down the stretch.
It seemed like IU’s luck might change in the final seconds when Yarden Garzon hit a stepback three to tie the game at 68, but then Harden responded with her now viral game-winning jumper.
Miami is now rewarded with a matchup against the nation’s best scorer Maddy Siegrist and Villanova in the Sweet 16. The other matchup in the Greenville 2 regional is between No. 2 Utah and No. 3 LSU. The Utes won the outright Pac-12 title and the Tigers are led by Kim Mulkey and Angel Reese, who scored 25 points and grabbed 24 rebounds in a second–round win over Michigan.
No.1 overall seed South Carolina is still dominating its way through the Greenville 1 regional, No. 1 Virginia Tech and No. 2 UConn are still very much alive in Seattle 3, and player of the year candidate Catilin Clark and No. 2 seed Iowa are trucking through Seattle 4. If any other top seed should struggle, look out for the Hawkeyes, who have to play Colorado in the Sweet 16. The Buffaloes upset Duke in overtime to advance.
Even with all this excitement, you can’t help but think that the women’s tournament is still destined for a rematch of last year’s national championship game between South Carolina and UConn. But the growing parity is a welcome change as we see top teams falling to relative tournament newcomers.
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her on Twitter @LakenLitman.
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