Tennessee forward Uros Plavsic celebrates after the Volunteers beat Texas A&M in the SEC championship game on Sunday in Tampa, Florida. Chris O’Meara/Associated Press
TAMPA, Fla. — Santiago Vescovi scored 17 points and Josiah-Jordan James had 16 points and 10 rebounds to help ninth-ranked Tennessee beat Texas A&M 65-50 on Sunday to claim its first men’s SEC basketball tournament title in 43 years.
The second-seeded Volunteers (26-7) never trailed, rattling off the first 14 points of the afternoon and winning for the 12th time in 13 games following a one-point loss at Texas in late January.
Auburn and Kentucky entered the SEC Tournament ranked in the top five and Arkansas was as hot as any team in the country down the stretch, but Tennessee has emerged as the top team in the league after beating each of those other rivals in the past two weeks.
Kennedy Chandler had 14 points and seven assists for Tennessee, which recorded assists on 19 of 22 baskets, including the first 10 the Vols made after halftime.
Playing its fourth game in four days, Texas A&M (23-12) started slowly and never recovered.
(24) IOWA 75, (9) PURDUE 66: Keegan Murray had 19 points and 11 rebounds as the Hawkeyes (26-9) beat the Boilermakers (28-7) in Indianapolis to win their first Big Ten Tournament championship since 2006.
The sixth-seeded Hawkeyes became the fourth team in conference history to claim the title by winning four games in four days. Iowa was also the first school to do it, in 2001, and Michigan repeated the feat in 2017 and 2018.
(18) HOUSTON 71, MEMPHIS 53: Fabian White Jr. scored 20 points, fellow big man Josh Carlton had 18 and the Cougars (29-5) beat the Tigers (21-10) in the American Athletic Conference championship game in Fort Worth, Texas.
A day after White played less than three minutes in the Cougars’ semifinal win because of back tightness, the first-team All-AAC forward helped the top-seeded Cougars earn the AAC’s automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
(7) TEXAS 67, (4) BAYLOR 58: Rori Harmon scored 20 points and the Longhorns (26-6) beat the Bears (27-6) in Kansas City, Missouri to win the Big 12 championship.
Harmon, a freshman, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after failing to be selected first-team all-conference, which Texas Coach Vic Schaefer considered a snub.
The game was projected to be a tussle between the front courts, but foul trouble on both sides put a crimp in that plan. Instead, the guards took over.
Texas (26-6) also got 14 points from Joanne Allen-Taylor and 12 from Aaliyah Moore.
Baylor (27-6), which swept the regular-season series by an average of 10 points, was led by Big 12 Player of the Year NaLyssa Smith with 21 points, but she only had seven before the fourth quarter and was still below her season average of 22.3.
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