Thirteen years after Jim Valvano's greatest coaching victory, The Pit nearly served up another historic moment in the NCAA tournament.
Western Carolina was shooting at the same basket where North Carolina State's Lorenzo Charles picked off Dereck Whittenburg's airball and stuffed home the basket that gave Valvano's Wolfpack a 54-52 win over Houston in the 1983 championship game.The Catamounts came within inches of beating Purdue in Thursday's first round of the West Regional, but by surviving with a 73-71 win, the Boilermakers avoided becoming the first No. 1-seeded team to lose to a No. 16 seed.
Purdue (26-5) advanced to Saturday's second round against No. 8 Georgia (20-9), which beat No. 9 Clemson, 81-74. No. 4 seed Syracuse (25-8) will meet No. 12 Drexel (27-3) in the other second-round game.
Syracuse routed 13th-seeded Montana State 88-55 and Drexel upset No. 5 seed Memphis 75-63.
Purdue needed an offensive rebound basket by Brandon Brantley with 1:29 left, a block from Roy Hairston with 13 seconds remaining and two missed shots by the Catamounts in the final 11 seconds to dodge the upset.
Western Carolina (17-13), making its first trip to the tournament, had two chances to tie or win in the final seconds after Purdue's Brad Miller missed the front end of a one-and-one with 11.6 seconds left.
Point guard Joel Fleming put up a 3-pointer that missed. The rebound came out long and Catamount Joe Stafford grabbed it and shot a running 15-footer that also missed as the buzzer sounded.
Chad Austin led the Boilermakers with 18 points, and Brantley had 17, going 6-for-6 on field goals and 5-for-5 at the line. Anquell McCollum scored 21 to lead Western Carolina and Jarvis Graham scored 14.
Western Carolina refused to be awed and played like a No. 16 seed should - with nothing to lose. The Catamounts, who lost 10 of their first 13 games this season, hit 15 of 26 shots in the first half (58 percent) and defensively forced the Boilermakers to overwork on offense.
Drexel, a role player in Philadelphia's lineup of basketball talent with only 4,073 students, rode Malik Rose's 21 points and 15 rebounds to the win over Memphis (22-8). The victory extended the nation's second-longest winning streak to 15 games.
The Tigers couldn't stop Rose inside, and the few times they did, he kicked the ball out to freshman Mike DeRocckis or Myers. Myers scored 15 points and DeRocckis 14. Rose also won the inside battle against Memphis star Lorenzen Wright, who finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds.
Syracuse pulled away from Montana State in the second half with its inside scoring combination of John Wallace and Todd Burgan and a zone defense that starved the Bobcats' perimeter shooting.
Wallace scored 18 points in 28 minutes and Burgan had 17. That offset a record-setting effort by Montana State's Quadre Lollis. Lollis, who led the nation in field-goal percentage this season at 65.5, hit 12 of 13 shots and finished with 26 points.
Georgia's win over Clemson was a case of experience winning out over youthful ambition.
Georgia, with five seniors starting, won its first NCAA tournament game in 11 years by beating a Clemson team that started four freshmen and a sophomore.