By Ranjan Bhaduri
New Orleans, Mar 19, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Texas Longhorns witnessed a heavy suffering at the hands of Wake Forest boys. The 17 feet jumper in the overtime period of 1.3 seconds that came from Ishmael Smith made the difference. That was also the decider for the game between Texas Longhorns and Wake Forest which gave the latter a cut throat win by 81-80. NCAA witnessed the fall of the Texas men team at the third game of the first round which had the crowd keeping the environ noisy all the time. This is the very first match in the season that has stepped into the overtime for Texas Longhorns. As a matter of fact, there were only two matches that rolled over to the overtime in the previous year.

It was none other than Gary Johnson who failed to hit it right for two free throws that came in for Texas. Smith finished as the score stood 19-12-7-8 (points, rebounds, assists, turnover). Wake Forest climbed up to a blazing score, standing at 54-42 lead from their initial 17-4. The first deficit in the first half witnessed the Longhorns at 24-10 alongside the 11-point deficit recorded in the first half of the game. Al-Farouq Aminu stopped at 20 points, 15 rebounds from the Wake Forest side. Harris gave him a worthy support with his reverse that made the scores turn in behalf of Wake Forest ahead with a lead of 12-5. The short spoiler was attached in the string by Stewart who contributed 3-pointers on a double note, thus taking the score to 18-7.

Texas Longhorn fresher Jordan Hamilton who had been pulling in with 10 points each game came in to chip in four 3-pointers that made the Texas Longhorns lead the way over Wake Forest by 38-37.