Kemba Walker Walks Off With Win

Kemba Walker has provided the University of Connecticut basketball team with big shots all season long. Thursday the Huskie's star guard may have saved his best for tournament time.
With his team down by a point to Pittsburgh in the first quarterfinal of the Big East Tournament, Walker hit an 18 foot jump shot as time expired, sending the Huskies into the semifinals against #11 Syracuse on Friday night.  It was an ignominious ending for the Panthers who blew a first half double-digit lead and looked terribly disorganized on Walker's final shot.
Pittsburgh, ranked #3 in the country in both the AP and ESPN/Coach's polls, had been one of the favorites coming into the tournament yet they ended up being spectators to the Mighty Kemba's heroics.  Although the loss likely won't affect Pitt's seeding in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, its residual effect may have long-term repercussions on the psyche of a team expected to contend for a national title this season.
Connecticut, on the other hand, is riding high after entering the Big East Tournament seeded only 9th and ranked #19 in the country, a far cry from their earlier ranking of #3 this season.  After running roughshod over hapless DePaul in the first round and cruising past #22 Georgetown in the second, UConn and Walker found themselves down big to a Pitt team that had handed them their first loss of the season back in December.
However, behind Walker's 24 points, the Huskies chipped away at Pitt's lead early in the second half and found themselves in a one-possession game for most of the last eight minutes.  When UConn came out of a timeout with 5.7 seconds left to play and the score knotted at 74-74, there wasn't a soul in grand old Madison Square Garden who didn't know one Kemba Walker would have the ball in his hands.
Unfortunately for Pitt, big man Gary McGhee was the only one standing between Walker and tournament immortality.  Walker drove right, stepped back, drove left, stepped back and calmly buried the game winner from the top of the key while a broken McGhee looked on helplessly, a witness to his own team's demise.
Such heroics are old news to Walker, who beat both Texas and Villanova with late shots earlier this season.  But today's buzzer-beater against Pitt was in a league of its own; unless Walker has another miracle in store.  UConn and Syracuse played a six-overtime classic in this very tournament just a few short years ago.  Perhaps the time is now for Walker to add another layer to his legend.