2012 Paradise Jam Tournament

The 2012 Paradise Jam Tournament was a men and women's preseason college basketball tournament that took place in Saint Thomas at the Sports and Fitness Center. New Mexico won the men's division while Connecticut won the women's Island Division and South Carolina won the women's Reef Division.

Men's Tournament

New Mexico's Demetrius Walker drives against UConn's Enosch Wolf at the 2012 Paradise Jam Championship game

The 2012 Paradise Jam featured some close games. ESPN predicted that UConn would face New Mexico in the finals, which did happen,^[1] but the results were far from ordained. In the first round, the largest victory was a seven-point win by New Mexico over the University of Illinois at Chicago. Connecticut beat Wake Forest by six, While George Mason,behind at the half, came back to win by three points over Mercer. However, the Quinnipiac – Iona game was tied at the half, and tied at the end of regulation. Despite scoring 13 points in overtime, Iona fell to Quinnipiac.^[2]

In the second round, the games were even closer. George Mason held a five-point lead over New Mexico with twelve seconds left, when the Lobos hit a three pointer, then stole the ball and hit another three pointer with under two seconds to play, to win by a single point. In the other match up, between two teams from the same state, UConn was down by double-digits with five minutes to go, yet the game went to double-overtime before UConn won in the second overtime.^[3] In the title game, UConn came from nine points down to take a brief two-point lead with just over two minutes to go, but gave up nine straight points, and ended up with the loss 66–60. The Lobos hit all 21 of their free throw attempts in the game and went on to win the 2012 Paradise Jam Championship.^[4][5][6]

Women's Tournament

Geno Auriemma at 2012 Paradise Jam making a point

The woman's tournament is organized as two divisions of four teams, each playing each other in a round-robin format. This format is chosen because the invitees occasionally include more than one team from a conference. Teams are not allowed to play each other from the same conference outside of scheduled conference play. A traditional playoff format, where winners player winners, and losers go into a losers bracket allows any two team an opportunity to play each other, This format is not suitable when there are multiple teams from the same conference.

Overview

South Carolina's Ieasia Walker drives to the basket against DePaul's Brittany Hrynko, while Blue Demon coach Doug Bruno watches at the 2012 Paradise Jam Tournament

The first round games were held on Thanksgiving Day 22 November, while the second and third round games were held on Friday and Saturday, the 23rd and 24th.

Reef Division

In the Reef Division, DePaul was involved in two of the closest games. In their Thanksgiving match up with Florida Gulf Coast University, despite twelve point leads in the first half, the Eagles were within one point at halftime. They briefly held a lead in the second half, but were behind by eight points with just over two minutes to go. They climbed back to within two, but could not take the lead, and lost 60–58.^[8] In their next game against Hampton, the Blue Demons fell behind by 13 with 14 minutes to go. They tied up the game with just over a minute to go. No one scored until the final seconds, when Anna Martin was fouled with three seconds to go in the game. She missed the first free throw, but hit the second, to secure the win for DePaul, 68–67.^[9]

South Carolina won their first game against Hampton 45–34, and their second against Florida Gulf Coast 65–46, setting up the deciding game between the two 2–0 teams. South Carolina went on to win the game 55–46, which won the Reef Division championship. South Carolina's Aleighsa Welch was named the Reef Division Tournament MVP.^[7][10]

Island division

In the Island Division, the results were dominated by Connecticut. The UConn team faced Wake Forest on Thanksgiving, and won easily 95–64. Their next match up was against Marist; while the result was closer, it was still a 42-point victory 81–39. The 14th (AP) ranked Purdue also won their first two games, beatings Marist by twenty, and then Wake Forest by fourteen.

Connecticut and Purdue were both 2–0 when they faced on Saturday. The result wasn't close, as UConn won 91–57 to win the Paradise Jam Island Division Championship. UConn freshman Breanna Stewart was named the tournament MVP, the first time a freshman had own the award other than UConn's Maya Moore in the 2007 Tournament.^[7][11]

References