Basketball Page 981 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Duke? UNC? UConn? Ranking the best NCAA national champs over the past 20 years
Selection Sunday will be the first time we’ve been able to fill out a bracket in two years. A lot has changed since then, especially in college basketball, as it’s been as upside down as the rest of the world is. Juniors and seniors are the biggest draws this season, as only a few freshmen like Okla...

Top scorers in Tournament include all-time greats and one other guy ...
The list of all-time leading NCAA Tournament scorers is a who’s who of legends. Guys who threw teams on their backs and hacked a trail with a machete to a title. Glen Rice still tops the list with his transcendent performance in 1989, leading Michigan to an unlikely title over Seton Hall. His 184 po...

Deadspin Presents: Our National Champ Bracket of the 32 most recent NCAA Tourney winners
We love a good bracket around here. And not just in March, but especially in March. So we’re paying tribute to the reason we’re doing brackets in the first place with a bracket based on 32 previous brackets....

College athletes are not NCAA property, for the millionth time, so pay them
Athletes are organizing on social media, using the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty to advocate for name, image, and likeness reform in college sports. And you love to see it....

Stupid ways to fill out your NCAA Tournament bracket
Your well-considered bracket is try-hard garbage. Admit it. With all your esoteric knowledge of basketball — and possibly even due to it — you will inevitably sit slack-jawed in the coming weeks as your “lock” of a team gets melted by a 5-foot-3 point guard from Southwest Rando State University....

Which team is the only one since brackets expanded to make three title games in a row? (And how’d they do?)
We covered all the teams to make two NCAA title games in a row in this article… except... I left out one on purpose with the way I worded the question. Because there has only been one team since the 1985 expansion to make THREE final games in a row. They won it, lost it (in overtime), and won it bac...

Two tough: Here are the teams who made back-to-back NCAA title games … and how they fared
Back in ancient times — you know, the ’60s and ’70s — UCLA won the damn NCAA title every year and twice on Sundays. The modern era (since the brackets expanded in 1985) has seen more parity, and the number of repeat champions has been slim. Most people can name the two teams that have done it: Duke ...

Ranking the greatest college basketball championship teams of the 2010s
There are a lot of words you could use to describe a college basketball season that has been wrecked by COVID-19, but the best one is “weird.” Besides the blue bloods of Duke and Kentucky missing the tournament, and North Carolina and Michigan State having subpar years with even lower seeds than usu...

The best NCAA Tournament performances ever
The NCAA tournament is one of the most captivating sporting events of the year. For an entire month, the world of college basketball takes center stage and the world is introduced to young, new stars trying to make a name for themselves. Many players have had great NCAA tournament performances over ...

Which Division I programs have never appeared in an NCAA Tournament from the get-go?
Most teams have never won an NCAA title, either in the modern era or in old-timey cager days. That’s just a sad fact of haves and have-nots. But most teams can at least say they had a chance to win one. Even if it’s like a Dumb & Dumber “chance.” Then there are four serious have-nots out there who h...

What are the lowest-seeded teams to win an NCAA Tournament?
Oh, sure, everyone loves a good Cinderella run. And if you’re like me and take the NCAA Tournament, and its history, seriously (you are reading this) you can no doubt rattle off the biggest underdogs to crash a Final Four, like Loyola and George Mason....

Watch in awe as Virginia State's president cooks up a student like Thanksgiving mac and cheese
If you talk to anyone who went to an HBCU, they will tell you that it is a completely unique college experience. There are things that happen on these campuses that secondhand accounts won’t ever do justice....


The winningest programs that never won a championship
This hasn’t been the best year for college basketball’s blue bloods. Kentucky had its first losing record since 1989. Duke is missing the NCAA field for the first time since 1995. North Carolina has been unranked all year, and the only reason Kansas has avoided a similar fate is how weak the Big 12 ...

Deadspin Wayback Machine: Norfolk State reps all HBCUs, CJ McCollum makes Duke fans cry
They say time heals all wounds but even after nine years, I know Duke and Missouri fans are still salty after becoming victims to some of the biggest upsets in tournament history on the same day....

The best national champion teams of the 2000s
As the NCAA Tournament returns next week after missing a year due to COVID-19, one of the conversations that have been hovering over the sport is when will the NBA get rid of the “one-and-done” rule....

Geno Auriemma tests positive for COVID, will miss first round of tournament
Hours before the Women’s Basketball selection show, UConn announced that head coach Geno Auriemma tested positive for COVID-19. According to the school, the coach received a positive test result on Sunday. As far as we know, he did not come into contact with anyone since Friday, March 12. All Tier I...

Upsets, trendy faves, arguments against Gonzaga, and your champ will be...
If you’re at all serious about it, you’ve probably taken your first stab at filling out a bracket by now. If you were as serious ludicrous as I am about it, you’d have done it in real time as it was announced. I’d hear Greg Gumbel say, “Now ... the 15 seed in the West…” and immediately see an entire...

Getting fired is sure to induce March Madness of a sort
It’s March Madness for coaches, too....

Which football powerhouse could cut down nets at the Final Four?
The Madness is finally back, and the matchups are finally set for what will be one of the strangest NCAA tournaments in recent history. Not only will COVID-19 likely have an impact on the games within the Indiana “bubble,” but this year we are missing some of the most storied programs in all of coll...