college Page 314 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Northwestern's Attempted Halftime Buzzer-Beater Didn't Go In The Basket, But It Did Hit Somebody In The Head
Northwestern's consolation for missing out on the NCAA Tournament was hosting one of tonight's opening NIT games against Akron. While they missed this attempt to score before the halftime buzzer, I'm pretty sure knocking the ESPN camera assistant's hat off is worth a couple hundred tickets at a N...

Is Harvard Now Behaving Like Any Other College Basketball Juggernaut?
Four years ago, Pete Thamel wrote a story in the New York Times about how new Harvard coach Tommy Amaker had landed a potential recruiting class that experts ranked as one of the top 25 in the nation. How'd Harvard do it? Thamel reported that the school was considering players with lower academic st...

Fab Melo Is Ineligible Because Of Academics. Well, That's No Fun.
And here we were hoping it was something juicy keeping Melo out of the NCAA Tournament, like Jim Boeheim finally cracking down on the scourge of recreational marijuana usage, or Melo shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. Syracuse's brief statement didn't shed much light:...

ESPN Keeps Interrupting Its Programming To Give You Gambling Advice In The Most Annoying Way Possible
"Bullshit." "Ridiculous." "Pissing me off." "Hopefully it never happens again."...

Jack, The Georgetown Bulldog, May Need Knee Surgery
At eight years old, Jack is no spring chicken. But he recently injured his leg jumping to the couch, and is going for a second opinion to see if surgery will be required. Not a great day for the Hoyas, who won a tournament bracket based on tuition. Not a great day for Jack, because he's a Bulldog an...

Life As A Walk-On With Duke's 1992 National Championship Team
When Billy McCaffrey and Crawford Palmer transferred after Duke won the 1991 NCAA title, the Blue Devils had an opening, and then-senior Ron Burt won a spot on the team as a walk-on. Our friend Alan Siegel spoke to Burt for Slate about the trials and triumphs of unexpectedly earning a bit part on th...

UCLA Basketball Players Fought Each Other Long Before Ben Howland
The year was 1945, and John Wooden was still in the Navy. It would be three more years before he took over in Westwood, but the UCLA Bruins under coach Wilbur Johns were already using revolutionary training methods....

Penn State Is Still Glad It Fired Joe Paterno, Sorry It Didn't Find A "Dignified" Way To Do It In Person
Penn State's Board of Trustees posted a statement on the university's website this morning, explaining why it chose to fire coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier. The trustees already explained this in a New York Times interview in January. But with so many Penn Staters still foc...

Scrappy College Basketball Team From Just Outside Of Boston Makes It Big
This is the front page of today's Boston Herald. Not the sports cover. The front page. All because Harvard got the spot in the tourney it knew it would get as of Tuesday. All Boston learned yesterday was that the Crimson would be playing Vanderbilt in Albuquerque in the first round, which is actuall...

The Selection Committee Says Washington Wasn't Even Close To Being On The Bubble
Washington made a bit of history yesterday, when the Huskies became the first ever regular season champion from a Big Six conference to not make the tournament. Perhaps fans can take some sick sort of solace in the knowledge that it wasn't a close-run thing: at least six other teams apparently had a...

Florida State, Vanderbilt, And Michigan State Are Going Dancing, But They Would Have Been Anyway
This brings to a close our series highlighting teams celebrating their conference championships, and like most televised entertainment, it comes to a somewhat anticlimactic end. Sure, FSU won the ACC for the first time ever, and Vanderbilt won the SEC tournament for the first time since 1951 (thou...

St. Bonaventure Is Going Dancing
The past ten years have been mostly forgettable for St. Bonaventure, the tenure's nadir being a 2-26 season in 2005 that came in the wake of scandal and suicide. Last season's 16-15 record was the first time the Bonnies finished above .500 since 2002, and their last NCAA appearance was in 2000....

Prelude To A Selection: Your College Basketball Open Thread
There are four remaining games (three of them at 1 p.m.) scheduled today and then "March Madness" officially begins. Or continues. Whatevs....

ACC Referee Told N.C. State Head Coach Mark Gottfried To Shut His "Fucking Ass Up" Yesterday
Yesterday's ACC final between N.C. State and North Carolina was just a typical game for N.C. State in the ACC—oozing with controversy. N.C. State, you will recall, is the alma mater to Tom Gugliotta. Googs, of course, was unceremoniously kicked out of a game by ACC official Karl Hess little more th...

New Mexico State Is Going Dancing
These truly are special times for the basketball-loving Land of Enchantment, with the Lobos running off with a Mountain West tourney win and now the Aggies from Las Cruces joining the party after their Saturday Night Special 82-57 drubbing of Louisiana Tech. [ESPN2]...

Cornell Defender Sends Her Team To The Frozen Four On Dazzling Goal In Triple Overtime
Lauriane Rougeau sent Boston University packing, and the season high home crowd of 2,143 Cornell fans into hysterics, when she slipped this one past the goalie to end what amounted to two full games of hockey played. Cornell won the wild game, that featured a three-goal-comeback by each team, 8-7....

Long Beach State Is Going Dancing
The Long Beach State 49ers played five teams in the RPI's top 25 this season in their out-of-conference schedule. They lost all of them, sure, but at least in this instance the burnishing of losses to quality teams prepared Dan Monson's squad for the tangled mayhem of Big West rivalries....

Louisville Is Going Dancing After The Worst Big East Final In History
Maybe this is what we deserve, or what the Big East deserves, though the clefts in its foundation are not of its doing, mostly....

Mississippi Valley State Is Going Dancing
Congratulations to the Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils, who in beating Texas Southern 71-69 won the SWAC tournament and punched their ticket to the dance. [ESPNU]...

Ohio Is Going Dancing, Thanks To Akron Inadvertently Making A Free Throw
Congratulations to the Ohio Bobcats, who in beating Akron 64-63 won the MAC tournament and punched their ticket to the dance....