ncaa-tournament Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Let's Remember Some March Madness Guys
It’s just simple arithmetic: There are going to be more Guys than there are actual Dudes in the NCAA Tournament. The Dudes will go on to make some money playing basketball, in the NBA or in Europe or in Asia or possibly in picaresque White Men Can’t Jump hoops-hustler scenarios. The Guys, who are go...

Iowa's Luka Garza Has Extremely Powerful Eyebrows
The portion of the nation that doesn’t pay attention to Big Ten basketball outside of March was introduced to the voluminous eyebrows of Iowa forward Luka Garza in today’s game against Cincinnati, and boy, are they glorious. You can’t coach brows like that....

Tom Izzo Isn't Sorry For Having To Be Restrained From Going After A Freshman
Michigan State head coach/psycho Tom Izzo briefly lost his mind yesterday, exploding at freshman forward Aaron Henry during a timeout—after a 10-0 Spartans run, by the way—in MSU’s eventual 76-65 first-round win over Bradley. This is nothing new for Izzo (which is an indictment rather than a defense...

New Mexico State Out-Choked Auburn And Failed To Pull Off The First Real Upset Of March Madness<em></em>
Fifth-seeded Auburn tried its best to let 12-seed New Mexico State pull off the first big upset of this year’s NCAA tournament by consistently bungling things at the precise moment when they could’ve put the game to bed. Unfortunately, New Mexico State was even more inept when it mattered most, and ...

Tom Izzo Flips Out On Aaron Henry, Has To Be Held Back By Players
No. 2 seed Michigan State hasn’t looked great so far in their first tournament game against Bradley. The Spartans trailed at halftime, but were able to re-established some control over the game with a 10-0 run at the start of the second half. That positive stretch wasn’t good enough to save freshman...

Fletcher Magee's Shooting Remade Wofford. How Far Can It Take Them?
At first glance, the Wofford Terriers seem like a very specific type of college basketball team. Even if you only watch college basketball in March, you know the one: the biggest fish in a mid-major pond, a styles-make-fights oddball match-up challenge for a major program, maybe even an underdog tha...

The Hater's Guide To March Madness
The NCAA Tournament is what you make of it. So is everything else, obviously, but while the tournament is objectively just what it is—a sloppy whirlwind fortnight of stressed-out teenagers just absolutely freaking the fuck out while playing the most important basketball games of their lives—it is al...

The City Got Too Big For Fran Dunphy And Phil Martelli
There was something appropriate about Fran Dunphy and Phil Martelli exiting the scene on the same day. Dunphy’s “retirement” as Temple’s head coach had been announced in advance; his final season with the Owls ended with last night’s First Four loss to Belmont. Hours earlier, Saint Joseph’s surpris...

How Big A Threat Is Saint Mary's?
Ignore the seedings. According to the analytics, one of the most evenly matched games of the NCAA Tournament’s first round isn’t an 8-9 or 7-10 match-up, but the battle between Villanova, the sixth seed in the South Region, and 11th-seeded Saint Mary’s. Kenpom, which rates Villanova as 26th in the c...

Bubble Teams Belong In Hell
Today, we’re talking about chicken pot pie, the NCAA tournament, dirty belts, and more....

Murray State Vs. Marquette Should Be Sick As Hell
Thank goodness Murray State made it into the NCAA Tournament, because before last Saturday it seemed worryingly possible that Ja Morant and his Racers might be hanging out in the NIT this postseason. But after finishing as OVC regular-season co-champions with Belmont and then winning their conferenc...

The NCAA Tournament Bracket Is Out Which Means It's Time To Complain
The ball has not been tipped (yet), but here we are. The NCAA Tournament field is set and there are plenty of emotions that a lot of people are probably going through now. The teams they dislike somehow got in while the teams that are near and dear to their hearts somehow got snubbed. Their coworker...

The NCAA Will Use A New Metric To Screw Your Team Out Of The Tournament
RPI, the long-bemoaned metric used to determine who’s in and who’s out of the NCAA tournament for the past 37 years, is dead. ...

A College Basketball Insider Is Uniting Mid-Majors To Bust The Big Guys' NCAA Tourney "Cartel"
A mid-major lifer is calling out the NCAA tournament for the cartel system it is. And college basketball’s mid-major conferences aren’t silently nodding their heads anymore....

The Donte DiVincenzo Show Was A Damn Work Of Art
Donte DiVincenzo was not a sophomore bench player on Monday night. He was when the game started, but by the final horn he was the man who had saved a national championship for Villanova. ...

Villanova Coasts To Title On Back Of Record-Setting Bench Player Donte DiVincenzo<em></em>
For the bulk of the first half, tonight’s NCAA men’s basketball championship was Michigan’s game—not by more than a few points, not convincingly, but it was. With six minutes remaining, though, Donte DiVincenzo hit a three to deliver Villanova its first lead since the opening seconds, and then he se...

This Was Muffet McGraw's Masterpiece, And Notre Dame's Next Season Could Be Even Better<em></em>
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Muffet McGraw’s husband Matt clearly knows the drill by now. He beamed as he watched his wife of 40 years hold court with reporters after the greatest coaching win of her career. She wore a black dress that she’d bought especially for what turned out to be her second national champi...

This Is "This Is March": Unpacking College Basketball's Most Uncanny Twitter Account
Jon Rothstein is a real person. He was born in a town at the very outermost edge of what could be called exurban New York City and has covered sports for a living virtually from the moment he graduated from Ithaca College. Rothstein won a Dream Job contest at New York’s ESPN sports radio station, 10...

Arike Ogunbowale Wasn't Supposed To Take The Last Shot
Notre Dame’s final play wasn’t called for Arike Ogunbowale. After hitting the winning three in Friday’s semifinal win over UConn, the Notre Dame junior guard had an off shooting night against Mississippi State, and when the Irish inbounded the ball in a tie game with three seconds left, the play was...

Notre Dame's Arike Ogunbowale Crushes Mississippi State With Championship-Winning Three
For a while, it looked like today’s National Championship game would be an anticlimactic finale after both semifinals went to overtime on Friday. Mississippi State led Notre Dame 30-17 at the half, holding the Irish to just three points in the second quarter. But Notre Dame fought back and gave us a...