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When Rick Pitino and No. 15 seed Iona led No. 2 seed Alabama midway through the second half on Saturday, it looked like the Gaels might have the goods to pull off the tournament’s second huge upset.
On Friday, No. 15 Oral Roberts became just the ninth No. 15 seed ever to topple a 2 when it took down Ohio State. And way back in 1987, Pitino had coached Billy Donovan and Providence to an upset of a second-seeded Alabama team in the regional semifinals.
But another epic takedown wasn’t to be. Alabama’s Herbert Jones went for 20 points, six rebounds and two assists as the Southeastern Conference tournament and regular-season champions held off Iona, 68-55, at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The Crimson Tide meet the winner between No. 7 UConn and No. 10 Maryland in the East region.
Iona has now lost 14 straight N.C.A.A. tournament games, including one win that was vacated.
Iona led 42-40, but the Gaels went cold on offense and Alabama rattled off a 20-6 run to go ahead 60-48.
Iona got to within 62-55, but Alabama guard Jahvon Quinerly (11 points) hit a clutch jumper to push the lead. Alabama’s bench outscored the Iona bench, 23-8.
Isaiah Ross, the leading scorer in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, led Iona with 19 points, while senior guard Asante Gist had 16. Gist also played on the Iona team that lost in the first round in 2019 and had hoped for an upset this time around.
Pitino, 68, this year became just the third coach to lead five programs to the tournament. After taking over in March following his firing from Louisville in 2017, he and his staff had to rebuild the roster and recruited eight new players, including several international players led by the freshman Nelly Junior Joseph of Nigeria, who finished with 6 points and six rebounds.
Despite four coronavirus pauses this season, including one that lasted 51 days, the longest in the nation, Pitino got the most out of his team in his first year at the helm.
No. 2 seed Alabama defeated No. 15 seed Iona, 68-55.
Iona kept it close for the bulk of the game before the Crimson Tide pulled away.
As our colleague Jonathan Ellis points out, 49 percent of our readers correctly predicted that there would be one No. 12 seed to beat a No. 5. Alan Blinder correctly predicted it would be Oregon State over Tennessee.
When Bill Self was asked about the atmosphere in this N.C.A.A. tournament, he looked at the attendance sheet: 961. “It was the coldest arena I think I’ve ever been in at the start of the game. … It was literally, 58-60 degrees at the start of the game.”
No. 5-seeded Creighton held on against No. 12 seed U.C. Santa Barbara, 63-62. The Bluejays were favored in this one, but it came down to the last few minutes as the Gauchos kept it close.
After coming back from down 8 in the first half, Creighton led at halftime, 34-30.
The second half is where things got really wild. Creighton took a 10-point lead with about 13 minutes left in the game, but U.C. Santa Barbara came fighting back, led by guard Jaquori McLaughlin, who finished with 13 points and seven assists.
The game came down to the last minute when Christian Bishop made two free throws for the Jayhawks with 16 seconds left, sealing the win. He finished with 15 points and Marcus Zegarowski led Creighton with 17 points and eight assists.
Creighton Coach Greg McDermott, who has been with the team 11 years, was suspended the last game of the regular season for a racially insensitive comment to his players, but he was allowed to return for the Big East tournament and coached on Saturday. This was the Bluejays’ first N.C.A.A. men’s tournament win since 2014.
Creighton will fact the winner of Virginia-Ohio on Monday.
Following a dramatic 53-52 win over Wichita State in Thursday’s play-in game, Drake has tougher task with Southern California and is down at halftime, 40-37.
The good news is, the Bulldogs are 20-1 when ShanQuan Hemphill is in the lineup, and he has been able to come off the bench in this tournament in his return from a foot injury he suffered in February.
In the first half against U.S.C., Hemphill had 6 points in 16 minutes. On Thursday, he finished with 3 points, a steal, and four rebounds.
He led the team with 14.1 points per game when he went down. The Bulldogs are certainly hopeful for a larger role today, especially in the second half.
No. 5 seed Creighton squeaks past 12th-seeded U.C. Santa Barbara, 63-62.
The Gauchos missed a late layup that could have been a game-winner.
Top-seeded Michigan easily beat No. 16 seed Texas Southern, 82-66.
Michigan gets Louisiana State in the next round.
The N.C.A.A. has debuted a new weight room for its women’s basketball tournament in an attempt to move past a firestorm of condemnation for disparities between that competition in Texas and the men’s tournament in Indiana.
In a tweet on Saturday, the N.C.A.A. promoted the upgraded training options for the women’s tournament, which officials said they had long planned to have available ahead of the round of 16. This week’s critical onslaught led the association to apologize and to speed up its timeline.
Sedona Prince, an Oregon forward whose video of the original, far more limited amenities, helped bring wide attention to the situation in Texas, welcomed the change.
“Guess what, guys? We got a weight room!” Prince said in a video posted on social media on Saturday. “We got a ton more dumbbells. Look at all these racks for squats and whatever we want to do.”
And she thanked N.C.A.A. officials for responding to the complaints ahead of the tournament, which will begin on Sunday.
“We appreciate y’all,” she said. “Thank you so much for real.”
Although the frustrations surrounding training facilities may be ebbing, the N.C.A.A. also faced criticism for its decision to use rapid antigen tests at the women’s tournament, not the polymerase chain reaction tests that are in use at the men’s tournament and are considered the gold standard of infectious disease diagnostics.
On Friday, Mark Emmert, the N.C.A.A. president, said the association had “complete confidence in all the medical protocols that have been put together.”
The N.C.A.A. just announced on Twitter that between Bracket Challenge, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and Sports Illustrated, there are only 23 perfect brackets remaining 20 games into the men’s tournament.
Isaiah Livers, the injured Michigan senior who emerged as one of the leaders of this week’s online protests against the N.C.A.A., wore a shirt at Saturday’s game that used the #NotNCAAProperty slogan.
The backyard one-on-one basketball games between the brothers Isaiah and Evan Mobley came to a screeching halt early in their high school days.
Throughout much of their childhoods, Isaiah, older by around 20 months, stood as the more imposing of the two. But in high school, Evan had caught up to him, at least in height.
Now, Evan did not want to just beat his brother once or twice on luck and hope. “Winning was cool,” he said, “But I wanted to win how I wanted to win. I wanted to win in a way that was solidified and not a close game.”
Sometimes, their father, Eric Mobley, demanded the ball and told them to go inside before the games got too physical. “Evan would be hot, just mad at the world,” Eric said. “And Isaiah was bigger, stronger, so I didn’t want them to get into fights or anything like that. Then, sometimes I’d let them get in there and mix it up a little bit, because they got to settle it.”
They never did really settle it. “It gets too nasty,” Isaiah, 21, said. But instead of battling each other, the brothers are teammates at the University of Southern California, where Eric is still coaching them, as an assistant. The team is a throwback, with the brothers anchoring a rugged defense and providing solid interior play.
A late slip caused U.S.C. to miss out on its first regular-season conference championship since 1984-85, but the Trojans closed play in the Pac-12 Conference with a dramatic comeback win over its crosstown rival U.C.L.A.
Quietly, the Trojans are stitching a sustained run of success as they open the N.C.A.A. tournament Saturday against Drake.
Iona’s Rick Pitino is just the third coach to lead five programs to the N.C.A.A. tournament (Lon Kruger, Tubby Smith). He’s also one of five active Naismith Hall of Fame coaches who made the event this year (Self, Izzo, Williams, Boeheim).
Rick Pitino — Rick Pitino! — is back in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
You might remember him. He has appeared in the Final Four seven times. He won national titles at Kentucky and Louisville, even though the latter’s win was ultimately vacated. He had a mediocre run in the N.B.A., where he coached Patrick Ewing, who steered Georgetown into this tournament.
And Pitino, having gone into a basketball exile in Greece after a scandal at Louisville, is suddenly in the whirlwind, too. His 15th-seeded Iona Gaels beat Fairfield, 60-51, a week ago to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament and earn a chance to keep playing for a national championship.
Seed notwithstanding, history suggests the Gaels, who have a formidable defense, could cause some headaches: In the 21 seasons that Pitino-coached teams have reached the N.C.A.A. tournament, they have advanced past the first round in all but four years.
Iona’s target today: No. 2 Alabama, which is trying to prove that football schools can be pretty good at basketball, too.
Earning its highest seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament since 2002, the Crimson Tide stormed through the regular season and the Southeastern Conference tournament under Coach Nate Oats, who is in his second year at Alabama. Herb Jones, the SEC’s player of the year, was the league’s most feared defender this season and topped the team in rebounds, steals and blocks.
Look for Alabama to try a lot of 3-point shots: It has attempted more than 800 this season, second-most in the country, with John Petty Jr., a senior guard from Huntsville, Ala., leading the team.
No. 8 seed Louisiana State pushed past No. 9 seed St. Bonaventure, 76-61.
Cameron Thomas had 27 points for L.S.U.
No. 3-seeded Kansas played its first game in nine days since the team dealt with positive coronavirus tests. It was a rocky one, but the Jayhawks’ second half effort was enough to get them to the second round.
Kansas beat No. 14-seed Eastern Washington, 93-84. This was the Jayhawks’ 14th straight win in the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament under head coach Bill Self.
The Jayhawks had a rough start and the Eagles took advantage. It was Tanner and Jacob Grove’s game in the first half, leading the way for the Eagles. The brothers combined for 58 points and 14 rebounds on 65.5 percent shooting.
The Jayhawks looked tired in the first half, resting in folding chairs on the sidelines, as if the Eagles had sucked the energy out of them. The Eagles, meanwhile, were doing jumping jacks between plays. Eastern Washington led Kansas 46-38 at halftime.
The Jayhawks opened the second half with more aggression, going on a run to take a 12-point lead with just under five minutes to play. Eastern Washington had a hard time recovering as David McCormack took hold inside, scoring 20 of his 22 points in the second half. The Jayhawks finished with five players scoring 12 or more.
Kansas will play the winner of Southern California-Drake on Monday.
No. 3 seed Kansas got past No. 14 seed Eastern Washington, 93-84.
The Jayhawks will play the winner between Southern California and Drake.
Creighton is 3-3 in its last six games, despite being favored in five of them. Its opponent on Saturday, though, 12th-seeded U.C. Santa Barbara, played just three nonconference games all season while being favored in every single Big West game it played.
The Gauchos have won 18 of their last 19 games, going in a different direction entirety than the lukewarm Blue Jays over the past few weeks.
It’s a recipe for an upset pick that becomes so popular, it barely registers as an upset (Creighton is favored in this game by 7½ points).
One of those recent three losses for Creighton was a crushing 25-point defeat to Georgetown in the Big East title game.
In that title game they went 9 for 34 on 3-pointers. When they’re cold, they’re cold, and U.C.S.B. has the 15th-lowest opponent 3-point rate in the country.
North Carolina-Greensboro, a No. 13 seed, never led fourth-seeded Florida State on Saturday. Most of its scoring came from just two players. It made less than one-third of its shots.
But do not be mistaken for believing Florida State was wire-to-wire dominant; it merely survived, 64-54.
Although Florida State led by 16 with about seven minutes to play in the first half, its advantage eroded by late in the game, when, with less than five minutes to go, the Seminoles’ lead was down to one.
F.S.U. used the last five minutes to score 13, including a 6-point run. In the same stretch, North Carolina-Greensboro managed just 4.
Next up for F.S.U., which RaiQuan Gray led on Saturday with 17 points: fifth-seeded Colorado, which overwhelmed No. 12 Georgetown.
No. 4 seed Florida State held of 13th-seeded U.N.C. Greensboro, 64-54.
Florida State’s RaiQuan Gray had 17 points and seven rebounds.
Here’s some quick free-throw math: Colorado was 12 of 14 against Georgetown and upped its season-long percentage to 82.25 percent. Harvard’s 1983-84 record is 82.18 percent, and 15th-seeded Oral Roberts is at 82.17 percent after its win over Ohio State.
Patrick Ewing coached Georgetown into the N.C.A.A. tournament for the first time since 2015, but the Hoyas didn’t stay for long. McKinley Wright IV and Colorado made sure of that.
Wright, the senior point guard who is feared in the Pac-12 but not appreciated nationally, notched his fourth double-double this season with 12 points, 13 assists and no turnovers as No. 5 seed Colorado dispatched any hopes of an upset and routed No. 12 seed Georgetown, 96-73, at famed Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The Buffaloes advance to face the winner between No. 4 Florida State and No. 13 U.N.C.-Greensboro in the East region.
Wright became the first player since 2008 to register at least 13 assists with zero turnovers in an N.C.A.A. tournament game.
“I’m glad the country gets to see McKinley Wright,” U.C.L.A. coach Mick Cronin said before the game. “He’s the best guard in the country nobody’s heard of.”
On Saturday, No. 12 seed Oregon State had upset No. 5 seed Tennessee and there was some thought that Georgetown might be able to follow suit.
But Colorado (23-8) also got a career-high 24 points from freshman Jabari Walker and 18 from senior D’Shawn Schwartz, who combined to make 10 of 12 3-pointers. As a team, Colorado drained 16 of 25 from beyond the arc.
Qudus Wahab led the Hoyas with 20 points and 12 rebounds.
The Buffaloes raced to a 47-23 halftime lead while making 11 3-pointers.
After winning four games in four days last week to capture the Big East tournament title, Ewing and the Hoyas had hopes of keeping the momentum going in Indianapolis. Ewing received congratulatory messages from Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley.
Ewing is one of four Hall of Fame players to go on and coach in the N.C.A.A. tournament. But while he led the Hoyas to three N.C.A.A. championships games and one title (1984) as a player, Ewing is still building a program as a coach.
The good news is Georgetown has help coming in next season in five-star shooting guard Aminu Mohammed and big man Ryan Mutombo, the son of Georgetown legend Dikembe Mutombo, who was in the stands in Indianapolis.
No. 5 seed Colorado routed No. 12 seed Georgetown, 96-73.
Colorado went up early and cruised in a game that was a popular upset pick in pools.
Brothers Jacob and Tanner Grove are leading the way for Eastern Washington, totaling 30 points in the first half against Kansas with about two minutes to play.
North Carolina-Greensboro, a No. 13 seed, struggled early against fourth-seeded Florida State. But an eventual 9-0 run by the Spartans helped close the gap, and F.S.U. will open the second half with a lead of just 3 points.
Hopefully you read this lovely essay by one of our colleagues, Ken Plutnicki, on a 37-year-old men’s college basketball record that is at stake during this tournament.
The 1983-84 Harvard team shot 82.2 percent on free throws. Actually, we’ll need to be more precise than that — Harvard shot 82.18 percent (535 for 651) in an era where there were no 3-pointers and no shot clock.
Plutnicki was on that team, and this N.C.A.A. tournament he and his former teammates have been following two teams: No. 15 seed Oral Roberts and No. 5 seed Colorado.
Oral Roberts came into the tournament on pace to break the record. It knocked off No. 2 seed Ohio State on Friday in the biggest upset of the day, but in the process, slightly lowered its free throw shooting percentage by only going 14 for 18. Right now, before the Golden Eagles play seventh-seeded Florida on Sunday night, they are at 82.17 percent (378 for 460) — one hundredth of a percentage point behind Harvard.
Colorado, meanwhile, entered the tournament at 82.16 percent (419 for 510). And in the first half against Georgetown, while the Buffaloes were racing to a 47-23 lead, Eli Parquet and McKinley Wright made all four of Colorado’s free throws to inch the stat to 82.3 percent.
If Colorado closes out the win, the record won’t be settled today. When I messaged Plutnicki about it last night after Oral Roberts won, he made clear he was paying close attention.
“.01 … We shall see,” he said.
Jacob Groves is on fire for Eastern Washington early against Kansas. If he borrowed a headband from his older brother Tanner, the Big Sky M.V.P., he’d be the second coming of Napoleon Dynamite.
Freshman Jabari Walker has already made a career-high four 3 pointers for Colorado and we still have about seven minutes left in the first half of this matchup.
One thing to remember about the N.C.A.A. tournament is that teams are preparing for opponents they haven’t seen before. If San Diego State looked like it hadn’t seen a zone defense all year against Syracuse last night, it’s because they hadn’t. Georgetown is getting a lesson on the craftiness of McKinley Wright, which Pac-12 schools have been learning for four years.
Former Georgetown great Dikembe Mutombo, now known to a younger generation as the guy in the Geico ads, is in the building supporting the Hoyas. His son, Ryan, is committed to Patrick Ewing’s squad for next season. Ewing said he also received messages from Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley after winning the Big East tournament.
Colorado’s Evan Battey is the grandson of former Twins All-Star catcher Earl Battey, who was known for his rocket arm (he threw out 44 percent of would-be base stealers for his career) and toughness on some of the great Twins teams in the 60s, including the one that lost to the Dodgers in seven games in the 1965 World Series.
As in recent years, the men’s games will be broadcast on CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV. The official way to stream the tournament is through the N.C.A.A.’s March Madness Live app, which requires logging in through a TV provider. (The Paramount+ app, formerly known as CBS All Access, will also carry games broadcast on CBS.)
Here’s a look at the men’s bracket and the schedule for Saturday (all times Eastern):
No. 12 seed Georgetown vs. No. 5 seed Colorado, 12:15 p.m.
No. 13 seed UNC Greensboro vs. No. 4 seed Florida St., 12:45 p.m.
No. 14 seed Eastern Washington vs. No. 3 seed Kansas, 1:15 p.m.
No. 9 seed St. Bonaventure vs. No. 8 seed Louisiana State, 1:45 p.m.
No. 16 seed Texas Southern vs. No. 1 seed Michigan, 3 p.m.
No. 12 seed U.C. Santa Barbara vs. No. 5 seed Creighton, 3:30 p.m.
No. 15 seed Iona vs. No. 2 seed Alabama, 4 p.m.
No. 11 seed Drake vs. No. 6 seed Southern California, 4:30 p.m.
No. 15 seed Grand Canyon vs. No. 2 seed Iowa, 6:25 p.m.
No. 10 seed Maryland vs. No. 7 seed UConn, 7:10 p.m.
No. 13 seed Ohio vs. No. 4 seed Virginia, 7:15 p.m.
No. 9 seed Missouri vs. No. 8 seed Oklahoma, 7:25 p.m.
No. 16 seed Norfolk St. vs. No. 1 seed Gonzaga, 9:20 p.m.
No. 11 seed U.C.L.A. vs. No. 6 seed Brigham Young, 9:40 p.m.
No. 14 seed Abilene Christian vs. No. 3 seed Texas, 9:50 p.m.
No. 10 seed Virginia Commonwealth vs. No. 7 seed Oregon, 9:57 p.m.
The Bulldogs are the top overall seed and enter the tournament at 26-0. They are the first team since Kentucky in 2015 to come into the tournament unbeaten. Kentucky, which featured nine future N.B.A. players, rolled to 38-0 that season before losing in the national semifinals to Wisconsin at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Before that, Jerry Tarkanian’s Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels were the last unbeaten team to reach the Final Four in 1991 before falling to Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Duke in the national semifinals at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
To become the first undefeated champion since Indiana in 1976, the Bulldogs must reel off six wins in the next three weeks — also in Indianapolis — beginning Saturday night against Norfolk State, which beat Appalachian State, 54-53, Thursday.
Gonzaga Coach Mark Few’s team features three finalists — Corey Kispert, Jalen Suggs and Drew Timme — for the John R. Wooden Award as the nation’s top player, while the team’s fourth best player, Joel Ayayi, notched the only triple-double in program history.
If Gonzaga can win six straight, it will be 32-0 — just like Bob Knight’s Indiana team.
“Heck yeah, we want to win a national championship,” Few said Sunday on ESPN. “But every darn game, we have to be ready to go, and we have to play really, really well, including this first one.”
Georgetown had to do a lot of winning to even end up in this position. The Hoyas upset Creighton in the Big East title game in a 24-point rout, and before that they topped Villanova.
None of that was supposed to happen.
Now the run has Georgetown as the most popular No. 12 seed selected to win its first-round game against fifth-seeded Colorado, according to ESPN and Yahoo entries.
Given that the Hoyas were projected to finish dead last in the Big East, the run has been more than just a couple of conference tournament upsets. It has also been a big deal for Patrick Ewing, who has said the run has helped him gain some respect as a coach.
Georgetown’s 3-point shooting is dangerous and Dante Harris, who is from the District of Columbia, has emerged as a budding star after Jalen Harris left the program a few games in.
More than 40 percent of ESPN and Yahoo brackets picked Georgetown for the win on Saturday — and about 14 percent even have the Hoyas in the Sweet 16.
Michigan Coach Juwan Howard is the first person to coach a No. 1 seed in the tournament who also played for a No. 1 seed in the tournament during his playing career.
He played in two national title games with the Wolverines over his three seasons with the program, which he now coaches. The last time was in 1993, while Howard was a sophomore, and that was the last time Michigan had been a No. 1 seed. They lost in the championship game that season to North Carolina.
Michigan has been a No. 1 seed three times: Twice with Howard as a player, and once with him as a coach.
Howard was named the coach of the year by the United States Basketball Writers Association on Friday.
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