The most anticipated sporting event of my life was Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014: the Michigan men's basketball team playing Michigan State in Ann Arbor. I'd grown up around Big Ten basketball, but I was a newly minted Wolverine fan (and a freshman on campus). My matriculation coincided with off-the-charts hype for Michigan hoops; the Brady Hoke doldrums of the football team combined with a thrilling…
Monday's NCAA Championship Game delivered a huge victory for the University of Connecticut, in that Dan Hurley did not bring himself, his team, the university or the coaching profession into three days of disrepute, nor did Dawn Staley repeatedly offer to kick his ass. Hey, sometimes the championship you're playing for isn't necessarily the same one everyone else recognizes. It will be a lot of…
There was a moment early in the third quarter of Sunday’s national championship game when you could see exactly how UCLA was going to win and why. The South Carolina Gamecocks, desperate for offense, had taken to gambling now: sending bold passes through traffic, pawing for steals, taking shots early in the clock. They needed something—anything—and in the absence of a real halfcourt method, the…
As the Final Four game between Michigan and Arizona wound down on Saturday night, the TBS broadcasting crew said a bunch of demonstrably true and contextually confusing things about Arizona. The Wildcats really had entered the game as hot as any program in college basketball, carrying a nine-game winning streak that included a convincing march through the Big 12 Tournament into the NCAA…
A college basketball coach in the middle of a meltdown is extended grace that generally wouldn't be granted to any other adult having a tantrum in public. On the merits, there's nothing much to say on behalf of a grown man who is stamping and fuming and turning a Cran-apple color while heatedly saying things like "it's about _respect_." That's just an embarrassing thing to do, and if and when you…
Any hotshot high schooler who commits to South Carolina is also committing to a kind of amnesia. How many points you scored last game, how old you are, whether you’re a starter or come off the bench, whether you’ve been on this stage before—none of those things seem to matter as much as what you’re doing right now, in this game. When sophomore Joyce Edwards was asked, after Monday night’s Elite…
Here's one mark of a legendary highlight: You can show it to someone who hasn't seen a minute of the sport in years, with no explanatory context, and get a reaction that's something like, "_Wow!_ " Such is the case with UConn's Braylon Mullins and his shot to beat Duke in the Elite Eight. Everything about the play itself and the production around it felt practically scripted for maximum…
UConn freshman Braylon Mullins watched his last shot Sunday night arc toward the basket from 35 feet away. If his eyes had been shut, he still would've known, not only from the pandemonium of the crowd and the euphoria of his teammates, but from the wonderful knife-plunge noise of a swish from great distance. _Chuh!_ That's the best sound basketball has to offer. It's very much like the sound of…
Campy, goofy, stylish, a little chaotic—there is something so _college basketball_ about Olivia Miles. Her decision to forgo last spring’s WNBA draft, where she was poised to be a top-three pick, and use her final year of NCAA eligibility might have surprised WNBA fans, but it also felt fitting. You get the sense that March is exactly where she belongs.
In the two tournaments Miles was healthy…
Opening night of the men's NCAA tournament’s round of 16 will be remembered for the guys who weren’t on the floor when the games were decided.
An intense and otherwise beautifully played Iowa-Nebraska game was decided by one of the most bizarre coaching boners in recent March Madness history and maybe ever. Nebraska had only four players on the court coming out of a timeout, with just under a…
There is no dignified way to promote a book. Emma Baccellieri of _Sports Illustrated_ is a longtime friend of the pod and always a welcome guest, but she is also a busy woman—busy on the bargaining committee for the Sports Illustrated Union, busy covering the women's NCAA tournament on the West Coast, busy having deeply held opinions about sodas most people don't know exist. But as the co-author…
I've never been to Connecticut except to pass through it, so I personally can't speak to how hospitable it is to visitors. But Syracuse coach Felisha Legette-Jack would be happy if she never saw another Nutmegger for the rest of her life.
"For us to continue to come to Connecticut year after year after year is, to me, it's a personal attack," Legette-Jack said after her Orange lost, 98-45, in…
The beauty and tragedy of taking part in a great crowd pop is that you had to be there. The TV sound mixers will not do it justice, nor will that guy who filmed the whole thing on his busted iPhone. The YouTube video you’ll pull up years later, trying to remember the moment, will only underwhelm you in relation to the real thing. (You don't understand: I swear this Tim Hardaway Jr. three prompted…
St. John's was blowing it. After building a 56-42 lead against Kansas with eight minutes left to play, they suddenly started getting outworked and outplayed by a Jayhawks team that had spent the previous 32 minutes looking totally uninterested in advancing to the Sweet 16. Kansas came all the way back to tie the game at 65 with 14 seconds left, and then the funny stuff started happening.
After…
Arkansas point guard Darius Acuff Jr. will be selected near the very top of this summer's NBA draft. He will be a boon to any team in need of a crafty, athletic, classically trained point guard. If there's any knock on his pro prospects, it's his size: he's just short enough to profile as a defensive liability, and these days even the most skilled guards can get bullied out of games by beefy…
The NCAA women's tournament selection committee has never let an opportunity for rematch, rehash, or reunion pass them by. When the bracket was released on Sunday, it was no surprise to see a rather cinematic Elite Eight meeting set up in the Fort Worth 1 region, something in the vein of Obi-Wan vs. Darth Vader. The circle is now complete.
When former Huskies point guard Shea Ralph left UConn's…
A 12 seed upsetting a 5 seed is not the most unexpected NCAA tournament result, and yet it can still offer a chance to partake in one of March's most pleasurable traditions: learning about a school and program that 95 percent of viewers had never heard of prior to tip-off. Sometimes this process leads to charming discoveries (Florida Gulf Coast University's campus lake) and sometimes it doesn't…
As my variously diseased sports-watching habits go, my fondness for college basketball feels like the most disreputable. The Mets are a family thing. West Coast MLB and NBA games, between teams I don't care about, are mostly about proving that I am allowed to stay up as late as I want. Choosing to watch the Horizon League semifinals, on the other hand, is just very difficult to excuse. I'm not…
The NCAA men's tournament begins today, and I hope that you’ve got everything you need on hand to enjoy the games when they tip off later this afternoon. Beer? Check. Pre-scheduled takeout order for wings? Check. A slipshod plan to flee the office an hour after lunch? Oh yeah, that’s a check.
Almond butter?
What’s that, you have no almond butter on hand? You had all winter to get ready for this…
You can tell a lot about a college basketball fan by what they miss. Cut me open and the concentric rings of idle sentiment that have accrued over a lifetime spent caring about this stuff will date me to my precise moment of conversion, on a well-timed sick day back in middle school; it remains the first and only legit sick day among the many I've called in during the first days of the NCAA…
March came in like a lion last night. An off-balance three-pointer from UMBC at the buzzer caromed off the backboard, allowing Howard University to survive a crazy and clutch comeback and advance to the main pool of the NCAA men's tournament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAA5nqPsH-w
Howard’s win, which was in a “first four” play-in game but is being accepted as the first March Madness win in…
March Madness means it's time to get invested in random schools from places you've never been, and after the bracket reveals on Sunday, I'd like to offer a potential rooting interest: the Saint Louis Billikens men's team. Based indeed in Missouri and not some off-brand St. Louis (à la Oakland University), you may faintly recall the Billikens for their quirky mascot and their three straight…