It was quite a night of college basketball in the Sweet 16 on Friday. Three of the four games went literally to the final possession, including both games at the Midwest Regional in Indianapolis where the crowd was out in full force. Here’s a look back on the four games that completed the field for the regional finals…
The last four teams in the NCAA Tournament East Regional converge on New York City to settle a Final Four berth between tonight and Sunday. Friday’s semifinals feature Iowa State-UConn (7:27 PM ET) and Michigan State-Virginia (9:57 PM ET), with both games carried by TBS.
If you look at a regional just from the standpoint of how fun it would be to attend in person and how loud the crowd is going be, it’s tough to get much better than what the NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional offers, starting Friday and concluding Sunday. Indianapolis is the site, and all four schools—Kentucky, Louisville, Michigan and Tennessee are from nearby. You have the last two national champions—blood rivals going head-to-head—and the NCAA finalist from 2013. The roof may blow off the RCA Dome before the weekend is finished.
Are we headed for another sibling rivalry to settle a major sports championship? Everyone remembers the Harbaugh Brothers going it in the Super Bowl following the 2012 NFL season when John’s Baltimore Ravens nipped Jim’s San Francisco 49ers. Now the 2014 NCAA Tournament has two brothers still coaching and both took their teams to the regional finals last night. It’s the Millers, Sean leading Arizona and Archie heading up Dayton that have their eyes on meeting in the NCAA final. Here’s a recap on their wins, along with the rest of Thursday in the Sweet 16…
Anaheim is the site of the NCAA Tournament West Regional, as Arizona, Wisconsin, San Diego State and Baylor are converge on SoCal to play for a spot in the Final Four, with semi-final games on Thursday night and a final on Saturday.
The NCAA Tournament South Regional has its Sweet 16 games tip off on Thursday, with a place in the Final Four being settled on Saturday. This is the gutted bracket of this year’s field, with 10-seed Stanford and 11-seed Dayton having advanced, and one of those guaranteed to move forward to Saturday.
The whirlwind of March Madness is over and the hard business of determining a national collegiate basketball champion has begun. The romance of the NCAA Tournament is about what took place this past weekend, when a four-day rush pared the field from 64 teams to 16 and no-name underdogs had their day in the sun.
Life in the NCAA Tournament is harsh, and Wichita State became the latest to learn that lesson on Sunday when the Shockers’ unbeaten season came to a crushing end in a 78-76 loss to Kentucky that was nothing less than a brilliantly played basketball game.
It was a lost season for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2013. The year got off to a bad start on the field, then rotation ace Yovani Gallardo got a DWI, something that was akin to gathering storm clouds. Then the hammer dropped, when left fielder Ryan Braun, the face of the franchise and heart of the lineup, was suspended for PED use. Braun is back and both he and the team have a lot of repair work to do, both in the community and on the field. Our spring training review here at TheSportsNotebook continues with the Brewers’ Notebook Nine, the nine talking points for the coming year.
The Arizona Diamondbacks led the NL West for much of the first part of 2013, but faded badly down the stretch and their only impact on the division race in September was to raise a fuss over the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrating in the pool when the Dodgers clinched the NL West in Phoenix. Is there any hope for the D-Backs to reclaim the status they held in 2011 when they won the division and were seen as a rising force in the National League? Here’s the Notebook Nine, our nine focal points for a new season…
The chalk started to assert itself in the NCAA Tournament, as six teams that were favorites moved on to the Sweet 16. But there was still room for upsets, as two dark horses also survived this opening weekend of the tournament. Here’s a look back at yesterday’s eight games from the Round of 32…
The Kansas City Royals are relevant again. After years of seeing false hopes raised and dashed, the good people of Kansas City were able to watch their team compete for a playoff spot into the final week of the 2013 regular season.
It was the first winning season for the franchise in ten years and gives a reasonable basis for hope that the first playoff berth since the team’s championship year of 1985—and first of the post-1993 realignment era—will be forthcoming. What follows is the Notebook Nine, our nine talking points on the Royals as the new season begins…
