NCAA tournament 2018 live: Thursday schedule, TV info, scores

Rhode Island’s Jared Terrell takes a shot against Oklahoma during the first half of the first round’s first game. (Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports)

2018 NCAA tournament interactive bracket: Make your picks now

Schedule and results | Top story lines | Tournament history

Tip-off was still minutes away when Charles Barkley uttered his first controversial comment of the day.

Blabbing on CBS’s pregame show Thursday, Barkley opined that Arizona’s “DeAndre Ayton is the best college basketball player I’ve seen in 25 years.” Clark Kellogg agreed, but Kenny Smith brought a bit of balance to the conversation, reminding everyone of Anthony Davis.

Remember, the tournament’s first round hadn’t even started. Whee.

Rambling men: As noted by Matthew Giles over at Fancy Stats, Loyola-Chicago is seen as a prime candidate to upset a higher seed, and the 11th-seeded Ramblers will get their chance at approximately 3:10 p.m. Eastern in Dallas against sixth-seeded Miami.

“Each Rambler is an offensive mismatch: [Coach Porter] Moser’s small-ball squad consists of dual ballhandlers in Ben Richardson and Clayton Custer with 6-4 Marques Townes at the wing and 6-6 Donte Ingram as a power forward. (Moser will sometimes go even smaller with Ingram as the Ramblers’ de facto center.),” Giles wrote this week. “It’s a lineup built to shift the defense side to side with crisp ball movement (60 percent assist rate) and perimeter speed, continually probing for a seam until 17 or so seconds remain on the shot clock, at which point the Horizon League champs attack the subsequent opening. Five Ramblers connected on 38 percent or more of their threes, and only seven other Division I squads posted a higher effective field goal percentage (57.8 percent).”

As the first game was tipping off, the Hurricanes were just two-point favorites over Loyola-Chicago.

Trae Young, Sooners try to justify their bid: March Madness began with a bang, with one of the best players in the tournament taking the floor for one of the tournament’s most controversial teams at 12:15 p.m. Eastern in Pittsburgh.

Oklahoma’s Trae Young figures to be an NBA lottery pick this spring, but his team struggled down the stretch, and its selection caused a minor ruckus on Selection Sunday. Barkley and Dick Vitale were particularly critical, with Barkley sharply questioning Bruce Rasmussen, the selection committee chairman, about the at-large choice. Oklahoma started 14-2 but lost 11 of its final 15 games, including an opening-round loss in the Big 12 tournament, to finish 18-13, an unusually poor record for an at-large team. TBS analyst Clark Kellogg began the discussion Sunday by asking Rasmussen how the committee evaluated the Sooners, who were given a No. 10 seed.

“We look at the entire body of work,” said Rasmussen, the athletic director at Creighton who is in his first year chairing the selection committee. “So we look at all the games. The games in November, December count the same as the games in February and March. And Oklahoma had six wins against top 35 RPI [teams]. They had some absolutely great wins. We know that they stumbled down the stretch, and that certainly affected their seeding, but they had enough on their résumé to get in.”

Barkley wondered, with a dash of sarcasm, just how highly the committee had ranked Oklahoma before its swoon. “They were 2-8 [to end the season] … what, were they a No. 1 seed before they went 2-8, to drop all the way down to 10?” he asked, to laughter. He then doubled down on his assertion Thursday during the CBS pregame show, saying USC should have gotten in to the tournament over Oklahoma.

Young, meantime, said the Sooners are ignoring the chatter about their poor finish. “This is a new season,” he said. “I count the regular season as last season.”

For more on Oklahoma, read The Post’s profile: Is Young the second coming of Steph Curry? That’s for his father to worry about. The Post’s Neil Greenberg still identifies the Sooners as one of his first-round upset picks. And here’s a look at his round-by-round odds and projections for every team.

Schedule and results

Afternoon schedule (All times Eastern):

• 12:15 p.m. No. 7 Rhode Island vs. No. 10 Oklahoma (CBS)
• 12:40 p.m. No. 3 Tennessee vs. No. 14 Wright State (truTV)
• 1:30 p.m. No. 4 Gonzaga vs. No. 13 UNCG (TNT)
• 2 p.m. No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 16 Penn (TBS)
• 2:45 p.m. No. 2 Duke vs. No. 15 Iona (CBS)
• 3:10 p.m. No. 6 Miami vs. No. 11 Loyola Chicago (truTV)
• 4 p.m. No. 5 Ohio State vs. No. 12 South Dakota State (TNT)
• 4:30 p.m. No. 8 Seton Hall vs. No. 9 N.C. State (TBS)

Evening schedule (All times Eastern):

• 6:50 p.m. No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 16 Radford (TNT)
• 7:10 p.m. No. 5 Kentucky vs. No. 12 Davidson (CBS)
• 7:20 p.m. No. 6 Houston vs. No. 11 San Diego State (TBS)
• 7:27 p.m. No. 3 Texas Tech vs. No. 14 Stephen F. Austin (truTV)
• 9:20 p.m. No. 8 Virginia Tech vs. No. 9 Alabama (TNT)
• 9:40 p.m. No. 4 Arizona vs. No. 13 Buffalo (CBS)
• 9:50 p.m. No. 3 Michigan vs. No. 14 Montana (TBS)
• 9:57 p.m. No. 6 Florida vs. No. 11 St. Bonaventure (truTV)

Top story lines

— The most important thing you’ll need to know over the first two days of the tournament — the absolute most essential information is how to find truTV, the Turner channel that assumes a lofty status along with CBS, TNT and TBS for this part of the March Madness. Here’s everything you need to know about how to quickly find it.

— This week’s play-in winners are Radford, Texas Southern, St. Bonaventure and Syracuse. Radford faces Villanova; Texas Southern plays Xavier; St. Bonaventure plays Florida; and Syracuse faces TCU. And as John Feinstein writes, Radford isn’t letting the long odds kill its vibe.

— Kansas just won its NCAA-record 14th straight conference title and is a No. 1 seed for the eighth time in 15 years under Bill Self. (Read more on Big 12 player of the year Devonte’ Graham, who plays a beautiful but understated game.)

— Miami is in its third straight tournament, and the school is already in love with 5-foot-7 Chris Lykes. Next up: All of college basketball.

— Kentucky Coach John Calipari didn’t seem thrilled with his team’s draw —  or with being sent to Boise.

— There will be no team in this year’s field with more scrutiny and attention than Arizona, thanks to the ongoing FBI investigation of college basketball corruption. Some people think the FBI is cleaning up college basketball, but critics claim the bureau is wasting its time. And Jerry Brewer argues that March Madness is the sport’s greatest hypocrisy and best hope of salvation.

— Michigan is again peaking at the right time, with a tenacious defensive identity and another Big Ten tournament title.

— Forget about Kentucky and Arizona, Virginia, still has the easiest road to the Final Four. The Cavaliers face UMBC, which is embracing a “nothing to lose” attitude,” in the first round. And, unsurprisingly, the three best bets to win the NCAA tournament include Virginia, as well as Villanova and Duke. Here is a roundup of other expert picks.

— Barack Obama isn’t letting a little thing like being out of office keep him from his annual “Barack-etology” brackets. Spoiler: he has Michigan State winning the men’s title and UConn (again) winning the women’s championship.

Tournament history

One crying moment

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