In the men’s tournament, No. 2 Houston tips off against No. 12 Oregon State at 7:15 p.m., followed by No. 1 Baylor vs. No. 3 Arkansas, on CBS.
Follow along for live updates during the games.
Houston jumps out to 14-6 lead, puts clamps on Oregon State
Houston entered the tournament regarded as one of the best defensive teams in the country and then backed that up through three games. The Cougars, seeded second in the Midwest Region, proved again in the early going against No. 12 Oregon State they can put the clamps on opponents.
Midway through the first half, Houston led 14-6 by holding the Beavers to fewer made baskets (three) than turnovers (five). The good news for Oregon State is that its deficit isn’t any bigger, but the team will need a find a way to get leading scorer Ethan Thompson (zero points, 0-for-2 from the field) untracked.
Oregon State Coach Wayne Tinkle has a pretty good starting five at his house
INDIANAPOLIS — The Tinkle family of Montana, then of Europe, and nowadays of Oregon, is the first family of American basketball, and don’t you argue with that, you myopic East Coast snob.
Their number of family members stands at five — two parents, two adult daughters, one adult son — and their number of family members who played in Division I stands at, wait, let’s check it, five. The five Tinkles have treated four universities to 7,224 points and 3,684 rebounds. If you’re one of those who recoils at diving through the intricacies of basketball, you ought not go messing around at their house in Corvallis, Ore., which is not to say the two Rottweilers and the Double Doodle will chase you off or anything.
Many a night, Wayne Tinkle, who once coached Montana into three NCAA tournaments and has helmed Oregon State from 11-11 earlier this year to 19-12 and the Sweet 16 in arguably the best story left in this male March Madness, comes on home from another night at the mercy of the scoreboard. Often everybody’s there, as they’ve been this pandemic year. Sometimes, they begin consolation: “They know exactly what to say to make him know everything’s going to be okay,” Lisa McLeod Tinkle said of her daughters.
How they got here: Oregon State vs. Houston
Second-seeded Houston meets 12th-seeded Oregon State in the Midwest Region final at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The game will be broadcast on CBS at 7:15 p.m. Eastern time, with the winner gaining a Final Four berth against the winner of the South Region final between Arkansas and Baylor later Monday.
No. 12 Oregon State (20-12)
NCAA tournament results: beat Tennessee, 70-56; Oklahoma State, 70-60; Loyola Chicago, 65-58.
Remember when a last-place finish in the Pac-12 was predicted for Oregon State? The Beavers, in the NCAA tournament for only the second time since 1990, have won six consecutive games to reach the cusp of their first trip to the national semifinals since 1963. What’s the secret? A plus-27 edge in rebounding, among other things.
“You look at the games we’ve won, we’ve answered some pretty good runs from the opponents and we’re playing really good ‘D,’ ” Coach Wayne Tinkle told reporters.
No. 2 Houston (27-3)
NCAA tournament results: beat Cleveland State, 87-56; Rutgers, 63-60; Syracuse, 62-46.
This game is Houston’s first regional final since 1984 and the heady days of Guy Lewis’s Phi Slama Jama crew. Under Coach Kelvin Sampson, the Cougars have won 27 games with tough defense and aggressive rebounding, two things Oregon State also has done well. In its three tournament victories, Houston has outrebounded each opponent by at least nine.
Houston entered the tournament holding opponents to a nation-best 37.3 percent field goal shooting. It was even tougher in its Sweet 16 matchup against Syracuse, holding the Orange to 28 percent, including 5 for 23 from three-point range.
In Oregon State, Sampson sees a familiar foe. “They’re a lot more like us,” he told reporters, “in that they get on the boards with athleticism and they play physical.”
How they got here: U-Conn. vs. Baylor
With the River Walk Region up for grabs, Connecticut and Baylor get the Elite Eight started at the Alamodome in San Antonio. The game is being broadcast on ESPN at 7 p.m. Eastern time. The winner will advance to play No. 3-seed Arizona or No. 4-seed Indiana in the Final Four. Here’s what you need to know.
No. 1 Connecticut (27-1)
Fresh off a convincing win in what was painted as a battle for freshman supremacy between Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the Huskies head into their most difficult test to date with an increased level of confidence after impressive performances from Bueckers’s teammates. Coming into the tournament — despite having four players average more than 10 points — questions remained about whether Connecticut’s surrounding cast could carry the load versus a formidable opponent should the freshman struggle. Led by juniors Christyn Williams (27 points) and Evina Westbrook (17 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds) and freshman Aaliyah Edwards (18 points) against Iowa, the Huskies appear to have addressed those concerns.
No. 2 Baylor (28-2)
After opening the tournament with convincing wins over Jackson State and Virginia Tech, Baylor needed overtime to dispose of a scrappy Michigan team during Saturday’s Sweet 16 matchup. While winning always takes precedent in a single-elimination tournament, it’s fair to question the price Baylor paid to get it as the Bears to face No. 1 Connecticut two days after NaLyssa Smith, Moon Ursin, Dijonai Carrington and Didi Richards each played 44-plus minutes. When these powerhouse programs last met in January of 2020 — a 74-58 win for the Bears in Hartford — Baylor leaned on its superior athleticism, length and physicality to overwhelm a Connecticut offense built on skill and finesse. Obviously it’s a new season, but the stylistic approach of each team remains. If Baylor plans to use a similar approach against the Huskies tonight, the Bears could become fatigued as the game wears on.
How Connecticut freshman Paige Bueckers is breaking college basketball
There are precious few secrets anymore when it comes to Paige Bueckers, who was a Minnesota hoops phenom as a seventh-grader; who 13 months ago became the first high school girl to grace the cover of Slam magazine; who on any given day might dish out fashion tips or social-justice truth to her 671,000 Instagram followers; and who, as the final seconds of overtime ticked down on the evening of Feb. 8 in Storrs, Conn., might as well have worn a sign saying, “I WILL BE TAKING THIS LAST SHOT.”
The clock dwindling, the Connecticut freshman broke open. A defender draped on her, she gathered the ball near the top of the key. A hand in her face, she let it fly.
Bueckers’s dagger bounced impossibly high off the back rim before falling in — her 11th, 12th and 13th consecutive points for the Huskies down the stretch, and her 29th, 30th and 31st for the game as U-Conn., ranked No. 2 nationally at the time, took down top-ranked South Carolina.
Men’s Sweet 16 teams might be stuck in Indy with idle time, but they don’t want to leave
INDIANAPOLIS — Before the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament began two weeks ago, Michigan Coach Juwan Howard packed as though he was planning to live in Indianapolis for a month. He brought enough clothes for four weeks — the length of a trip that would end with a Final Four appearance — and some laundry detergent.
“This is the first time, I would say, I look forward to being away from my family for a month,” Howard said on a radio show before his team took a four-hour bus ride to Indianapolis. “That’s the goal.”
The more the Wolverines win, the longer their trip becomes. With the NCAA tournament confined to one location, personnel from the final 16 teams have already lived in their Indianapolis hotels for nearly two weeks, but none for as long as Michigan. The Wolverines arrived March 11 for the Big Ten tournament, also staged in Indianapolis, which allowed teams to stay in town through Selection Sunday. That limited the risk of the coronavirus seeping into their programs and prematurely ending their seasons and meant Big Ten teams would play all of their postseason games during one long trip to central Indiana.
“We’ve embraced living here in Indy, and it’s been great,” Howard said Thursday as his top-seeded team prepares to face No. 4 Florida State on Sunday in the Sweet 16. “We made sure that we continue to keep changing our bed linens and getting comfortable with our hotel room.”
40 years of men’s NCAA tournament buzzer-beaters
The clock shows 0:00, the ball remains airborne, and the term “buzzer-beater” has long since joined the lexicon of an eccentric land. And that ball’s destination can affect the jobs of coaches, the legacies of players, the lifetime statistics of programs, the coveted chance to remain in the bracket for at least a few more days, all of it.
Some of the plays transpired almost precisely as drawn or conceived. Others unfolded as if beholden to the magic of a child’s scribbling. And some proved so implausible that no child on Earth could have scribbled them. They’re the shots that sent the benches scrambling, the broadcasters screaming and the winners escaping, shots that have dotted the batty fabric of March Madness through the past four, bracketed decades.
There have been 37 game-winning buzzer-beaters — shots that landed with no time left on the clock — in the past 40 years of the NCAA men’s tournament. Some have been launched from as far away as 50 feet and as close as the air above the rim. Here are some of the most memorable from each range.
This March Madness, the globetrotters have found their way to Indianapolis
INDIANAPOLIS — Last weekend and Monday, amid an insular country disconnected from most of the world by two prudish oceans, in an event called “Madness” only one nation has hatched and cherished, a Swiss man had an aria of a stat line. A Canadian son of Nigerian immigrants had numbers like a daydream. His Dominican teammate had a near-sonnet.
A man from Bordeaux, France, as if that weren’t enviable enough, posted 12 points and eight rebounds for favored Gonzaga. A giant of a man from Jamaica had 21 points, nine rebounds, two steals and two blocks but wound up with March sadness with Illinois. A German player for Michigan, the younger brother of another German player for Michigan who graced the 2018 Final Four, had 15 points, seven rebounds and two assists.
The idea of a frenzied basketball tournament played by college students can seem batty to the rest of the world, yet it also has come to seem dreamy to the rest of the world. Of the 1,051 players on 68 teams who began here, 157 from 49 countries and four unincorporated territories listed hometowns abroad. Ten years ago, those totals were 78 players and 31 countries.
“It’s not slowing down,” Illinois Coach Brad Underwood said Friday, five days after his team’s soaring season ended against Loyola Chicago’s mastery. “I see it just continuing to grow. It’s a big part of what we do.”
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