Charles Barkley wore a big, goofy cowboy hat ahead of the men’s NCAA tournament championship.
Charles Barkley sported quite the hat while discussing Monday night’s 2023 men’s NCAA tournament championship.
With the anticipated clash between Connecticut and San Diego State taking place in Houston, Texas, Barkley wore a big, red cowboy hat while co-hosting the CBS pregame show.
“You’ve got a 10-gallon hat with a 20-gallon head,” Barkley’s longtime co-host Kenny Smith joked during the segment.
Barkley has never shied away from his sillier side, and this national championship headwear certainly honored the grand spirit of the Lone Star State. Plus, it was just downright hilarious.
Barkley has taken the big hat trend and added the Texas spin to it, and you can bet that big, goofy cowboy hat sales will soar now with this kind of national exposure!
Well, maybe not, but if you’ve got the confidence to pull one of those off, you certainly deserve a tip of the cap.
Should Jill Biden’s idea that Iowa join LSU at the White House actually happen? Angel Reese doesn’t seem to think so.
After attending Sunday’s 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship, First Lady Jill Biden said on Monday she wants both teams to attend the White House ceremony later this year.
“I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come,” she said, via AP. “But, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”
After watching the women's NCAA basketball championship from the stands, Jill Biden says she wants Caitlin Clark and Iowa to join victorious LSU at the White House. https://t.co/eBxhab7jzN
It’s never been customary for championship losers to visit the White House alongside the winners. However, the first lady seems interested in amending tradition to honor Iowa women’s basketball and its stellar tournament run behind AP National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark.
Well, LSU star sophomore forward Angel Reese saw the idea and couldn’t take the first lady’s suggestion very seriously.
While the first lady certainly means well with her suggestion, the whole point of winning a championship is getting to celebrate the exclusivity of being a champion.
We’ll see if this actually happens, but Iowa attending the White House ceremony would make much more sense if they had, y’know, actually won.
It’s all love between LSU’s Alexis Morris and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark.
Ahead of Sunday’s 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship between LSU and Iowa, two of the game’s top players exchanged in a really cool meeting.
LSU’s Alexis Morris and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark were soon to be rivals on the court, but Morris couldn’t help but talk about how excited she was to meet Clark, the AP National Player of the Year.
It would be LSU who hoisted the trophy in a surprising upset, but both teams certainly have a lot to be proud of for what was one of the biggest women’s NCAA tournaments of recent memory.
It’s very possible these two teams will see each other again next spring in next year’s tournament.
A look at who’s calling the final March Madness game.
The end of March Madness 2023 is here, with the thrilling men’s NCAA tournament down to its final two teams: San Diego State and UConn, a pair of Cinderellas waiting to be crowned.
If you’re here, you might be wondering: Who’s calling the game you’re watching? And that’s what we’ll answer for you.
We’ve updated this post with the info for the final on Monday night. The game in Houston will be broadcast on CBS, so of course there’s just one announcing team on top of all the action (and that’ss significant given that it’s a certain play-by-play announcer’s Final Four).
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So let’s take a look at who’s calling the final on Monday:
But lost in the shuffle might have been what Alexis Morris was up to. On her Instagram, the guard shared a photo of herself, in uniform, smoking a cigar while holding the national championship trophy. In case anyone needed a reminder, it’s an homage to Joe Burrow’s legendary locker room cigar pic after he took LSU’s football team to a 2019 national title game win.
What a great callback after another big-time championship for the school:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqjtOCbsZey/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlM-l1rwok/
Two LSU legends, forged in greatness, forever memorialized with a celebratory cigar picture.
It’s possible that if you’re reading this, Bill Murray is in the stands at UConn’s championship game against San Diego State. As a certain character of his might say, it’s been a real Cinderella story for the Huskies, and as you’ll see below, Murray has been in attendance for a bunch of the team’s games in the 2023 NCAA men’s tournament.
But why, you ask? Wasn’t it only a few years ago that Murray was a Xavier superfan? Well, yes! And the reason is the same!
Not that this isn’t the norm, but if you’re on Eastern Standard Time, you might want to drink some coffee before the men’s national title game tonight.
Connecticut and San Diego State will not officially start until around 9:30 Eastern. That’s right, 30 minutes before 10 o’clock (on the East Coast) on a Monday evening, with work the next day, meaningful basketball will be played. That is just patently absurd.
I’m aware that fans in other time zones are a bit luckier, and this has a heavy hint of East coast bias. But come on now. This is a championship game. It’s a little ridiculous that even one time zone has to deal with this tip-off time.
Never mind that, hello — one invested fanbase, Connecticut — is in the Eastern time zone!
College basketball fans, especially those in the east, aren’t happy.
The reaction to Angel Reese taunting Caitlin Clark proved Dawn Staley’s point about double standards.
This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Prince Grimes.
After South Carolina’s bid for a perfect season came up short Friday, head coach Dawn Staley had a message for the media in her postgame press conference.
“Watch what you say.”
Staley had been hearing the ways her predominantly-Black team was being talked about in certain circles, and she planned to address it regardless of the game’s result.
Before the subject could get lost in the moment, a reporter asked Staley for the truth about her team, which was often described as a bully.
“The truth about our team … We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court. And I do think that [is] sometimes brought into the game, and it hurts.
“Some of the people in the media, when you’re gathering in public, you’re saying things about our team and you’re being heard. And it’s being brought back to me.”
"We're not bar fighters. We're not thugs. We're not monkeys. We're not street fighters. … So watch what you say when you're in public and you're talking about my team in particular."
What Staley described is racism, at worst. At minimum, it’s an implicit bias common in sports: Black women are the aggressors in proximity to their non-Black counterparts. In basketball, that type of bias influences how athletes are covered, coached, officiated, and ultimately perceived by the public.
"I'm too hood, I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y'all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me."
The great ambassador for women’s basketball that she is, Staley should have been applauded for bringing this issue to the forefront. As the sport continues to grow in popularity, it’s something better addressed earlier than left to fester and become normal.
There was no better person to speak about it than a Black woman who has experienced these biases first-hand, as both a player and coach. Already a Hall of Famer, Olympic gold medalist and two-time champion, Staley doesn’t have anything left to prove. She’s simply someone who has seen and heard everything there is to be seen and heard about basketball. If she says something is happening, we should listen.
Instead, Staley was doubted by people like columnist Peter Vecsey and called a sore loser or a victim who was playing the race card – sentiments that did nothing but prove the exact point she was making.
Guarantee, nobody in the media has ever referred to South Carolina’s players as monkeys. What nonsense!
People would rather live with their unchecked biases than look themselves in the mirror and admit they harbor harmful thoughts, which is sad and the type of behavior that allows racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and so forth and so on to exist.
Seeing it play out the way it did — just in the same way Staley pointed out how her team was talked about — put a real damper on what was otherwise an incredible Final Four.
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Quick Hits: LSU-Iowa officiating gets slammed … Wrestlemania madness! … The “ghost fork” makes its regular-season debut … and more.
LSU basketball past and present embraced after the program’s first women’s NCAA tournament victory.
LSU women’s basketball legend Seimone Augustus shared a wonderful embrace with 2023 women’s NCAA tournament star Angel Reese after the Tigers won this year’s national title.
Augustus is one of the most accomplished women’s basketball players of all time, winning four WNBA titles with the Minnesota Lynx. Her No. 33 is retired by both LSU and Minnesota.
Of course, Augustus was on hand for LSU’s historic title win on Sunday against Iowa, and she shared in a really awesome hug with Reese after the victory. Augustus also shared some NSFW praise for Reese on the win.
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) April 2, 2023
Well, isn’t that just the coolest thing? LSU past and present embracing in such a fantastic moment for the program really is what March Madness is all about.
Reese will join Augustus in LSU women’s basketball history, and they’ll get to celebrate now in the school’s historic title.
Caitlin Clark had amazing perspective after Iowa lost in the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship to LSU.
Iowa women’s basketball superstar Caitlin Clark wanted to put her historic March Madness in perspective on Sunday.
After her team’s 102-85 loss to LSU in the 2023 women’s NCAA tournament championship, Clark talked about how she hoped her team’s postseason run inspired those back at home.
“I want my legacy to be the impact that I have on young kids and the people in the state of Iowa,” Clark shared,” and I hope I brought them a lot of joy this season. I hope this team brought them a lot of joy.
“I understand we came up one win short, but I think we have a lot to be proud of and a lot to celebrate. I was just that young girl, so all you have to do is dream, and you can be in moments like this.”
"I want my legacy to be the impact that I have on young kids and the people in the state of Iowa.
