Tag: NCAA Men’s Basketball

When was the last time the Big Ten won a title in NCAA men’s basketball?

It’s been nearly a quarter-century since the Big Ten tasted victory in March Madness.

The Big Ten is, without a doubt, one of the strongest conferences in men’s college basketball. Year after year, teams like Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State and more are contenders to play deep into March and cause opponents to get a little nervous.

But since the turn of the century, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has been unkind at best — cruel at worst — to the Big Ten. The conference’s last NCAA championship was in March of 2000 when Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans won the Big Dance.

For those keeping track at home, it has been 23 years — nearly a quarter-century — since the Big Ten hoisted the trophy. Maryland, which is currently a Big Ten member, did win in 2002, but the Terps were an ACC squad at the time.

The Big Ten has gotten close over the last 23 years, finishing as a runner-up seven times and lost in the semi-finals seven more times. Will this season break the drought? The Big Ten had three ranked teams going into the 2023-24 season, led by No. 3 Purdue and No. 4 Michigan State.

NIT to change selection process for 2024, NCAA announces

The NIT Tournament will no longer automatically grant bids to regular-season conference champions who don’t make the NCAA Tournament.

The NIT Tournament will change its qualifying structure and selection criteria for the 2024 tournament, the NCAA announced on Friday.

The NCAA’s statement said automatic bids will now be granted to the two highest-ranked available teams in the NET rankings from each of the biggest six conferences (the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC).

Each of these 12 automatic qualifiers will host their first-round matchup in the tournament.

In previous years, these automatic bids were awarded to any regular-season conference champions who did not win their conference tournament and otherwise failed to be selected for the NCAA Tournament.

“The change to the selection process for the 2024 NIT is a necessary effort to evolve this historic tournament in a dynamic event marketplace,” said Dan Gavitt, NIT board chair and NCAA senior vice president of basketball, in the NCAA release.

Once the 12 automatic selections outlined above are awarded, the NIT Committee will fill in the rest of the bracket with the 20 teams deemed the best available, starting with the first four not selected for March Madness.

The NIT will also widen the free-throw lane from 12 feet to 16 feet, consistent with current NBA regulations.

2024 NIT Tournament selections will be announced on March 17.

Duke’s Filipowski leads 20 power forwards on Karl Malone Award watch list

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame named 20 power forwards to its watch list for the position’s best, including Duke’s Kyle Filipowski.

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame released its watch list for the Karl Malone Award on Thursday, highlighting the 20 players expected to compete for the title of the nation’s best power forward.

Duke’s Kyle Filipowski offered the most star power on the list. A preseason Associated Press All-American, the 7-footer averaged 15.1 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.3 steals, and 0.7 blocks per game as a freshman a year ago. He helped lead the Blue Devils to an ACC Tournament title before their second-round loss to Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament.

Mississippi State’s Tolu Smith, a senior who averaged 15.7 points and 8.5 rebounds last season, also featured on the list. Smith injured his foot in practice earlier this month, but should he come back early enough in the season, he should be one of the SEC’s best.

Storied recent programs like Gonzaga and UConn got names on the list as well. Read below to see all 20 names recognized by the voting committee.

Player School
Enrique Freeman Akron
Grant Nelson Alabama
Keshad Johnson Arizona
Trevon Brazile Arkansas
Fousseyni Traore BYU
Tristan da Silva Colorado
DaRon Holmes II Dayton
Kyle Filipowski Duke
Graham Ike Gonzaga
J’Wan Roberts Houston
Coleman Hawkins Illinois
Oso Ighodaro Marquette
Julian Reese Maryland
Norchad Omier Miami (FL)
Tolu Smith Mississippi State
Jevon Porter Pepperdine
Bryce Hopkins Providence
Adem Bona UCLA
Alex Karaban UConn
Drew Pember UNC Asheville

The list will be narrowed down to 10 in January, then five players the month after that. The winner will be selected from the five finalists in March.

Hunter Dickinson and the top-50 players who used the NCAA men’s basketball transfer portal

We have a handful of former five-star recruits in the portal.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the transfer portal in college sports.

Although roster continuity is one of the keys to success in March Madness, it’s also incredibly helpful for some programs to use the transfer portal to find ready-to-play contributors.

More than 1,600 men’s college basketball players used the transfer portal last season and some of the players who appeared on last year’s edition of this list (e.g. Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman) played impactful minutes in the NCAA men’s tournament. Several important players in the Final Four (like Miami’s Jordan Miller and Nijel Pack or UConn’s Tristen Newton) were transfers.

Below, we highlighted some of the most notable names in the transfer portal.

We used data from our good friends at Cerebro Sports — you can create a free account to evaluate player performance across all levels globally. Their C-RAM metric grades players on a scale from 0 to 10+ based on their overall performance.

This story references projected impact metrics provided by EvanMiya.com. BPR values are interpreted as the expected points per 100 possessions better than a D1 average player while on the floor.

We have also included projected impact metrics from BartTorvik.com, which you can view here and learn more about it here.

Additionally, NBA likelihood percentages are provided by Nick Kalinowski. You can learn more about the metric here.

You can see a full list of the available players if you click here and you can also check out our rankings for the women’s college basketball transfer portal as well.

Sleuthy fans apparently learned Rick Pitino’s phone number by reading his lips during Knicks game

Shockingly, Pitino said that 95% of the more than 300 messages he received were “nice n positive.”

Newly hired St. John’s coach Rick Pitino hasn’t been back in the Big Apple for very long, but he received quite a warm welcome from the fans in New York City after the Knicks’ playoff win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday.

According to a tweet from Pitino — who attended the game at Madison Square Garden, where he will coach his home games with the Red Storm — on Monday, a number of eagle-eyed fans managed to ascertain his phone number when a broadcast camera caught him telling someone else his phone number.

A number of people were apparently able to figure out his number by reading his lips, and he said he received more than 300 messages following the game. Surprisingly, the polarizing coach said the vast majority of the messages were positive and even resulted in “a lead on 7 new recruits.”

Pitino makes his return to New York City after spending three years at Iona. He previously coached the Knicks as well as the Boston Celtics, and he’s made collegiate stops as the head man at Boston University, Providence, Kentucky and Louisville, winning national championships with the latter two.

However, his title with the Cardinals was later vacated by the NCAA.

After an NCAA scandal ended his tenure in Louisville, Pitino is back in major college basketball. It seems that New York City basketball fans are excited about it, if a bit overzealous.

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1 wild stat shows just how active the college basketball transfer portal has been this offseason

We’re seeing unprecedented levels of movement in college basketball this offseason.

There’s no ignoring the impact the transfer portal has had on college sports since its advent several years ago.

The impacts have been felt across all sports, but perhaps most notably in basketball. On the men’s side alone, more than 1,000 players have already entered the portal, and the number is growing by the day.

That list includes several big names like Michigan’s Hunter Dickinson, Baylor’s LJ Cryer, Creighton’s Ryan Nembhard and mid-major superstar Max Abrams from Oral Roberts.

Just to put the sheer volume of players heading elsewhere this offseason into context, more than 20% of scholarship Division I men’s college basketball players have entered the transfer portal already, per On3’s Matt Zenitz.

Compare that to football, which saw around 12% of scholarship FBS players enter the transfer portal.

Lots of offseason movement is the new normal in college sports, and considering all it takes is one big season in college basketball to make a name for yourself as an NBA prospect, we’re likely to only see these numbers continue to grow.

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Jordan Hawkins had the best response to both him and his cousin, Angel Reese, winning titles: ‘The cookout gone be lit’

Talk about a family of champions.

It’s going to be a pretty incredible summer for the family of Angel Reese and Jordan Hawkins.

For those of you who didn’t know, the two of them are cousins and they both live in Maryland. Hawkins is from Gaithersburg and Reese is from Baltimore, which is just a ride up the local beltway.

Angel Reese received an elite Old Bay care package after LSU’s national championship win

Hawkins said he and Reese “go way back” to the days when she’d beat him playing one-on-one when the two linked up back home. Hawkins stood up for Reese after people online criticized her for her celebration taunt aimed at Caitlin Clark during the women’s national championship game.

Now, after Hawkins and UConn won on Monday night, both of them are national champions. And Hawkins was totally pumped about it.

“Me and Angel paved the way. We did it. We did it…Look, I’ma see her in Maryland soon, so. The cookout gone be lit.” 

Yes indeed. That cookout might be like a joint championship parade. The menu is going to be wild, too. There will be lots of crabs, Old Bay, some half smokes on the grill,  good burgers and a couple of championship rings to show off.

Hopefully, we get some good pictures.

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UConn is so much better at winning titles than everyone’s favorite college basketball teams it’s not even funny

And the stats back it up, too

Every year in March, we’re always talking about the same teams regarding the NCAA Tournament.

It’s Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky and the like. All the schools everyone loves to call the “bluebloods” of college basketball. Each of them has a rich, storied history in the sport, so it’s reasonable for people to hold them in reverence.

But when you look at the numbers, it’s hard to figure out why newly minted national champion UConn is never included in so many conversations.

The March Madness champion will (almost definitely!) be one of these 8 NCAA men’s teams

With Monday night’s championship win, UConn’s men’s basketball team has truly begun to run laps around everyone’s favorite schools. The school has won five championships in the last 25 years.

The school stands alone in that. 

Three of those titles came within the last 12 years, including the 2011 Kemba Walker run.

It’s also worth noting that the school has managed to do this under the leadership of 3 different coaches during this run. Jim Calhoun, Kevin Ollie and, now, Dan Hurley.

That’s some pretty incredible stuff. Let’s be honest — it’s probably much better than what your favorite school has done in the same time.

If you didn’t consider UConn a blueblood of college basketball before, you absolutely have to now. It’s impossible to deny the program’s success — especially when you stack it up against the schools that we consider the creme of the crop in college basketball now.

UConn is not only among the best, but it’s better than the best. Next time, if we treat them like it, we might not be so surprised if the school makes another title run.

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Watch the latest One Shining Moment to cap off March Madness 2023

ONE SHINING MOMENT ALERT

One of the best traditions in all of sports has once again come and gone.

Every men’s NCAA tournament ends with a heartwarming montage of all of the best moments from the postseason, set to the song “One Shining Moment” by Luther Vandross. 

This year’s “One Shining Moment” video is as glorious as you’d expect, complete with all the upsets, buzzer-beaters, heartaches and celebrations that made this March Madness run one to remember.

Whether it’s watching No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson shock the world or Lamont Butler hit a game-winning shot for San Diego State in the Final Four, there are plenty of amazing moments to look back on this year.

Like, c’mon, what’s better than that? You can watch last year’s “One Shining Moment” to refresh yourself on what once was and enjoy this year’s version as many times as you’d like.

Congratulations to the UConn Huskies for taking home this year’s title, and we’ll see who is left celebrating at the end of next year’s “One Shining Moment.”

In the meantime, let’s just all break out our calendars and cross off the days until the next March Madness.

Jim Nantz’s final men’s March Madness signoff was perfect and made everyone so emotional

Jim Nantz had us all in our feelings as he signed off for the last time from March Madness.

As the 2023 men’s NCAA tournament closed on Monday night, college basketball fans got one last goodbye from CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz.

The longtime NCAA tournament fixture recently shared that he was leaving CBS’ coverage of March Madness after more than three decades on the mic.

Nantz got quite a hero’s welcome as he prepared to call his last Final Four, and he become emotional as he signed off with a spin on his classic catchphrase, “Hello, friends.” 

“Thank you for being my friend,” an emotional Nantz told the CBS viewers as his voice trembled a bit.

It was the perfect way for folks at home to say goodbye to Nantz covering one of the biggest sports celebrations of the spring.

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