Tag: NCAAM Tournament

A classy Cormac Ryan stood up for teammate RJ Davis after a brutal Sweet 16 loss for North Carolina

UNC’s Cormac Ryan showed outstanding maturity following March Madness.

Despite a devastating loss, North Carolina Tar Heels senior Cormac Ryan showed outstanding maturity following the Sweet 16.

Although they were a No. 1 regional seed in the West, the Tar Heels were eliminated by Alabama in March Madness on Thursday night in Los Angeles. North Carolina lost, 89-87, in a close match against the Crimson Tide.

Following the game, UNC’s RJ Davis was asked about his performance on the court. Davis had 16 points but struggled with his efficiency, shooting 4-of-20 from the field and 0-for-9 on his 3-pointers.

Ryan noticed that Davis was having a difficult time answering the question, so he helped him out. It showed an incredible amount of thoughtfulness.

Here is what Ryan told reporters:

“I gotta chime in here. You guys can write whatever you want about tonight’s game. You can talk about RJ. You can talk about the stats. You can talk about whatever. But we would not be in this position today without RJ Davis and Armando Bacot. Carolina wouldn’t be in this position today without these two guys and so say what you want. There’s just not a true fiber in your being that could actually believe that anything that happened tonight could be the result of something RJ did wrong because RJ’s done something incredible for this team. He’s done stuff that’s never been done before. He’s one of the greatest Tar Heels of all time. For anybody to come and say anything negative about RJ is unacceptable.”

Those are incredibly strong words from Ryan and likely meant a lot to Davis.

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Dan Hurley, please wash your own lucky underwear

Never make your superstition someone else’s problem

UConn head coach Dan Hurley has a pair of lucky underwear.

As far as sports superstitions go, this one is pretty tame, if not especially common among athletes. It’s all well and fine and mostly harmless.

In Hurley’s case, we’re talking about a pair of MeUndies red boxers with dragons on them. I know this, so you need to know this. He wore a similar pair all last March during the Huskies’ title run and lo and behold they’ve returned this year.

Hurley, thankfully, isn’t superstitious enough to abstain from washing his underwear, but apparently the coach relies on his wife, Andrea, to clean them in between games. After UConn defeated San Diego State in Thursday’s Sweet 16 matchup, Hurley shouted out the practice in his postgame interview on the court.

It’s totally fine that Hurley has lucky underwear. It’s great that he can joke about them. It’s even better that will make sure they are clean.

All of that said— Dan Hurley, please wash your own underwear. You really don’t have to make that someone else’s problem. You are 51 years old. I have no doubt you can figure this out.

At the very least, that’s a lot of pressure to put on someone else. At worst, well, college basketball in March has never been kind to the stomach or bladder.

That should be a thing that Dan Hurley and only Dan Hurley gets to visualize.

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Clemson’s Brad Brownell prevented Ian Schieffelin from comparing himself to Kobe Bryant after Sweet 16 win

Nice save, Coach Brownell.

Six-seed Clemson upsetting two-seed Arizona got the 2024 men’s Sweet 16 started off with a bang, as the Tigers advanced to the Elite Eight in style on Thursday night.

Clemson forward Ian Schieffelin was part of the offensive excellence that powered the Tigers past the Wildcats to the tune of 14 points on the night.

After the game, someone reportedly asked Schieffelin about his Kobe Bryant-themed game shoes and if he felt like he was playing like the Los Angeles Lakers legend while wearing them.

Well, Clemson coach Brad Brownell saved Schieffelin from accidentally making too lofty of a comparison for himself with a very funny quip once the question was asked.

“Let’s please not compare yourself to Kobe Bryant,” Brownell joked, per The Post and Courier‘s Jon Blau, You’re playing well, but…”

Later, Brownell tried to compare Schieffelin to former NBA player and WNBA coach Bill Laimbeer, who Schieffelin said he didn’t know, per SportsTalk Media Network.

Schieffelin and his Clemson teammates are going to get plenty of spotlight on them as they continue to push for a spot in the Final Four, but it sure sounds like Brownell is going to keep his guys grounded on the way up… and show them some Laimbeer highlights for good measure.

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Dan Hurley compared athletes frequently using the transfer portal to changing out your daily underwear

That is certainly an interesting metaphor.

UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley took a pretty sound stance on Wednesday against the NCAA’s widening of the transfer portal for athletes.

As Hurley explained to the media, from his perspective, it’s not healthy for the players to be able to jump around with ease between programs, especially while an NCAA tournament is underway.

He went so far as to compare players making these moves with such frequency to someone changing out their daily undergarments.

“I just don’t think it’s healthy for somebody to be able to change schools like underwear,” Hurley said about his disdain about the increasing frequency of athletes using the transfer portal.

There will always be a stark irony to how coaches view players moving around between schools when you consider how coaches can do the same with relative ease throughout their careers when given the opportunity.

Between the transfer portal and NIL deals, athletes have more power swaying in their direction than they ever have in the sport’s history. Hurley joins the voices who feel that it’s a step in the wrong direction.

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Northwestern’s Chris Collins had a beautiful message for star Boo Buie after his final college game

What a heartwarming moment for Northwestern.

There is a cruel but inevitable reality to March Madness: only one team gets to cut the nets.

And only one team gets to really celebrate with its seniors. But this didn’t stop Northwestern’s Chris Collins from honoring one of the more important players in the history of the men’s program in the best way.

As No. 1 Uconn capped off a cruising second-round win over the Wildcats, Collins subbed out star Boo Buie with the intention of giving him a well-deserved curtain call in his last college game. And when Buie met Collins on the sideline, the Northwestern coach shared a heartfelt message about everything they’d been through together:

That is what it’s all about. Finding moments of joy and celebration, even when you’re not the last team standing.

Iowa State-Stanford announcers made the quirkiest middle school reference during their March Madness game

This call deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

If you were watching Iowa State and Stanford’s instant classic during March Madness on Sunday evening (and well into Monday morning), you were probably trying to find the words to describe what your eyes were seeing. The game was so mind-bending that even the TV announcers had to get super creative to describe it, but one call absolutely nailed it.

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Holy basketball, Batman! Stanford and Iowa State gave hoops fans the best game of the NCAA tournament thus far. If I didn’t watch it myself, I wouldn’t believe these stats: 17 lead changes (including seven in overtime at one point), 14 steals, 13 blocks, 11 ties and 63 percent shooting on 3-point shots from Iowa State. Did I mention that Stanford’s Kiki Iriafen dropped 41 points and 16 rebounds, and Iowa State’s Emily Ryan had 36 points on the other end? WILD TIMES. INCREDIBLE.

Social media was scrambling to keep up with so much happening at once. Heck, even Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer used one of the wildest metaphors we’ve heard in a while to describe it. However, Roy Philpott’s call during overtime said what everyone was thinking.

Here’s the call:

Hoops fans couldn’t get over how perfect the call was. Here’s how they reacted:

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Bill Self’s admission of looking forward to next season while Kansas was still alive was unfair to this year’s team

Bill Self could have kept this to himself.

Bill Self put his foot in his mouth Saturday after Kansas was eliminated from the second round of the NCAA tournament with a blowout loss to Gonzaga. During his postgame press conference, Self was asked if he was already looking forward to next season and the head coach responded by admitting he was looking ahead even before the tournament started.

“For the last month I’ve been thinking about next season, to be honest,” Self said. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the team he was still coaching just a few moments earlier.

College basketball fans dragged Self for what sounded like an admission of giving up on a season that ended with a top-25 AP ranking and 4-seed in the tournament, disappointing only by Kansas’ own high standards. Sure, the Jayhawks had four losses in their previous five games before the tourney started, including the last two by a combined 50 points, but March is for miracles and a deep Kansas run would have hardly counted as such.

What Self said isn’t actually the problem, though, and shouldn’t be interpreted as him quitting on the season. In fact, him acknowledging he can do better to improve the roster is actually a statement of accountability — an admission of his own failure to put together a team he could believe in this year. Where he went wrong is that he said it out loud. Self should have kept this to himself.

“We could have done a much better job as a staff putting more guys out there that we could play,” Self said. “And so that’s something that I’ve thought about for a long time.”

Every coach is concerned with how they can improve their teams from year to year, and that doesn’t start and end in the offseason. Holes on a roster are never more evident than during the grind of a regular season. Self admitting as much shouldn’t be taken as him giving up, rather it’s a peek into the mind of someone obsessed with winning. There’s no way to prove Self wasn’t giving 100 percent while manning the sidelines for this year’s team, but if anyone deserves the benefit of doubt, it’s a two-time champion and third active career wins leader.

Because a team isn’t good enough doesn’t mean it needs to be said, though. Self admitting his team was short on “firepower” and lacked the depth to overcome injuries didn’t accomplish anything but throw his current players under the bus. Maybe he did it to absolve himself of a sub-par coaching job, or maybe he lacked the awareness to know how it would come across. But it was completely unnecessary and below any coach, particularly one already held in high regards.

Tennessee beat Texas in the Round of 32 despite only making 12-percent of its 3-pointers

The Vols are very lucky to still be dancing.

The Tennessee men’s basketball team is very lucky to be dancing after an atrocious night from the arc.

The team earned a hard-fought Round of 32 victory over Texas on Saturday night, one where the Volunteers went a staggering 3-for-25 in 3-point attempts. That’s just 12-percent of 3-pointers made on the night.

Dalton Knecht, Zakai Zeigler and Josiah-Jordan James all hit one 3-pointer a piece to keep Tennessee from missing all of their 3-pointers, which would’ve made for even more shocking a victory.

For comparison, Oakland’s Jack Gohlke made six 3-point attempts during his team’s loss to NC State on Saturday night.

The Vols are darn lucky to still be alive after such an abysmal performance, one that had Tennessee coach Rick Barnes beating his old team in Texas, in fact.

However, if Tennessee wants to advance to the Elite Eight, it’s going to have to focus on making 3-point buckets. The luck can run out quick in March.

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Jack Gohlke set an NCAA tournament record for 3-pointers two games into March Madness

Jack Gohlke made March Madness history in just two games

The Jack Gohlke Experience will no longer just be remembered as a fun March Madness subplot. It will now officially go into the NCAA record books.

After his breakout performance with 10 3-pointers in No. 14 Oakland’s first-round upset of No. 3 Kentucky on Thursday — which earned the guard an NIL deal with TurboTax — Gohlke poured in another six 3-pointers on Saturday against in a 79-73 overtime loss to No. 11 NC State.

That gave Gohlke the most 3-pointers through two games in NCAA history with 16 — and some of them were just absolutely ridiculous. Even those who were betting on an Gohlke to hit an extremely unlikely 2-pointer had to be impressed.

The Oakland Golden Grizzlies run may be over, but we’ll remember them as another reason March is the best month in sports.

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Charles Barkley rooting for Michigan State to spite Kenny Smith was perfectly petty

Charles Barkley couldn’t help getting a few digs in at his co-host during March Madness

Charles Barkley doesn’t need to do a ton of research when it comes to picking his favorite teams each year in the men’s NCAA tournament.

If his Auburn Tigers are in the big dance, he’ll ride with his alma mater. And if the Tigers get knocked out — like they did on Friday in a massive Yale upset — he’ll just root for which ever teams are playing against the favorite teams of his NBA on TNT co-hosts.

With No. 1 North Carolina facing No. 9 Michigan State on Saturday, Barkley was asked about joining the Tom Izzo bandwagon and gave a very succinct and sarcastic answer.

“I want Izzo to win because I hate Kenny [Smith].” Barkley joked.

Smith seemed thrilled about the development.

Knowing you’ve just gotten under Barkley’s skin must still be so satisfying after all these years. Especially when Charles has certainly had worse reasons for picking teams in March.