ESPN. “They should listen to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, the scientists and the experts. But I think it’s not responsible.”
Major League Baseball is encouraging everyone involved with the sport to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible. A three-page memorandum from MLB and the players’ association sent to players and staff on Monday says some restrictions will be eliminated when 85% of major league players and primary field staff are vaccinated against the coronavirus.
But Major League Baseball isn’t requiring the vaccine for players or staff. Asked how he would advise players who might feel hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine, Biden said: “I would say I’m President of the United States and I got vaccinated. I don’t have an unimportant job. Would I take the vaccine if I thought it was going to hurt me? We have done incredible research on the vaccines and they have shown that they work. We have to get to the point where enough people have taken the vaccine so we diminish the possibility for it to spread.”
The Nationals announced Wednesday that they had a player test positive for COVID-19, and four teammates and a staff member had been quarantined after contact tracing. They are scheduled to host the Mets on Thursday night.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and union head Tony Clark also are discussing the possibility of moving the All-Star Game because of the legislation adopted in Georgia restricting voting rights. Manfred said Wednesday he is talking to “various constituencies within the game” about the issue.
Georgia’s new law adds a photo ID requirement for voting absentee by mail, cuts the amount of time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed. It also bans people from handing out food or water to voters waiting in line and allows the Republican-controlled State Election Board to remove and replace county election officials while curtailing the power of the secretary of state as Georgia’s chief elections officer.
Clark has said he “would look forward” to discussions around moving the Midsummer Classic out of Truist Park, and Biden said he would “strongly support” such a decision.
“People look to them,” Biden said, referring to professional athletes. “They’re leaders. Look at what happened with the NBA, as well. Look what’s happened across the board. The very people who were victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports, and it’s just not right. This is Jim Crow on steroids what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states.”
per ESPN's Mike Reiss. "I really do believe Cam getting COVID, and what it did to the team, it changed a lot. Now we'll get a chance to see.
"Players on the team, in the locker room, really love the guy. In the end, I trust Coach Belichick's ability to build a team, and put the right players in the best position to succeed."
Newton re-signed with New England on a one-year deal this month after starting 15 games for the team last season. He completed 65.8% of his passes for 2,657 yards, eight touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He also rushed for 592 yards and 12 scores.
Kraft also addressed his uncharacteristic shopping spree in free agency this offseason, during which he spent a league-record $165 million in guaranteed money. Kraft said his preference is to build a team through the draft, but cited his team's poor performance in recent drafts—as well as the NFL's reduced salary caps handcuffing other teams—as factors that led to his unprecedented spending.
"What happened here last year was not something to our liking. We had to make the corrections," Kraft said. "In all the businesses we're involved in, we try to take advantage of inefficiencies in the market. We were in a unique cap situation this year and it allowed us to try to [fix] things we missed, to a certain extent, in the draft. So this was our best opportunity."
The Patriots will pick 15th in the upcoming draft, their highest pick since 2008. That year, the team took linebacker Jerod Mayo with the 10th pick.
Kraft also said he did not regret letting Tom Brady leave via free agency, rather than retaining him using the franchise tag. Brady went on to lead the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl title, winning the title game's MVP honors in the process.
"After 20 years, I'll make this commitment to any player in the future. Anyone who spends 20 years with us, and helps us go to win six Super Bowls, we're not going to keep; look, we could have contract-wise, kept him in our camp," Kraft said. "But it's not the right thing."
The news comes hours after reports surfaced that the two sides were at an impasse regarding contract negotiations. The Mets had originally offered 10 years and $325 million, with Lindor's team countering at 12 years, $385 million.
Lindor, 27, was traded to the Mets in January in exchange for young shortstops Andres Giménez and Ahmed Rosario as well as minor league outfielder Isaiah Greene. Lindor and the Mets were engaged in extension discussions throughout Spring Training prior to Wednesday's deal. The new contract has no opt-outs, according to Tim Britton of The Athletic, and is $1 million more than the extension signed by Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., which was worth 14 years and $340 million.
The Mets now have one of baseball's best shortstops under contract for the next 11 years, as his new contract begins in 2022. Lindor is a four-time All-Star in six MLB seasons, sporting an .833 career OPS. Lindor combined to hit 103 home runs from 2017-19, tallying 329 runs in the three-year stretch. Cleveland's former shortstop is also a two-time Gold Glove winner.
Lindor's extension continues a spending spree for the Mets after Steve Cohen took over as the team's owner in October 2020. New York retained starting pitcher Marcus Stroman on a one-year deal in November, and it signed catcher James McCann a month later. The Mets could also offer outfielder Michael Conforto a nine-figure extension before he hits free agency after the 2021 season.
The Mets enter the year seeking their first playoff appearance since 2016. They have reached the postseason just four times since 2000, including two World Series appearances in 2000 and 2015.
The details of what caused Tiger Woods' car crash will only be released if the 15-time major winner gives permission for police to share their findings.
As things stand, the Mets are unwilling to increase their offer of 10 years, $325 million, while Lindor will reportedly not move off his 12-year, $385 million request. Lindor has imposed a deadline of Opening Day to complete negotiations, though it's possible talks can extend beyond that date.
Mets owner Steve Cohen offered his take on the negotiations via Twitter on Tuesday, praising Lindor in the process.
Lindor, 27, is one of the faces of baseball and has the perfect personality to be a franchise player in New York. He will make $22.3 million in 2021, his first with the Mets. He arrived in Queens alongside starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco via a blockbuster trade from Cleveland in January, in which the Mets gave up four players. A four-time All-Star, Lindor has won two Gold Gloves and two Silver Sluggers so far, finishing in the top 15 in MVP voting each year from 2016-19.
The Mets' $325 million offer to Lindor reportedly included deferred money initially, though Cohen removed that condition in a dinner meeting with Lindor. Lindor and his agent, David Meter, have only made the lone offer to New York, and have not budged from their numbers.
Veteran shooting guard JJ Redick, who was dealt at the NBA trade deadline from New Orleans to Dallas, is not happy over how Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin handled the move, saying he "did not honor his word."
Speaking on his podcast, The Old Man & the Three, Redick explained his reasons for requesting a trade from New Orleans in November, according to ESPN's Andrew Lopez. Among the most important reasons was his desire to be closer to his family in Brooklyn, while he also cited the team's trade of Jrue Holiday as a factor for wanting out.
"Griff basically says to me, 'Come down for a month. If you still want to be traded, I give you my word, I'll get you to a situation that you like.' We had four subsequent conversations," Redick said. "Again, my agent talked to them. But I'm talking to Griff directly. Griff and I had a personal relationship. Obviously, he did not honor his word."
Redick said he was under the impression that he would be bought out of his contract after not getting traded at the deadline, when he could then sign with the Nets. He said he will still join the Mavericks once he finishes rehabbing his injured knee, which he's doing in New York away from the team.
When asked about the trade last week, Griffin said the front office tried to trade Redick to be closer to his family, but ultimately was unable to execute a move.
"We did spend a great deal of time trying to put JJ closer to home," Griffin said Friday. "When it became clear that the teams that were in the best position regionally for him were not necessarily the most aggressive in landing him, we did have conversations about the importance of immediately contending, as he's aging.
"I think we felt confident that JJ welcomed the better contending opportunity because we're not even at the play-in at this point. We felt it was the right thing to do for him and his family."
Redick said the experience has caused him to distrust Griffin and the Pelicans' front office going forward.
"I don't think you're going to get honesty from that front office, just objectively speaking ... It's not something where I would expect certainly the agents that worked on this with me to ever trust that front office again."
The near month-long event has provided a much-needed cash infusion to the local hospitality industry that's been rocked by the pandemic. The Marriott was closed for nine months starting last March and only reopened for weekends in January before wrapping itself in an invisible bubble with a surge of clients starting with the Big Ten tournament.
It will, finally, reopen to the public on April 13, Moros says. By that time, his hotel would have hosted two dozen basketball teams, more than 500 basketball and football players, another 300 college coaches and staff members, nearly 100 NFL personnel and blocked off more than 1,200 rooms over 33 days—all the while operating with 300 fewer hotel employees than normal.
It's another sign that the country is emerging from the COVID cave, and Moros couldn’t be more ecstatic.
“We’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.
Will Geoghegan's men's bracket is still intact and in the top 0.2% of more than 14 million brackets on ESPN after training a machine learning model to fill out his bracket for the Big Dance.
"I think it's cool that something like this can work well. Because we look at March Madness and we see all the craziness and all the upsets that no one saw coming, like Oral Roberts and UCLA," Geoghegan says. "But, at the end of the day, it's two one seeds and a two seed in the Final Four. And so these analytics can still be successful even in such a kind of volatile format as March Madness."
This isn't the first time the former professional runner, who now works in the computer science industry, has done something like this but it's possibly the most success he's had with a sports machine learning model. Close to seven years ago, Geoghegan created a model to draft his fantasy football team.
It worked until Adrian Peterson, who the model selected first, was suspended for the season.
"I've always liked kind of applying this stuff to things like sports because anything with a lot of data that's available, you can usually make a good model," Geoghegan said. "Sports and data definitely go hand in hand in this."
A few years later, he trained a machine learning model to fill out a March Madness bracket; however, it wasn't as successful as this year's because of overfitting. The model was too specific and complicated, so it learned the data he gave really well versus extrapolating into the future.
"No matter how you know how perfectly tuned your model is, these are still games that are being played and there's a huge element of randomness," Geoghegan. "Not randomness from the player's perspective necessarily but from the model's perspective. Sometimes the worst team will win, and that's just how it goes. The biggest takeaway was just making kind of a good, general model that didn't try is too hard to get everything right but just has a good kind of high-level map of where things stand."
Taking what he learned from previous codes and models, Geoghegan used AdaBoost, which he said is essentially "an algorithm for combining a collection of relatively weak predictors into a single strong predictor." He pulled data from the Massey Ratings instead of using player or game-level data.
Essentially, the model aggregated the opinions of experts who create the college basketball rankings. It used the seeds and the various ranking systems as weak predictors with training data going back to 2003.
"It's able to kind of find the relationships between them in a way to combine all of them into one kind of rating system," Geoghegan said. "If you get really into the math, you can prove that it's guaranteed to do better than the best single rating system."
Within three hours, his model and bracket were set, and when he compared it to his bracket he did by hand, the picks were logical and not too wildly outrageous. Geoghegan said none of the picks really made him scratch his head too much.
And it worked. The model correctly predicted Rutgers over Clemson, USC over Kansas, Arkansas in the Elite Eight and Houston in the Final Four. The biggest miss, like most brackets, was UCLA's overtime upset of Alabama.
The model also didn't predict Cinderella-esque teams like UCLA or Oral Roberts. The data stops with the end of the conference championships, so if a team, like those or Oregon State, suddenly gets hot in the tournament, the model most likely won't predict that.
In the future, Geoghegan is planning to use more data with a similar approach since this system only looked at how teams were rated going into the tournament versus how ratings changed throughout the season.
"I've always been into programming. There's a creative aspect to it, where you're starting with a blank file, and you're creating something," Geoghegan said. "And I think it's really cool on the data side to be able to take megabytes worth of ones and zeros and turn it into useful predictions about the future and about the world.
"Obviously, March Madness isn't as high impact as a lot of other applications of this stuff. But it's turning data into useful insights about the world we live in."
announced the move on Wednesday, the day before Opening Day, calling it "beneficial to our organization" and citing the company's belief in the Marlins and greater South Florida community.
"I think you've seen what we've been trying to do here in the community and our involvement in the community and saying that this is the community's team," Jeter said, per MLB.com's Christina De Nicola. "And (loanDepot CEO Anthony Hsieh) is on board with that. He wants to make an impact here as well."
The 11-year-old mortgage company was founded by Hsieh, who had previously started and sold other mortgage companies to E*Trade and LendingTree. Its slogan, "Home means everything," is being embraced by the Marlins as a season-long RBI campaign. The company will donate $25 for every regular-season RBI to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, plus $250 per RBI on Opening Day.
The initiative is certainly a noble pursuit worth commending, but back to the name. I'm quite certain this will be the first Major League ballpark whose words begin with lowercase letters, creating a real pop artist track listing feel. It's a style Hsieh believes "looked pretty cool," but it also breaks conventional rules of capitalizing proper nouns. If the goal was to come up with a name that stood out from its peers, mission accomplished. If the goal was to also choose a name guaranteed to be the most mis-capitalized, a job well done on that front as well.
Whatever your feelings on lowercase letters, loanDepot park joins the ranks of the previously-lambasted Guaranteed Rate Field (White Sox) and RingCentral Coliseum (Athletics) as the league's worst-named venues. Baseball stadiums are built like cathedrals—let's try to avoid naming them like used car dealerships and strip-mall payday lenders.
Now, the Bruins are headed to the men's Final Four.
UCLA completed its miraculous run through the East Region with a 51–49 victory over No. 1 seed Michigan. The Bruins, who spent Selection Sunday sweating after losing their last four regular season games, are headed to the Final Four for the first time since the program's run of three straight that ended in 2008.
This was a gritty, defensive-minded affair that harkened back memories of head coach Mick Cronin’s days at the helm of the Cincinnati men's program. The Bruins scored just four points in the game’s first 10 minutes. But Cronin’s club got the offensive spark it needed from Johnny Juzang, who scored 14 straight Bruin points at one point and tallied 18 of the team’s 27 points in the first half. Meanwhile, UCLA tightened the screws defensively, limiting star Michigan big man Hunter Dickinson to just four points in the first half to carry a 27–23 lead into intermission.
Three free throws by Juzang less than two minutes into the second half gave UCLA its largest lead of nine. The Wolverines quickly fought back, and the game remained incredibly tight into the closing moments. UCLA found a way to get clutch stops even as the offense bogged down while Juzang was temporarily sidelined after re-injuring his ankle, holding a Michigan offense that had scored 75 or more points in each of its first three NCAA tournament games to a season-low 49.
A big three by Michigan’s Chaundee Brown tied the game at 46 with 5:23 to go—and was the last field goal the Wolverines would make. A baseline drive and finish by Juzang gave UCLA a 50–47 lead with 1:05 to play before Franz Wagner answered with a pair of free throws. After a Michigan stop, Wagner had an open look from three to take the lead that came up woefully short, and Eli Brooks’s put-back also wouldn’t drop. Juzang split a pair of free throws to give Michigan one last chance, but last-gasp threes by Mike Smith and Wagner both wouldn’t drop to send Westwood into euphoria.
Juzang led all scorers with 28 points, while point guard Tyger Campbell added 11 for the Bruins. Michigan was led by 11 points from Dickinson and eight each from Brooks, Brown and Brandon Johns Jr.
While the Bruins are no strangers to the biggest stage in college basketball, it’s the first trip of Cronin’s career. Cronin, whose main knock as a candidate for the job was his lack of March success, now has brought the storied UCLA program back to the Final Four.
UCLA becomes just the second team ever to go from the First Four to the Final Four, joining a VCU team coached by Shaka Smart back in 2011. The Bruins’ reward? A date with undefeated Gonzaga, which looked every bit like a juggernaut in an 85–66 win over USC Tuesday evening.
with an 85–66 win over USC now in the rearview. Timme’s index fingers traced the outline of his ubiquitous, furry mustache, wiping beneath both nostrils for emphasis (not cleanliness) and finishing with a skyward point. He’d already done this once, at the outset of the game, the Bulldogs already hurtling toward the finish line. He followed subsequent first-half buckets with a shrug and a flex of his right bicep.
Whoever the Bulldogs face Saturday, whether Michigan or UCLA, they’ll be favored. Cross that one off, and they’ll play the winner of Baylor and Houston, in which they’ll also be favored. It should surprise absolutely no one that Gonzaga is still here in Indianapolis defending its top overall seed. Yet, somehow, it seemed Timme never thought to expand his repertoire of extra celebrations, even as he finished with 23 points, five rebounds and four assists.
“Drew wants to go toe-to-toe with the best of the best,” Corey Kispert told reporters earlier in the week. “All of the facial hair and giggling and laughing and celebrations aside, Drew’s a dog.” At this point, some light rehearsal may be a good use of Timme’s hotel downtime leading into Saturday. “[Drew] gets us going,” Jalen Suggs said postgame. ”He gets us all fired up.” Sitting for his press conference, Suggs punctuated his point with a brief pause and a chuckle, to mimic Timme’s signature celebration for himself.
It may have been that Timme’s much-diagnosed matchup with USC’s Evan Mobley became a personal affront to the Tao of the Stache, which has evolved from light gimmick to a maybe-sort-of-convincing manifestation of his mojo. Through four tournament games, Timme has dominated all comers with his soft touch, quiet footwork and understanding of his place at the center of a historically great offense.
Gonzaga revolves around Timme, but not always through him. The Zags can flash him to the middle, let Jalen Suggs work downhill, or run Kispert through actions away from the ball. If they feel like it, they can do some or all of those things at the same time. Joel Ayayi and Andrew Nembhard are there to whip the ball around and improvise. As he’s built what is indisputably the premier college program on the West Coast, Mark Few has always played to his personnel. “This team plays better without sets,” Few told reporters on Sunday. “Our flow is probably the best thing we do.” The Bulldogs’ small-ball outfit is his best team, and his best job yet.
The way the Zags pass the ball is part innate, partially bespoke. In early-season practices, Few and his staff saw the the way his guys were sharing it. “It’s fun,” Kispert said on Sunday, “because we just do what we’re best at all day long.” The staff installed drills and warmups to cultivate that piece of the group’s identity. “They really, really bought into that,” Few said.
Through four NCAA tournament games, Gonzaga has assisted on 83 of 129 made field goals, while turning the ball over just 46 times. It's won all four games by at least 15 points. Few made clear that his team would, perhaps refreshingly, allow itself to be content, at least for now. “This is something that needs to be celebrated, and we need to take the time to enjoy the heck out of it,” he said.
Early ball pressure started with the 6' 10" Timme nimbly switching onto 6' 2" Tahj Eaddy on the first play of the game, then stripping him, going the length of the court and drawing an important foul on Mobley. (“He really kind of enjoys those moments,” Few says). Gonzaga took advantage of nearly every mistake and ran out to a 17–4 lead. Searching for answers, Andy Enfield pivoted away from the mad-scientist zone defense that helped his Trojans get this far into the tourney.
By the time they went back to it, it hardly mattered. “When Timme is playing as well as he did tonight in the lane, and their shooters and their ball handling, their speed is very hard [to handle],” Enfield said. The Bulldogs played their way. They never trailed. “We were moving in unison,” Suggs said.
Bar none, the most dramatic moment of the night came five minutes into the game, when official Bert Smith collapsed directly in front of Gonzaga’s bench and hit the floor hard. He was immediately tended to by medical staff, was awake as he was wheeled off the court and was said to be alert and stable shortly afterward. That news came as a major relief to both teams and all observers.
But in that brief, frightening silence, as Smith received care, you could hear Bulldogs assistant Tommy Lloyd—who had been first to Smith’s side—speaking up in the Gonzaga huddle. He concluded his spiel with a loud message to his players. “Trust each other, and get a great shot.” All season, they’ve made it look as simple as it sounds.
The undefeated, top-seeded Zags are two wins away from the big thing they’ve convinced everyone they can do. Kispert, Gonzaga’s lone senior, expressed a broader view on the matter over the weekend. “Even though there is this big buildup to these big games coming up,” he said, “we’re not on planes, we’re not back in Spokane with everyone telling us how great we’ve been. It just feels like business as usual. It makes it easy to focus on the present and be in the moment.”
Whichever way this unusual season ends, there’s a week left, tops. And in the world outside this strange, condensed, basketball bubble, the expectations are certainly weightier than Few, or Kispert, or any of them let on. You just wonder if anyone’s told them yet.
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Gamecocks won, 62–34, after keeping the Longhorns scoreless for the entirety of the fourth quarter. For South Carolina, the country’s leader in blocks and one of its strongest rebounding teams, this display of defensive force was nothing new. But it made for a particularly strong statement to do it in the Elite Eight—especially against a Texas team that just showed off its own defensive ability in its upset of No. 2 offensive juggernaut Maryland.
“They’re just long and really quick and athletic,” said Schaefer. “They can test you in everything that you do. Whether you’re out there at three-point range or all the way at the rim, they really make it hard on you… Part of defense is contesting the shot. A lot of people don’t do that, and they do.”
South Carolina finished with 14 blocks, tied for its season high, and forced 15 turnovers. It resulted in the lowest scoring total of the year for Texas. (That distinction had previously been held by a 61–35 loss to Baylor in February.) The Longhorns looked off-balance all night—backed into corners and boxed into bad shots. They missed their last 19 field goals and posted their lowest field-goal percentage of the season at just 23%.
“We just played with our guard up,” said South Carolina sophomore Zia Cooke. “We knew that Texas was a good defensive team… Maryland was supposed to win that [Sweet 16] game, but they did, and it could have been the same for this game. We were supposed to win, but it could have gone the other way, so we just made sure we put our foot on the gas, kept our guard up, and did what we needed to do.”
It was the first time in the history of the women’s tournament that a team had been held scoreless for an entire quarter. But South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said that she didn’t even notice her squad had pulled off such a feat until she had a chance to look at the scoresheet after the celebration. “It didn’t feel like that,” she said. “We were just locked in.”
The game had been positioned as a match-up between Texas’s Charli Collier and South Carolina’s Aaliyah Boston. Both stand out as powerful 6-foot-5 forwards who average a double-double; Collier might be the No. 1 pick in the upcoming WNBA draft, and Boston, a sophomore, could eventually follow her. But Collier struggled against the Gamecocks’ physical defense and posted one of her roughest performances of the year. She scored just four points on 2-of-10 shooting.
“They guarded us like we like to guard,” said Texas’s Kyra Lambert.
Boston scored 10 points with eight rebounds. But some of South Carolina’s biggest contributions came from her teammates: Zia Cooke, who scored 16, and Laeticia Amihere, who scored 10 with nine blocks.
“I thought the moment may have gotten the best of [Boston] early on,” Staley said. “It took a while for her to settle in to be the Aaliyah that we need her to be… But Aaliyah does so many other great things. She didn’t score the ball today, but she rebounded, she defended, she was there, she was present.”
It’s the first trip to the Final Four for South Carolina since 2017. Then, they went all the way, winning a national championship by defeating a Mississippi State team coached by none other than Shaefer. (This is his first season at Texas after eight at Mississippi State.) Tuesday night's play—particularly its tough defense—reminded him of the force he saw from that team, he said.
“That’s a reflection of Dawn,” said Schaefer. “These kids really embody her… They’re an extension of her. You have to respect that.”
headed to its 14th Final Four after outscoring Louisville 52-25 in the second half, winning the Battle of the Cardinal(s) 78-63.
Junior guard Lexie Hull led Stanford with 21 points and nine rebounds while sophomore Ashten Prechtel added 16 points off the bench for the Cardinal. Louisville guard Dana Evans led all scorers, tallying 24 points.
Stanford overcame a 12-point halftime deficit, and is now seeking it's first championship since 1992.
Louisville came out firing, scoring 21 points in the first quarter and 17 in the second while Stanford trailed scoring 13 in each period. But something shifted during halftime for Stanford as the team came out firing on all cylinders in the second half.
Stanford went on a 17-2 run, closing Louisville's lead to 50-48 with a quarter to go.
Prechtelhit a three-pointer, handing Stanford the lead. The Cardinal went on a 12-4 run before the momentum shifted with 5:37 to go.
As Anna Wilson drained a three, the momentum continued to shift in Stanford's favor. Her brother, Seahawks' quarterback Russell Wilson, cheered on the sidelines, hitting the chairs in front of him.
Prechtel followed it up with yet another three, pushing Stanford to a 66-54 lead. Louisville wasn't able to recover from the Cardinal's second half offensive push.
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whether the Trojans’ length could disrupt the Gonzaga offense. It didn’t matter. The Bulldogs got layup after layup in the early stages of this one, getting out in transition off early USC turnovers, and picked their opponent apart in the halfcourt playing through big man Drew Timme. Timme led a balanced Gonzaga scoring effort with 23 points, also adding five rebounds, four assists and three steals. Star freshman point guard Jalen Suggs also had it going for the Zags, stuffing the stat sheet with 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
Meanwhile, no one outside of the Mobley brothers could ever get anything going for the Trojans. Isaiah and Evan Mobley combined for 36 points and shot 12 for 22 from the field. The rest of the team shot an ugly 11 for 39, just 28%. That included just two points on 1-for-4 shooting for Isaiah White, who led the way for USC with 22 points in its Sweet 16 win over Oregon. The cold shooting never allowed the Trojans to make a serious push to get back in the game despite the Gonzaga offense cooling down some in the second half. USC was never within 15 in the game's final 20 minutes.
Gonzaga heads to its second-ever men's Final Four after first accomplishing that milestone in the 2016–17 season. It also becomes the first men's team to enter the Final Four undefeated since the 2014–15 Kentucky team that started 38–0 before losing to Wisconsin in the national semifinals.
Early in Tuesday's game, referee Bert Smith collapsed on the court. He reportedly felt light-headed but did not need to be hospitalized after receiving medical attention.
its national championship in 2017, South Carolina is headed back to the women's Final Four after holding Texas scoreless in the fourth quarter, smacking the Longhorns 62-34.
Tuesday night's Elite Eight matchup featured a battle between the potential No. 1 WNBA draft picks for 2021 and 2023—Longhorns' junior Charli Collier, who’s already declared for the 2021 draft, and Gamecocks' sophomore Aliyah Boston. However, Collier only scored four points while Boston tallied 10 with eight rebounds.
Five different players scored in double figures for No. 1 seeded South Carolina, who never trailed against its old SEC rival and current Longhorns coach, Vic Schaefer.
The majority of the Gamecocks' points came from in the paint, making 27 of their 57 attempts. They blocked over a dozen shots and tallied a total of 47 rebounds (37 defensive). They held Texas to just 23% from the field—and no points in the fourth quarter.
South Carolina will face the winner of Stanford—Louisville.
In their victory, head coach Dawn Staley honored the late John Thompson on Tuesday night by sporting a shirt with his image.
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Jack Easterby fitting into his reworked football operation; why David Culley was the right person to pair with in building it; and his own path to becoming a GM and how he plans to bring some, but not all, the things he learned in New England to Houston. Plus, in an interesting twist, he took us through how a Microsoft exec influenced his thinking on that.
When Texas and South Carolina take the court on Tuesday, the Longhorns will look to earn its first Final Four appearance since 2003. Texas head coach Vic Schaefer went 3-12 against Staley during his tenure at Mississippi State from 2012-20.
Joanne Allen-Taylor leads Texas in points per game with 15.4. Charli Collier's 19 double-doubles are tied with Oklahoma State's Natasha Mack for the lead among players in Power 5 conferences.
South Carolina has not trailed in the second half in any of its 2021 tournament games. The Gamecocks are led by first-team All-American Aliyah Boston. South Carolina leads the nation with 199 blocked shots. The Gamecocks are seeking their third Final Four appearance in program history, all of which have come under coach Dawn Staley.
Louisville is the only ACC school remaining in the tournament and will face top-seeded Stanford in the late game on Tuesday. Louisville is seeking its fourth Final Four appearance. Stanford, coached by the winningest coach in women’s basketball history in Tara VanDerveer, is 5-2 in the Elite Eight since 2010 and looks to reach the Final Four as a No. 1 seed for the seventh time.
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were pushed to their limits to defeat No. 2 Baylor in Monday's Elite Eight showdown. But in a 19–0 run through the third and fourth quarters that saw the Huskies come back from their largest deficit to take one of their biggest leads of the night, Bueckers scored 10, and though it remained close, UConn never trailed again.
“Paige does a lot of things you can’t explain,” head coach Geno Auriemma said after the 69–67 win. “And believe me, there’s a lot of things that Paige’s got to learn that she doesn’t handle so great right now. But what Paige can do is—Paige can sense the moment. Like all great players, she can sense the moment, when it’s time, what’s needed … And she has the ability to fill that moment. Not everybody does.”
In a game of runs—UConn had led by as many as 12 in the first half and Baylor led by as many as 10 in the second—Bueckers’s role in the big one for the Huskies did, in fact, come at the moment it was most needed. Baylor’s Didi Richards had gone down with what appeared to be a hamstring injury. On a team known for its tough, physical defense, the senior guard is the reigning defensive player of the year. Her presence had been key against UConn, as she was primarily responsible for guarding Bueckers. When Richards left the floor, a door cracked open for the Huskies, who found a way to rush in.
But the Lady Bears came close to clawing all the way back. The most memorable—and controversial—sequence of the game would not come until the final moments.
With UConn up by just one point with 18 seconds remaining, Huskies guard Christyn Williams went to the free-throw line with the potential to extend the lead to three. She missed both shots. Baylor took control of the ball with a chance to win—which ended with DiJonai Carrington driving to the basket with two defenders on her and forcing up an awkward shot with a few seconds left on the clock. Her attempt didn’t hit the rim. But she thought she had been fouled by the close play of the defense.
“I personally don’t see it as a controversial call,” said Carrington, who led Baylor in scoring with 22. “I’ve already seen the replay, and one girl fouled me in my face, and one girl fouled me on my arm. So at that point, you can’t do anything else.”
Her coach, Kim Mulkey, agreed. (“You don’t need a quote from me, I’ve got still shots and video from two angles. One kid hits her in the face and one kid had thrown the elbow.”) Auriemma dismissed that, pointing out that there are close calls and missed calls throughout any game, making note of the fact that Baylor shot 11 free throws in the first half compared to UConn’s two.
With a quick foul after Carrington’s missed jumper, Baylor had one last chance—inbounding with less than a second left in hopes of a catch-and-shoot. But Bueckers intercepted the inbound, putting an exclamation point on her highest-scoring game of the tournament so far, and the contest was over.
It was a game so tough that it was almost a shame it had to come in the Elite Eight, rather than in the Final Four, or even the national championship. (Had Baylor been able to play its full schedule, which it couldn’t due to COVID-19, it almost certainly would not have been seeded low enough for this matchup to happen so early.) These teams are frighteningly well-matched both currently and historically: Their all-time record against each other before tonight was 4–4, separated by just four points, with a much-anticipated ninth matchup that had been originally scheduled for January canceled due to COVID-19. Monday night’s game was both a continuation of that rich history and a thrilling new volume all its own.
That’s partially because of the physicality of this Baylor team; it's one of the best rebounding squads in the country, and with its size, it’s rare for anyone to be able to beat it at its own game on the boards. But UConn came close, with 39 rebounds to Baylor’s 41. That made for a chippy, high-intensity game from the jump on Monday—which UConn felt particularly hard in the form of early foul trouble for Aaliyah Edwards, who had to sit out much of the second quarter, leaving them to struggle without one of their stronger defenders.
“Their talent, their aggressiveness, their length—it’s just very difficult. They don’t look like any team in the country,” said Auriemma. “They don’t play like any team in the country.”
But UConn doesn’t play quite like any team in the country, either. And with a 13th consecutive trip to the Final Four, they’ll keep on playing.
received daily PCR tests during the men's and women's NCAA tournaments. Players have also been wearing SafeTag devices in order to assist in contact tracing issues. But with the final games of the 2020-21 season on the horizon, Mulkey believes these protocols should be abandoned.
"I don't think my words matter, but after the games today tomorrow, there's four teams left I think on the men's side and the women's side," Mulkey said. "They need to dump the COVID testing.”
“Wouldn’t it be a shame to keep COVID testing and then you got kids that end up having tested positive or something, and they don't get to play in the Final Four?"
"So you need to just forget the COVID tests and let the four teams that are playing in each Final Four, go battle it out”
Mulkey and the Bears exited the NCAA women's tournament on Monday night in a 69-67 loss to UConn. Baylor has reached the Final Four three times with Mulkey, winning the national title in 2005, 2012 and 2019.
Similar to the Beavers’ Sweet 16 matchup with Loyola Chicago, Oregon State started very slow offensively in this one. It shot just 7 of 20 from the field in the first half and turned it over eight times, allowing Houston to extend a big early lead. Meanwhile, Houston guard Marcus Sasser was hot from the start, knocking down three triples in the opening period to lead the way. A 9–0 Cougar run to close the half gave Houston a 34–17 halftime advantage, which felt insurmountable given its stingy defense.
But the Beavers weren’t ready to end their time in Indianapolis without a fight. Head coach Wayne Tinkle switched OSU into a 1-3-1 zone with forward Warith Alatishe at the top, and the adjustment completely baffled the Houston offense. Oregon State held Houston to just three points over 6:08 of game action shortly after the Beavers switched to the zone, allowing OSU to go on an extended 17–3 run that tied the game at 55 with 3:48 to go.
In the end, Oregon State simply couldn’t keep Houston off the offensive glass. Houston tallied 19 offensive rebounds, including 11 in the second half. Those second chances were backbreaking in the closing minutes: A three by Quentin Grimes off an offensive rebound gave Houston back the lead, and two other possessions in the final three minutes of game action saw Houston get three shots up.
Sasser led all scorers with 20 points, while Grimes added 18 for Houston. The Cougars won despite shooting a season-low 32.3% from the field thanks to the 19 offensive rebounds. Now, Houston returns to the Final Four for the first time since the “Phi Slama Jama” Cougars, who reached back-to-back national title games in 1983 and 1984. The program fell on hard times after though, reaching the men's NCAA tournament just once in in the 22 seasons prior to Kelvin Sampson taking over the program in 2014.
Meanwhile, the miracle run for Oregon State comes to a close after the Beavers stunned everyone by just making the NCAA tournament. OSU needed a missed free throw in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 quarterfinals to keep its season alive, then rattled off two more wins on back-to-back days to win the Pac-12 tournament and punch its ticket to March Madness. The Beavers then knocked off Tennessee, Oklahoma State and Loyola Chicago to come with one win of their first Final Four since 1963.
Houston becomes the first team ever to punch its ticket to the Final Four by winning four games against double-digit seeds. The Cougars will play either Baylor or Arkansas on Saturday night.
Baylor had an opportunity to win the game in the final seconds. Guard DiJonai Carrington took a shot on the baseline with under four seconds remaining, but she was blocked by a pair of UConn defenders. It looked as though Carrington may have been fouled on the shot, but the referees opted against making a call as UConn advanced.
"I personally don’t see it as controversial call," Carrington said postgame. "I already saw it on the replay. One girl fouled me on my face and one girl fouled me on the arm."
Bueckers finished Monday night with 28 points on 10-22 from the field as she led all scorers. Her Elite Eight performance continued a dominant freshman season, one in which Bueckers earned a first-team All-American honor. Bueckers previously combined for 62 points in her previous three tournament games.
UConn advanced to its 13th straight Final Four on Monday, but the program is still facing a relatively long championship drought. The Huskies have not won the national title in each of the last three seasons after winning four straight championships from 2013-16.
three-way trade that shook the NFL last week, and I think it’s at least worth noting all three of those teams have been connected to the Deshaun Watson sweepstakes. And it’s also worth noting that the Dolphins staying inside the top quarter of the first round, when all was said and done, meant maintaining the capital to make a run at Watson, should he become available—with a pick higher than any Carolina or Denver can offer. A tenet of how GM Chris Grier has built the last two years has been his ability to keep the franchise flexible, and having the flexibility to take a big swing could be important. Read our Jenny Vrentas's report from Monday for the latest on Watson's sexual misconduct allegations.
• As for the Eagles, with the dust settled, Philly is now sitting on a warchest of 20 picks over the next two years, and will have added financial flexibility in 2022 after eating a bunch of dead money this year. It’s no secret that Howie Roseman needs a more youthful roster as the team transitions with a new coaching staff. He should have all the tools he needs to do it, and be a player on draft day, in free agency next year, and on the trade market.
• The expectation now is that Super Bowl LVI in Inglewood will be held on Feb. 13. The city’s planners held three Sundays in February (the original date of Feb. 6, and Feb. 20 too), as the NFL dictates Super Bowl–bid cities do. And there was some discussion that the league might move the game, and season, back a week to put the big game on President’s Day weekend. But it doesn’t look like that’s happening now, with the season to start, as it usually does, the week after Labor Day. Organizers in L.A. are still awaiting final word so they can book events around the game, like NFL Honors.
• You may have noticed that USC’s Kedon Slovis and North Carolina’s Sam Howell threw at their schools’ respective pro days. I couldn’t remember having seen that happen in the past, and could’ve sworn it was against the rules. Turns out, it was, and now it’s not. Over the last couple years, a new rule was introduced by the NFL, in conjunction with the AFCA, that allowed each school to designate five underclassmen still in the program who pro teams can come evaluate during the year. Those players can also participate in pro day. So NFL teams got an early look at Slovis and Howell, who could be early picks in 2022, and the quarterbacks got a taste of what they’ll be going through next year (should they declare). Seems to me to be a win-win.
• This quote from Hue Jackson on ESPN 850 in Cleveland got my attention: "There is no doubt I was lied to by ownership and the executive team. … They were going to be football plus analytics, but they intentionally made it football versus analytics. They were going to take two years and they were going to find a way to use us as an experiment to make sure that they got the data that they needed for it to get better—at the expense of whoever—and that's not right. That's not the way it should be.” And to me, it really shows the folly in trying to middle something like this, where mismatch people serve different masters. The Browns were asking for what they got. The good news is it looks like ownership has learned, with GM Andrew Berry and coach Kevin Stefanski having come in with a preexisting relationship, and a cohesive set of beliefs.
• Leonard Fournette’s contract is a good example of where the tailback was all offseason. He got a $2.25 million roster bonus, a guaranteed $1 million base, and $750,000 in incentives. And this was after he helped to key a Super Bowl title, and restored a reputation that was in tatters after Jacksonville dumped him. The lesson? If you’ve got a 6-foot, 200-pound freak athlete for a son, make him a receiver or a corner. Or even a safety. But not a running back.
as an easy path for the No. 1 overall seed. To be fair, Mark Few’s Zags have beaten all comers. They’ve often made things look pretty simple, drubbing Creighton by 18 points to earn their Elite Eight bid. On paper, for the best team in the country, what draw wouldn’t have felt like a cakewalk?
Not for nothing, what few saw coming was USC’s emergence as the most frightening defensive team in the tournament, and a potentially capable match for the undefeated Bulldogs. The Trojans beat Kansas by 34 in the second round, and emphatically clocked in for the Elite Eight with an 82–68 win over Oregon. With size across the board, their ability to mix and match defensive looks around Evan Mobley, the most gifted rim protector in college hoops, is next to impossible for opposing teams to simulate in walkthroughs.
Tuesday will tell just how tricky Gonzaga’s path to the Final Four really is, but it’s hard to envision a more intriguing opponent than USC. The Bulldogs are favored for a reason. If you’re hoping for an all-time memorable upset, it’s still wishful thinking, But here’s how the Trojans might draw it up.
1. Find a way to get transition stops. Much easier said than done. Gonzaga thrives playing in flow. It has nimble thinkers and good rebounders at every position, and have bludgeoned the opposition with nonstop advantage situations in the open court for much of the season. The Bulldogs have the most efficient offense in the country and play at the sixth-fastest adjusted tempo, per Ken Pomeroy. They will run off misses and makes.
USC’s size across the board gives it a small leg up when it comes to setting tempo. Defensively, the Trojans can toggle between man and zone, but an educated guess would point to more of the latter against Gonzaga. Their 2–3 zone has been particularly tough to solve of late, with their guards often extending up higher to take away passing lanes, and the corner men willing to sell out on shooters. They’re willing to move their personnel around based on matchups, which can be tough to diagnose in real time.
This is only possible because of Evan Mobley. Standing 7-feet with a 7’ 4” wingspan, his advanced understanding as a rim protector allows USC’s other guys to overplay on the perimeter. Whether or not he blocks a shot, Mobley’s simple presence deters opposing drivers, and he rarely gets in foul trouble. Any hesitation from the opposition buys time for the other Trojans to recover and replace each other in the zone if needed. There’s no need to gamble for steals when you can bank on a quality contest and the likelihood of a defensive board.
“We probably played 90% zone during the season,” Andy Enfield told reporters, adding that the Trojans only implemented the scheme about a month ago. “But we’ve played three similar teams [in the tournament] that have tried to dribble-drive us into [kick-out] threes. I think our defense is much better when we stay big. We’ve gone to the zone out of necessity, here. The matchups we have and how we need to guard these shooters.”
Realistically speaking, Gonzaga’s players have proven too smart not to figure out the zone over the course of the game. They assisted on 23 of 34 makes against Creighton. Ball movement is what they do. Still, USC’s length is something they haven’t seen yet. If the Trojans can dictate a halfcourt game early, it’s a great start. But the other piece of that is limiting their own mistakes, which falls largely to their guards. Tahj Eaddy has been steady, but he’s more scorer than playmaker. Ethan Anderson and Drew Peterson can be turnover-prone. Small mistakes are one thing. What USC can’t afford are the type of mishaps that lead to breakaways and home run plays. It’s a tall task, but this is the first step to keeping the game close.
2. Find a way to work the ball inside. Gonzaga is a quality defensive team, but its vulnerability lies in the paint. Drew Timme and Corey Kispert will likely have to spend time on the Mobleys (Evan and his brother, Isaiah), and you’ll see minutes from 6‘ 8” Anton Watson for the added size. But the Bulldogs don’t deploy a true rim protector. Moving the ball and finding their bigs is the best way for the Trojans to force Timme and Kispert to defend, and if they’re lucky, cause some foul trouble. Santa Clara played Gonzaga relatively close in February by playing through its bigs.
Evan Mobley’s passing unlocks a ton of opportunities for his teammates, whether it’s finding a baseline cutter or kicking out to a shooter when he draws pressure. Gonzaga’s primary challenge should be making him uncomfortable as possible. Kansas tried to defend him with 6‘ 5” Marcus Garrett, hoping a smaller guard might get into his center of gravity and keep him from putting the ball on the floor. But Mobley has proven impressively unselfish, and rarely forces up anything he doesn’t want. He allows USC to play inside-out. And he’s so good that it doesn’t typically matter how much he scores.
Gonzaga will probably spend a lot of time fronting the post, forcing USC’s perimeter players to throw the ball over the top under duress. Jalen Suggs, Andrew Nembhard and Joel Ayayi are big, smart, and excel at applying pressure. The Trojans will have to stay composed in order to get the ball to their bigs. If they make mistakes, they can’t be the kind that lead to easy run-outs (see item No. 1). It’s going to take a lot of patience.
3.How do you guard Timme in the halfcourt? Gonzaga’s first read on most possessions is to look inside to Timme, who operates comfortably at the elbow, the block, or at the top of the key, and will be central to the dissection of the defense as he flashes around the court. If the Trojans continue to play a lot of zone, this probably means a lot of isolated possessions with Evan Mobley on Timme around the nail, while the others try to limit kick-outs. Mobley has the length and smarts to wipe Timme out of the game as a scorer, in a way that nobody else can. The Trojans may be able to keep him off the offensive glass with their size. But all of Gonzaga’s players are plus passers, and the ball is certain to to find its way to him eventually.
Teams are often afraid to double or collapse onto Timme because of the presence of Kispert, who shoots 46% from three out to NBA range. Alternatively, Ayayi is a notoriously canny cutter who causes nightmares creeping along the baseline. And if you over-commit onto Timme’s side, it leaves driving lanes for Suggs, an all-world athlete who needs minimal daylight to elevate for easy layups. Objectively, USC should be able to live with any of the other guys shooting threes—it’s just that it’s never been that easy for anyone to take Gonzaga away from the shots it likes.
The Trojans allow opponents to shoot just 41.5% on two-point attempts. The Zags make 63.9% of them as a team, which is the highest mark in the KenPom era. Something has to give one way or the other. And how they choose to deal with Timme will likely dictate what type of shots Gonzaga ends up taking in halfcourt flow. They’re a capable team shooting the three (37.3% on the year), but all of their shooters apart from Kispert can have an off night. You can dare Suggs and Ayayi to shoot if you want, and it may keep the game close. It just hasn’t been enough to swing the game in any of Gonzaga’s 29 wins.
4.Stay hot from three. It might seem like low-hanging fruit to tell your players to go make shots, but the Trojans’ staff has harped heavily on converting threes and creating good looks. Their bigs pass well enough to get those shots for their teammates without a true point guard on the floor, and it’s been working of late. USC sank 10 threes against Oregon and 11 against Kansas, with different players stepping up at different junctures. Statistically and visually, they’re not replete with elite shooters, but their confidence is riding high, and they’ll take whatever looks they can get with their feet set around the perimeter.
Isaiah Mobley made four threes against Kansas. It was Isaiah White who stepped up with four of his own against Oregon. Eaddy and Peterson are their their most consistent shooters, but are often relied on a bit more to create those shots than take them. “When we can shoot the ball at this level we're tough to beat,” Enfield says. “Some of our losses this year, we've been very inconsistent from the perimeter. And we're shooting the ball well as a team right now.”
Gonzaga is content to let opponents score a bit, and its offense does occasionally run dry in the halfcourt. It's just generally so good that there’s always another run coming. The Zags are decisive with the ball and share it like a professional team. USC won’t boatrace them out of Lucas Oil. But the more threes they make, the more pressure they can apply. A cold shooting night likely won’t lead to the result they want.
5. Where’s the element of surprise? Gonzaga hasn’t played in all that many close games this year. It plays with an unusual looseness for a team with a target on its back. But the Bulldogs haven’t fully been put to the grindstone late in the game since a five-point win over West Virginia in early December, which was an eternity ago by basketball standards, and a game in which Suggs got hurt and missed a chunk of time. Even in a winning scenario, there’s almost no likelihood USC just runs away with the game. But if it can keep the thing close into crunch time, whether leading or trailing, there’s a chance to create an uncomfortable endgame scenario. The NCAA tournament setting creates these types of upsets all the time (see: UCLA-Alabama, less than 24 hours ago).
It’s not like Gonzaga is totally green to the pressure—Kispert is a senior, Ayayi and Nembhard are juniors and Timme is a sophomore. Suggs is a freshman, but doesn’t play like one, and his memorable performance against BYU in the conference tournament final should give you a sense of what his nerves are like. The Cougars went under ball screens and dared him to shoot all game; Suggs eventually made the shots. He can be turnover-prone, but it really hasn’t mattered much at this point.
Still, when you’re facing a team with no true weakness, part of the equation is simply finding a pathway to the unexpected. Simply hanging around for most of the game won’t do it. USC has to ratchet up some type of pressure. Gonzaga just rarely gets in its own way, and its coaching staff’s collective calm enhances the composure of the players. Genuinely, it’s hard to say if there’s a moment that will be too big for this team. But one way or another, the game will probably have to veer into that type of territory. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s just that we’re talking about Gonzaga, and USC may not see it at all.
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