Category: Sports News

Next week, the month of March arrives.

But for college basketball fans, the angst and excitement of March Madness has already arrived. With conference tournaments around the corner, the excitement for the 2026 NCAA Tournament is building among many fan bases.

REQUIRED READING: March Madness bracketology prediction for NCAA Tournament has another shakeup

Fans have been treated to potential Final Four previews, with Duke-Michigan and Houston-Arizona facing off on Saturday, Feb. 21. Another big one ― No. 11 Illinois hosting No. 3 Michigan ― is on the docket for Friday, Feb. 27, which could help determine final seeding for the tournament.

However, while fans of programs are certainly excited, the bigger joy fans get is watching the teams currently on the bubble playing for their postseason lives. For all intents and purposes, their NCAA Tournament has already begun for these teams.

Here's a look at the latest NCAA Tournament preview, including bubble teams and locks to reach March Madness:

While there are still regular-season games and conference tournaments to be played, the March Madness picture for men's college basketball is starting to come into shape.

Strong national championship contenders for the 2026 NCAA Tournament include Duke (led by Cameron Boozer), Arizona (led by Brayden Burries), Michigan (led by Yaxel Lendeborg), Iowa State (led by Milan Momcilovic), Connecticut (led by Solo Ball), Houston (led by Kingston Fleming) and Illinois (led by Keaton Wagler). Reigning national champion Florida has also started to re-enter the mix in recent weeks with a few wins over Alabama and Kentucky.

There are, of course, a handful of teams sitting on the bubble that are hoping to secure a key win (or a few) to change their status from "March Madness maybes" to "March Madness locks" over the next few weeks.

REQUIRED READING: Who is rising, falling in latest March Madness bracket prediction?

The Final Four is set for five weeks from this upcoming Saturday in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium, the first time the Final Four is being held in the NFL stadium of the Indianapolis Colts since the COVID-19 bubble tournament in 2021, when Baylor took down Gonzaga.

Here's what to know on the when March Madness gets underway for men's college basketball:

When is March Madness?

March Madness gets going on Tuesday, March 17 in Dayton, Ohio, at UD Arena with the First Four. The condensed 64-team bracket will then officially get underway with first-round games two days later on Thursday, March 19.

When is Selection Sunday?

• Date: Sunday, March 15

Selection Sunday for the 2026 men's NCAA Tournament is set for Sunday, March 15 at 6 p.m. ET. The unveiling of the 68-team bracket will take place after the conclusion of the Big Ten championship game.

Complete March Madness 2026 schedule

Here’s a rundown of the schedule for the 2026 NCAA men's tournament:

• First Four: March 17-18
• First round: March 19-20
• Second round: March 21-22
• Sweet 16: March 26-27
• Elite Eight: March 28-29
• Final Four: Saturday, April 4 (at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis)
• National championship game: Monday, April 6 (at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis)

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When is March Madness? Complete schedule, dates for 2026 tournament

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Cavaliers picked up one of their most impressive wins of the season, as they downed the New York Knicks 109-94 after losing their previous two meetings.

Knicks head coach Mike Brown didn’t take the bait when asked pregame if his team lost something they could exploit against the Cavs since they don’t have two smaller guards after swapping out Darius Garland for James Harden.

“I don’t necessarily think that,” Brown said diplomatically.

Brown did, however, go into all the ways that Harden changes the offensive dynamic. It isn’t that the Cavs necessarily want to do different things; they’re just better at doing so due to his size and strength.

“Your backside [defense] has to be on point. Your transition [defense] has to be on point because everybody wants to run because he’s great at throwing that long pass. There are a lot of things you have to pay attention to. At the end of the day, they still have Donovan (Mitchell).”

They also still have Jarrett Allen, who’s playing the best basketball of his career.

Unlike Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Allen was an active part of the offense early, which led to him controlling the paint on both ends. He finished with 19 points on 7-8 shooting to go along with 10 big rebounds.

Performances like this have become the norm in February, to the point that his teammates are jokingly referring to this version of Allen as “Black History Month J.A.” In February, he’s averaging 21.4 points, 11.9 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game on 74% shooting.

Allen has been one of the best centers in the league during that stretch, and it was all spurred on by head coach Kenny Atkinson challenging him several weeks back when it was announced Evan Mobley would be a few weeks with a calf strain.

“He told me you’re going to have to pick it up,” Allen said. “You’re gonna have to make up for the loss of rim protection, lost offensive ability, and I took it to heart.”

It’s fair to say Allen has. And the Cavs have been at their best this season when he’s actively involved in the offense. They’re now 19-2 when he’s scored 15 or more points in a game. His rim pressure simply opens everything up for the offense, and that’s even more true after the addition of Harden.

The two-man game between Harden and Allen is lethal, given how well their skillsets match.

“He understands when to roll to the basket, when to short roll, when to find the pocket, screening angles, different things like that,” Harden said. “He’s so athletic, he gets into the role, to the screen, out of the screen so fast, which you know, I got to get used to that.”

Allen’s grasp of how to do these things pairs incredibly well with someone like Harden, who may be the best pick-and-roll manipulator in the history of the game.

“Just his patience,” Allen said. “He’s not going to force any lob…He’s not going to try to make the hero play. He’s going to try to pick the other team apart. Just try to understand their defense and try to make the right play.”

This play is a great example of how Allen’s feel and Harden’s patience can work in tandem.

Here, Allen sets a high screen for Harden, but holds it long enough to get OG Anunoby to trail on the play, forcing Karl Anthony-Towns to step up. Instead of Harden trying to blow by Towns, he slowly strings him out across the court, creating more separation between him and the roller. By the time Harden delivers the pass to Allen, the only thing the defense can do is foul or give up what would be an easy lay-in with how far out of position they are.

Good players can create mismatches and advantages. Great ones can amplify those advantages to consistently break a defense.

Harden processes the game at such a high level. He can diagnose and dissect what is happening in real time, allowing him to make the correct decision seemingly whenever he’s running the pick-and-roll.

“The first option is myself scoring the basketball off the pick-and-roll,” Harden said. “Then it’s the big, and then, once they figure that out, then it trickles down to the corner threes and the pull-behind guys and so forth.”

Allen said after the game that the offense has been clicking because they’ve been able to repeatedly run the same set and consistently score.

The Cavs have been able to do that with the pick-and-roll. It’s such a simple action, but when you run it correctly, there’s seemingly unlimited positive outcomes.

This is a good example of that. The Knicks know that they want to get the ball to Allen, so they crash to keep that from happening. This leads to the kickout to Dean Wade. But in the shuffle, the off-balance defense lost Allen, which set up another easy dunk inside.

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The Cavs have become a one-play Madden spammer. But no matter what the defense does, it’s nearly impossible to take away all the possible outcomes if it’s run correctly. Someone is bound to be left alone. It just comes down to execution at that point.

Being able to lean on the pick-and-roll has made the offensive adjustment easy; the same can’t be said for the defense, even on a night they held the Knicks under 100 points.

The defensive strategy has been simple since the trades: protect the rim at all costs and live with the three-point variance. These last two games show how differently that can play out depending on the night.

It didn’t work against the Thunder. They hit over half of their threes. Conversely, the Knicks converted just 27% of them, which led to their offense sputtering, particularly in the third quarter when they went 1-12 from three and essentially lost the game in that span.

Playing this way is a good short-term strategy, but it may not be how this team reaches its ceiling. That’s why both Allen and Harden brought up the defense as an area of concern postgame, even though they just held one of the best offenses in the league to only 94 points.

“Defense is going to be the key,” Harden said. “If we can find a way to really hone in defensively, and really get stops and limit teams to one shot, we’re going to be very, very tough.”

The Cavs are a better team now than they were the previous two times they played the Knicks. Swapping out an injured Garland for Harden has drastically changed the offense, as has finding legit bench contributors in Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis, who’ve done an incredible job of stabilizing the second unit.

In their Christmas Day meeting, the Cavs got up big in the third quarter, but coughed it all up in the fourth due to an inability to execute offensively, combined with poor defensive rebounding.

Tuesday night was different as they simply kept their foot on the gas, never giving the Knicks any hope that they could come back from their 18-point deficit at the end of the third. This speaks to how much more prepared the Cavs are to face elite opponents, despite their limited time together.

“I think we’re pretty good, but the crazy part is, we’ve had two practices (since the trade),” Mitchell said. “There’s some groups out there where we’re just playing off [feel]. Like, Dennis came in and created this play for me the first game we’ve got here, and we’ve been runnnig that. … We’ve just been going off film and going off our IQ. … Thats a credit to the guys coming in here.”

The scary thing is that the Cavs believe they’re nowhere near their ceiling for this group.

“We’ll continue to get better and better,” Mitchell said. “The fact that were doing what we’ve been doing at a high level without much time together, it speaks to a lot, but we’re not even close to where we want to be. We have a lot more we can figure out.”

Nothing really jumps off the page with a quick glance at the box score of the Celtics’ total eclipse of the Suns. The team shot just 40% from the field, including a dismal 13-of-47 from beyond the arc. They shot just nine free throws, with Payton Pritchard making all four of his trips after hitting just two of his 13 shots on the night.

And yet, the 97-81 win might be one of their most impressive and definitive victories of the season.

Disregard the fact that Jaylen Brown (and obviously, Jayson Tatum) didn’t play. They weren’t around three weeks ago when the Celtics grounded the Rockets in Houston either.

No, what the Celtics did to the Suns on Tuesday night has become their calling card throughout the entire season. If you were to boil down Boston’s approach, head coach Joe Mazzulla will tell you that it’s all about winning the margins, particularly limiting turnovers, generating more possessions with offensive rebounding, getting up threes, and defending like hell.

The latter two have always been staples of Mazzulla ball. In his first two seasons at the helm including the championship year in 2024, the Celtics were top-2 in defensive rating and three-point field goal attempts. Boston, with its star-studded roster, could bury teams with math.

This year, with several newcomers and young players, further refined the formula to include offensive rebounding and taking care of the ball.

“We just have to fight for perspective,” Mazzulla said after the team was down 26-21 despite winning the offensive rebounding battle, taking several open 3s, and turning the ball over just once. “We need to do a better job on the defensive glass, but we ended up getting more shots than they did and the shots finally came, but credit to the guys. Even when we’re not shooting well, we’re still defending. We gotta keep that up.”

At the buzzer, Boston ended up taking sixteen more field goals because of 22 offensive rebounds. At one point in the third quarter, they were up 28 points.

It may seem like an elementary basketball theory — take care of the ball, maximize your shots by taking threes, and get more shots off the glass — but it’s a novel approach in recent history. The Thunder were #1 in turnovers and defense, but didn’t hit the offensive glass as much and weren’t a prolific three-point shooting team. The Nuggets of three seasons ago ranked 20th in turnovers, 25th in 3FAs, 15th in defensive efficiency, and 12th in offensive rebounding percentage.

There are many ways to skin a cat and raise a banner for sure, but the Celtics this season might have the most unique technique. Considering they average the fewest possessions per game with a 95.55 pace, Mazzulla is betting that Boston will be more disciplined and more consistent in what is in effect a shorter game. The 81 points that the Suns mustered against the Celtics was their second lowest point total of the year. More so, it’s the fifth time in February that Boston has held a team under 100. They haven’t the lowest scoring defense in the league at 107.6 points per game and the lowest defensive efficiency in the month of February.

The 2026 men's NCAA tournament starts in Dayton for the First Four and ends in Indianapolis for the Final Four. Below is a list of the March Madness venues in between.

First- and second-round games will be held at eight cities spanning across four time zones. Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games will be held at regional sites before the final four teams converge on Indianapolis in early April.

March Madness bracketology: NCAA Tournament field prediction has another shakeup

When is Selection Sunday? March Madness bracket release date, TV info

Here’s a look at where 2026 NCAA men’s basketball tournament games will take place:

March Madness 2026 game locations, venues 

• First Four: Dayton, Ohio; UD Arena
• First/second round: Buffalo, N.Y.; KeyBank Center
• First/second round: Greenville, S.C.; Bon Secours Wellness Arena
• First/second round: Oklahoma City; Paycom Center
• First/second round: Portland, Ore.; Moda Center
• First/second round: Tampa; Benchmark International Arena
• First/second round: Philadelphia; Xfinity Mobile Arena
• First/second round: San Diego; Viejas Arena
• First/second round: St. Louis; Enterprise Arena
• Sweet 16/Elite Eight: Houston; Toyota Center
• Sweet 16/Elite Eight: San Jose, Calif.; SAP Center
• Sweet 16/Elite Eight: Chicago; United Center
• Sweet 16/Elite Eight: Washington, D.C.; Capital One Arena
• Final Four: Indianapolis; Lucas Oil Stadium
• National championship: Indianapolis; Lucas Oil Stadium

NCAA men's tournament 2026 schedule 

• First Four: March 17-18
• First round: March 19-20
• Second round: March 21-22
• Sweet 16: March 26-27
• Elite Eight: March 28-29
• Final Four: April 4 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis
• National championship game: April 6 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NCAA tournament 2026 locations: Every arena for March Madness

LOS ANGELES — While the Lakers have their big three of LeBron James, Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves healthy and available, it hasn’t been smooth sailing.

After the team’s loss against the Celtics on Sunday, Lakers head coach JJ Redick said they were “awful” offensively. In their encore on Tuesday, LA had another poor performance, losing to the Magic 110-109.

The game ended in heartbreaking fashion with Luka passing up an open look and tossing the ball to LeBron, who had to heave a shot to beat the buzzer that bounced off the rim.

This sequence, featuring some poor offensive execution, has been far too common in Los Angeles. It’s a prime example of how the team hasn’t been able to find an offensive rhythm lately.

With LA needing every win possible in the crowded Western Conference, better offense is necessary, especially on a night where the other aspects of their game were good enough to earn the result.

“I thought we played well enough to win tonight,” Redick said postgame. “[We] certainly had the edge and played hard enough to win. We played together. We did our best to play the right way and share the basketball.”

With 24 assists on 40 makes, Redick is right that the ball was moving. And with Dendre Ayton finding a rhythm during the first half, things were looking up for LA early on.

“Well, my playmakers were feeding me the ball, and they just kept telling me do the same thing over and over,” Ayton said. “So, I just was making sure I was physical and I tried my best to score closest to the rim as much as possible so I can keep getting it down there. Tonight, they believed in their switches a lot, so I’m glad I got a chance to punish that just to switch it up a little bit and give them a different look.”

But Los Angeles slowly died in this game. Through three quarters, they took a double-digit lead and turned it into a home loss. They couldn’t take advantage of Orlando shooting 24% from deep because they were outrebounded 48-40.

And as individuals, none of their big three stepped up.

Reaves is known for being an aggressive player who gets inside the paint and to the free-throw line. He only took five shot attempts in the first half and didn’t score until the third quarter.

Luka is the team’s bestplayer and on-ball creator. Against the Magic, he went 8-24 from the field and converted on just two of his ten3-point attempts. Perhaps that poor shooting is why he became passive on that final possession.

And LeBron had a respectable game, scoring 21 points, but most of that damage came during his first six minutes of play, where he scored 10 points. After that, he was rather pedestrian,and that’s not going to be enough when his co-stars are struggling.

LA needed more from their starson Tuesday night and no one was able to respond.

It’s clear the Lakers’ strength isn’t defense. They are ranked 24th in the league in defensive rating. So, they have to win games with their offense. That shouldn’t be as much of a problem with two All-Stars and Reaves, who is also known for putting the ball in the hoop.

However, they posted their second-lowest point total of the season against the Celtics and shot horrendously from three against Orlando, going 9-29 as a team.

Whether it’s because of a lack of time working together, their opponents throwing different defensive coverages at them or just a cold streak, the fact is they haven’t been able to, as a collective, consistently score since the All-Star break.

With 25 games left, time is running out for them to figure things out.

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PHOENIX —  Late in the third quarter of the Celtics 97-81 win over the Phoenix Suns, Payton Pritchard turned the ball over. Suns two-way player Jamaree Bouyea dribbled furiously down the court, while Baylor Scheiermman stayed in front of him, keeping his arms raised, but avoiding any contact.

Ron Harper Jr, amid his second-ever NBA start, trailed the play, but sprinted back and ultimately swatted Bouyea’s layup. Hugo Gonzalez secured the rebound and finished a layup on the other end. The Celtics led by 23.

The block was pretty cool.

But in the split second after Harper’s massive block came the play of the game. Before they ran back on offense, Harper and Scheierman enthusiastically high-fived, celebrating their collective big-time stop.

Harper got credit for the block on the box score, but Scheierman’s role in the play was just as important — he stayed vertical, avoided a foul, and ultimately helped force Bouyea into a difficult look.

“We talk about that a lot,” Joe Mazzulla said after the game. “Those plays are super important, because a lot of times that guy that goes up for the block may foul, and then you don’t get a chance to contest it. And so we do focus on a lot, it’s not just that guy that gets the block — it’s just as important to protect the rim.”

A Ron Harper Jr — Baylor Scheierman defensive sequence perfectly captures the magic of this Celtics season

Ron Harper Jr. and Baylor Scheierman first met when they played on the Celtics’ Summer League team in 2024. Scheierman had just been drafted days prior, while Harper was coming off a serious shoulder injury that abruptly ended his season.

Both players spent most of the 2024-2025 season in the G League; Harper began his year with the Maine Celtics and finished it with the Motor City Cruise after getting a two-way contract with the Detroit Pistons, while Scheierman spent it in Maine.

Now, both players are impacting winning with the parents club, and both got the start in Tuesday’s matchup against the Suns. (Scheierman has started the last five games for the Celtics, while Harper started in place of Jaylen Brown, who missed the game with a knee contusion).

Harper, who remains on a two-way contract, added 8 points, 5 rebounds, an assist, a steal, and a block in 30 minutes.

Afterwards, Sam Hauser — who also started en route to a 16-point night — praised his performances.

“Nothing changes when he gets out there,” Hauser said of Harper. “There’s no skipping of the beats, and he’s a great player. He’s a great defender, and he helps us in a lot of different ways. And tonight he was great.”

Scheierman, meanwhile, tallied 11 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists, and a steal in 32 minutes — and also earned Hauser’s praise.

“He can kind of can do a little bit of everything, and he’s shown it,” Hauser said. “And he, again, is another guy who just kind of got thrust into the lineup — and he’s made the most of it. At times, it’s really hard to take him off the floor, for obvious reasons, because he’s a really well-rounded player, and he’s been defending his butt off, and it’s been fun to watch.”

Harper will likely go back to the bench when Jaylen Brown returns to the lineup in the coming days, and Scheierman’s minutes will likely diminish when (or if) Jayson Tatum makes his season debut.

But on Tuesday night, for a brief moment, those two 25-year-old, former G League standouts were invincible.

And in the middle of live action, they high-fived one another, taking a moment to recognize just how great a defensive possession it was. It’s that kind of synergy that’s allowed the Celtics to have the NBA’s best defense over the past month, and the 8th-best defensive rating in the league this season.

That Harper-Scheierman sequence stood out to Derrick White, too.

“It’s huge,” said White. “Baylor does a good job of occupying, kind of slowing him down a little bit, and Ron sprints back and makes a play. That’s the kind of thing we talk about all the time — it’s a team effort, every time down the court. Even in transition, you try to get nothing easy. Big time for both of them to sprint back and make that big play, and it was a big momentum swing for us.”

The duo’s reaction perfectly captured what kind of season it’s been.