Category: NCAA Basketball

NCAA Basketball News

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No. 12 seed McNeese holds off Clemson to earn first March Madness victory

PURDUE 75, HIGH POINT 63 PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Trey Kaufman-Renn had 21 points and eight rebounds, and fourth-seeded Purdue held off High Point for a victory in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Big Ten player of the year Braden Smith added 20 points and six assists as Purdue (23-11) avoided a first-round exit after reaching the championship game last season. The Boilermakers will meet the winner of Clemson and McNeese State in the second round of the Midwest Region on Saturday.

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Khalif Battle scores 24 as Gonzaga beats Georgia 89-68 in the NCAA Tournament

Khalif Battle scored 24 points, Nolan Hickman had 18 and eighth-seeded Gonzaga routed Georgia 89-68 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday. Braden Huff added 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting as Gonzaga (26-8) advanced to an intriguing second-round matchup with top-seeded Houston. Asa Newell scored 20 points for Georgia (20-13), one of a record 14 SEC teams that made the field for the tournament.

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Richard Pitino and Phil Martelli Jr. bring a deep appreciation of their famous dads to March Madness

Richard Pitino looked to his right and didn't hesitate to put his son Jack on the spot. The New Mexico coach wondered aloud ahead of the 10th-seeded Lobos' first-round meeting with seventh-seeded Marquette on Friday who Jack might have picked to win it all in his bracket. The same St. John's, by the way, that happens to be coached by Jack's grandfather, Hall of Famer Rick Pitino.

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BYU enjoys March Madness success with 80-71 win over VCU a year after NCAA Tournament flop

Egor Demin and Richie Saunders led BYU to an 80-71 victory over VCU in the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, giving first-year Cougars coach Kevin Young a better memory of Ball Arena than his last one. The former Suns assistant watched the Denver Nuggets bounce Phoenix from the playoffs at this arena in 2023, leading Young to say this week that he still has nightmares of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. It was Saunders (16 points) and Demin (15) who haunted VCU and propelled the sixth-seeded Cougars (25-9) into a Saturday showdown against third-seeded Wisconsin, which handled Montana 85-66 earlier in the day in the East Region.

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March Madness perfect bracket counts plunge just 7 games into the NCAA Tournament

Fewer than a million perfect brackets remained on ESPN and just over a million were left on the NCAA's platform midway through the first day of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday. ESPN's perfect bracket tracker listed 806,020 remaining out of more than 24 million filled out on its site following the seventh game of the day, No. 6 seed BYU's 80-71 win over No. 11 seed VCU. The NCAA listed about 1,100,000 perfect brackets out of more than 34 million.

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No. 12 seed McNeese holds off late Clemson charge to earn first March Madness victory

McNeese coach Will Wade and his boombox-toting manager are moving on in March Madness after the 12th-seeded Cowboys held off late-charging No. 5 seed Clemson 69-67 on Friday in the first bracket buster of the NCAA Tournament. Brandon Murray scored 14 of his 21 points in a stifling first half, when the Southland Conference school from Lake Charles, Louisiana, held Clemson to 13 points. After falling behind by as many as 24 in the second, the Tigers rallied, erasing most of a 12-point deficit in the final minute before running out of time.