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On Sunday, after a long and arduous wait, the calendar will turn to March.

With it will come a tense two weeks for dozens of men’s college basketball teams across the country, whose results over the final stretch of the regular season will determine whether their NCAA Tournament dreams will live or die.

Such is life on the dreaded bubble for the 68-team event.

March Madness predictions: 13 teams who can win NCAA Tournament

Bracketology: NCAA Tournament prediction has another shakeup

Six months ago, it’s an anxiety-laced position few would have envisioned Auburn finding itself in. Coming off the program’s second Final Four appearance in a six-year stretch, the Tigers returned a handful of key contributors, namely guard Tahaad Pettiford, from a squad that went 32-6 while bringing in some impactful new players like Keyshawn Hall.

Auburn’s outlook abruptly changed in late September, though, when coach Bruce Pearl stunned much of the sport by stepping down and handing the reins over to his son, Steven. Under a first-time head coach who had never coached in the sport other than under his own father, the Tigers have failed to live up to their status as a preseason top-25 team, with a 15-13 record heading into the weekend of Feb. 28.

It’s been especially bleak lately, with six losses in their past seven games. Not all of those setbacks came against the SEC’s heaviest hitters, either. In the past 10 days, Auburn has fallen to a sub-.500 Mississippi State team and an Oklahoma squad that seems destined to make a coaching change once the season ends.

While that slew of losses has placed the Tigers in an uncomfortable position, they’ve got several important metrics working in their favor. As of Thursday, Auburn was No. 35 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, No. 37 on KenPom and No. 25 in BPI. On KenPom, it has the No. 1 strength of schedule this season, an unforgiving run of games that featured some notable wins against No. 7 Florida, No. 15 St. John’s and No. 17 Arkansas. Though it comes against 11 losses, it has five Quad 1 victories.

Conversely, the Tigers have a pair of Quad 2 losses and are 42nd nationally in Wins Above Bubble, a metric the NCAA Tournament selection committee said it will weigh heavily among bubble teams. There are some landmines lurking among their final three regular-season games, too, with matchups looming at home against Ole Miss and LSU, which are a combined 26-30.

Regardless of whether it makes the cut for March Madness, Auburn has experienced first-hand just how hard it is to move on from a legendary coach.

Here’s a look at some of the winners and losers among bubble teams from the past week of games:

NCAA Tournament Bubble winners

Statistics cited are as of Thursday, Feb. 26

UCLA

The preseason No. 12 team has had a largely disappointing season, but over the past month, the Bruins have started to elevate their play, with a 7-3 mark in their past 10 games. That spurt has been highlighted by a huge pair of home wins — against No. 8 Purdue and No. 11 Illinois. The victory over the Illini last Saturday was followed up by a 19-point drubbing of rival and fellow bubble-dweller USC, a game in which New Mexico transfer Donovan Dent had 30 points. 

Just don’t get too excited about the recent success, lest UCLA’s coach think you’re raising your voice a bit too much.

Missouri

A Tigers team that had just two Quad 1 wins entering February racked up three in a 13-day stretch, edging Texas A&M on the road on Feb. 11, hanging on to beat No. 21 Vanderbilt at home on Feb. 18 and knocking off No. 22 Tennessee at home on Feb. 24. Missouri is now 5-5 in Quad 1 games, though a 4-4 record in Quad 2 matchups could prove to be detrimental to its tournament hopes.

A trip to March Madness this year would mark the first time in 13 years that the Tigers have made the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons.

TCU

The Horned Frogs looked destined for an NIT berth as recently as three weeks ago, with a 13-9 mark that most recently included a 26-point beatdown at the hands of Colorado. Since then, though, coach Jamie Dixon’s squad has won five of its past six games. While four of those victories have come against teams in the bottom half of the Big 12 standings, a Feb. 10 win against No. 5 Iowa State serves as the centerpiece of an increasingly impressive resume.

TCU could ultimately be stung by some unsightly losses earlier in the season, including a Quad 4 loss at home against New Orleans and a Jan. 17 loss against a Utah team that’s 2-13 in Big 12 play.

Cal

The Calgorithm got a beneficial data point last Wednesday with a 73-69 win against SMU, giving the Golden Bears yet another win against a likely tournament-bound team (they’ve also defeated North Carolina, Miami and UCLA).

Cal’s 20-8 record is inflated a bit by a soft non-conference schedule that KenPom ranks 325th among 365 Division I teams. It will have a chance to stack up some wins to wrap up the regular season, with games against reeling Pitt, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest teams.

San Diego State

An Aztecs resume that had very much been lacking a marquee win finally got one, with San Diego State thumping Utah State by 17 last Wednesday to hand what had been a 23-4 Aggies team its most lopsided loss of the season.

While the predictive metrics like the Aztecs — they’re No. 42 in the NET and No. 43 on KenPom, as of Thursday — they’re negative-0.06 wins above bubble, ranking them only 53rd in the country.

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NCAA Tournament Bubble losers

USC

After an 18-6 start, the wheels have started to come off for the Trojans, who have lost four games in a row. One of those losses came at home against an Oregon team that’s No. 107 in the NET and another came by 36 at home against No. 11 Illinois.

On Saturday, coach Eric Musselman’s team will get a major opportunity in the form of a home game against No. 10 Nebraska. With a win, USC could improve its lowly 2-7 mark against Quad 1 opponents.

Indiana

Since a double-overtime road win against UCLA that improved their record to 15-7, the Hoosiers have lost four of their past six games, including three in a row. While losses, even lopsided ones, to Illinois and Purdue can be forgiven, a home setback last Tuesday against a 12-16 Northwestern team could loom large come Selection Sunday.

Indiana is only 8-9 in Big Ten play, though coach Darian DeVries’ team is still holding on at No. 38 in the NET — even if that includes a 2-10 mark in Quad 1 games.

More: Make no mistake, Indiana is a football school. It's not even close

West Virginia

DeVries’ current team is sitting in a slightly better spot than his former one. The Mountaineers have dropped three in a row, including losses to Utah and Oklahoma State teams that are a combined 7-23 in Big 12 play.

West Virginia’s down to No. 64 on KenPom, No. 66 in the NET and its negative-2.07 Wins Above Bubble are 69th in Division I. Even wins against BYU and UCF to cap off the regular season may not be enough at this point for a team that likely needs a run in the Big 12 tournament to get on the right side of the bubble.

Santa Clara

The margin for error for teams outside the sport’s power conferences, even in a league as strong as the West Coast Conference this season, is sadly small for teams hoping to get an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament.

The Broncos find themselves in that precarious position, with a No. 38 ranking on KenPom and a No. 41 ranking in the NET, but with two losses in their past three games, albeit against WCC powerhouses Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s. Those losses, while understandable, deprived Santa Clara of a chance to improve its 1-5 record in Quad 1 games.

Ohio State

The Buckeyes have only one non-Quad 1 loss this season — a 67-66 setback on a buzzer-beater at Pitt on Nov. 28 — but they’ve failed to do much of anything in their biggest games of the season. Ohio State is just 1-10 in Quad 1 games and is 4-6 since a 13-5 start.

It can reverse that discouraging trend, if even just temporarily, on Sunday, when it hosts No. 8 Purdue. A win against the Boilermakers could get the Buckeyes back on the right side of the bubble.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: March Madness bubble winners, losers: Auburn struggles, Indiana sweats

The Washington Wizards host the Toronto Raptors tonight. Let’s get to it.

Game info

When: 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, Feb. 28

Where: Capital One Arena, Washington

How to watch: Monumental Sports Network

Injuries

Wizards: Trae Young, Anthony Davis, Cam Whitmore and Alex Sarr all remain OUT. Tristan Vukcevic and Kyshawn George are both listed as DAY-TO-DAY. D’Angelo Russell remains OUT and will not report to the team.

Raptors: Chucky Hepburn is OUT. Collin Murray-Boyles is DOUBTFUL.

Game notes and more

The Wizards come back to DC after two whoopings by the Atlanta Hawks. The two losses also drop them to a 16-42 record, guaranteeing them yet another sub. 500 season. The Raptors have also lost three of their last five games, with their most recent loss coming last Wednesday to the San Antonio Spurs. Toronto is 34-25 and comfortably in a guaranteed Top 6 playoff spot. On paper, it’s safe to say that the Wizards will have a difficult time winning this one, but we shall see!

Tonight the Golden State Warriors host the Los Angeles Lakers at Chase Center without Steph Curry or Jimmy Butler, and with Kristaps Porzingis listed as questionable after missing three straight games with an illness. Golden State’s starting lineup reads like a beautiful fever dream of hustlers, grinders, and some guys your casual fan couldn’t pick out of a police lineup two months ago. And yet here we are, asking whether this team can steal a game that any rational observer would hand to LA on a silver platter.

The Lakers roll in at 34-24, losers of three straight, having dropped games to a Celtics team missing Jayson Tatum, a Magic squad without Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs, and a Suns team operating without Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks. That last one genuinely defies physics. Los Angeles has the firepower to cover for dysfunction, Luka Doncic is averaging 32.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 8.6 assists per game and the ageless wonder LeBron James remains a very dangerous LeBron James. But a team built to contend shouldn’t be slumping like that against shorthanded opponents.

Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Lakers

When: February 28, 2026 | 5:30 PM PT

Where: Chase Center

TV: ABC

Radio: 95.7 The Game

Meanwhile, the Warriors just went into Memphis two nights ago and posted 133 points on 37 assists. 8 of 9 players scored in double figures led by a career-high 21 points from rookie Will Richard. This team has spent February being elite in assist percentage and assisted basket rate, building something cohesive and joyful in the wreckage of a catastrophic injury report. The key question for tonight is whether Porzingis suits up.

Steve Kerr confirmed the POTS reports were misinformation and expressed genuine optimism that KP could return. If he plays, suddenly the Warriors have a legitimate interior presence who changes the calculus on both ends. If he doesn’t, the Warriors’ only path is chaos with bodies flying at Luka and LeBron crowding the paint and erasing runways.

What this Golden State group has proven is that they refuse to audition for the tank. That matters tonight. The Warriors are at 31-28 and fighting for playoff positioning while the Lakers sit three games ahead in the West. A win here tightens the race and sends a message that the next month is going to be a lot more interesting than anyone expected.

If Golden State steals this one, the Western Conference math tightens and the league has to take this group seriously. Not as a feel-good story but as a problem.That’s why we watch the games folks!

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander marked his return from injury with 36 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Denver Nuggets 127-121 in overtime.

The NBA's reigning Most Valuable Player had been out of action since sustaining an abdominal strain on 3 February and missed nine games.

He played 34 minutes on his return, but remained on the bench in overtime as Alex Caruso guided the Thunder to their sixth win from their past eight games.

"Felt good," said Gilgeous-Alexander. "I'm just thankful to be back."

The 27-year-old was in the action from the start, opening his account with a layup before being called for an early technical foul for throwing the ball at Denver's Nikola Jokic who made contact with him after play had stopped.

Thunder forward Luguentz Dort was later ejected for a flagrant foul after he tripped Jokic, sparking a shoving match that saw Jokic and Oklahoma City's Jaylin Williams receive technical fouls.

Caruso drove to the basket in the final seconds of regulation, but his shot bounced off the rim at the buzzer to send the game to extra time.

However, the Thunder scored the first five points in overtime and hung on for the win to maintain their two-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs at the top of the Western Conference.

Yours truly built a bracket around the most important question of the Two-Timelines era. It’s not about who was the best, but who did you believe in the most? Eight ex-Warriors drafted after Kevin Durant left. Three rounds. One crown. I seeded it by emotional gravity: draft expectations, peak belief, and how long you kept the faith. And now the voting starts.

First matchup: the #1 seed Jordan Poole against the #8 seed Alen Smailagic.

I was in Las Vegas for Summer League 2019 when Jordan Poole first put on a Warriors uniform. KD had just left. Kawhi and PG had just linked up in LA. The dynasty felt like it was genuinely over. And in the middle of all that noise, this 19-year-old kid from Michigan with a quick trigger and absolutely zero fear was out there getting buckets like the scoreboard owed him money.

I wrote about him that summer. I stayed high on him even when most people weren’t sure. Then the G League bubble happened in 2021 and everything changed. Pre-bubble, he was averaging 5.5 points on 42.6% shooting in under 10 minutes a game. Post-bubble, he was up to 14.7 points on 43.3% in 23.5 minutes. Same player, more runway, and that’s all he needed.

Dr. Tom and I wrote a whole season review for the legendary Warriors publication Dub Nation HQ about how Jordan Poole had arrived. By the end of the 2020-21 season, he was drawing shooting fouls at a slightly higher rate than Steph Curry. Steve Kerr said he gets places most players can’t get to. We compared him to Leandro Barbosa as a compliment. We meant it.

And then 2022 happened and it wasn’t the Barbosa ceiling anymore.

Four 20-point games off the bench in the playoffs at age 22 proved he was the sparkplug the Warriors needed to keep their offense rolling. He started showing out on the biggest stages, with no hesitation, serving up Poole Parties to defenders when the franchise needed him most. Dub Nation didn’t just believe Jordan Poole was good, we believed Jordan Poole was going to be the one who kept all of this going after Steph. The dream was that he’d evolve into some kind of Steph clone. And can you blame us? The slippery handles, the outrageous shotmaking, the dead-eye free throws in addition to watching the student take buzzer beaters from the master IN THE ACTUAL NBA FINALS. The next chapter wrote itself in our heads.

Then October 5, 2022 happened in practice.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the punch at the time, and honestly I’m still not. What I do know is that the season that followed was the most complicated thing I’ve ever had to cover as a Warriors writer. Poole played all 82 games. He averaged 20.4 points, 4.5 assists, 87% from the free throw line. Without Curry in the lineup, he averaged 26.1 points and 5 assists per game.

But then he’d have games where the turnovers were genuinely indefensible. Games where his shot chart looked like it was affiliated with the Bloods; his playoff shot chart had so much red on it that it was genuinely alarming. In the 2023 playoffs against the Lakers, he shot 34% from the field and 25% from three.

Steph got ejected throwing his mouthguard in pure frustration after a Poole decision in a must-win game. Klay could only watch in horror; he finally ran into someone with less of a conscience than the Splash Bros.

That summer, young Poole was traded to Washington for Chris Paul.

I wrote a season review about that too at DNHQ titled “How Jordan Poole’s Warriors Tenure Ended.” I tried to be fair. I noted that he was only 23. I noted that the turnovers made more sense when you realized he was a young guard on a defending-champion team where everyone had him circled. I noted that the same things that made him infuriating (the shot selection, the individual creation, the relentless ball-in-hands approach) were the exact same things that made him great without Steph.

The community poll at the end of that piece asked readers to grade his final season. Fifteen percent of respondents chose “F – I see why Draymond punched him.”

That’s the Poole story. That’s the whole thing. Not that he failed. It’s that we watched him arrive, we watched him ascend, we watched him win a championship, we watched the whole thing catch fire from the inside, and then we watched him leave at 23 years old with the best basketball of his life theoretically still ahead of him.

That’s why he’s the 1 seed. The peak belief was enormous. The confusing grief was real. And the fall hurt in a way that Dub Nation hasn’t fully processed even now.

Alen Smailagic was 18 years old when he played in the G League for Santa Cruz in 2018, the youngest player in the history of the league. He came over from Belgrade having played above the Serbian semi-professional third division and not much else. They called him Smiley.

The Warriors traded up to get him 39th overall in 2019 and gave him a four-year, $6.13 million contract. And for a moment a real, genuine, Warriors-fan-Twitter moment it looked like the investment might pay off. Draymond adopted him as a pet project, gushing about how quickly Smiley learned and how inquisitive he was.

The front office floated the vision of him as a pick-and-pop forward in the Davis Bertans mold, a 6’10” shooter who could put the ball on the floor and make plays from the arc.

The flashes were real. His shooting motion was fluid. His 84% free throw percentage as a rookie was a legitimately good sign for long-term development. He could put the ball on the floor in almost guard-like fashion for a center. There were moments in Santa Cruz where you could start to see the shape of what the Warriors were building toward.

But there were also the turnovers. The happy feet on defense. The 223 total minutes in a Warriors uniform across two full seasons. The G League bubble in 2021 where his Santa Cruz coach Kris Weems had to pull him aside and tell him flat out: “You can’t try to score every time you touch the ball.” The late-March start against Memphis where he played eight minutes, shot 1-for-5, and committed five fouls. The $1.78 million salary about to become guaranteed. The quiet August waiver wire move that most Warriors fans barely registered.

Connor Letourneau wrote the obituary in the Chronicle before it was officially over: “Even projects must show progress.”

That was it. He went back to Europe, building a career entirely on his own terms. Just a kid who came to the Bay at 18, learned English, learned the freeway, and went home when the NBA dream ran out of runway.

“I really would like to stay in the NBA and not just be on the bench,” Smailagić said one day after he was drafted. “I really want to play.” And Smiley played a little bit in his time with the Dubs. We just watched and hoped, and for a little while that was enough.

SINGAPORE (AP) — Australians Hannah Green and Minjee Lee moved to the top of the leaderboard Saturday to lead by one stroke after three rounds of the HSBC Women’s World Championship.

Green, the 2019 Women’s PGA Championship winner and who won the Singapore tournament in 2024, shot a 4-under 68 and three-time major winner Lee 69 to post three-round totals of 11-under 205 at the Sentosa Golf Club.

American Angel Yin (68) and Haeran Ryu (70) of South Korea were tied for third in the LPGA tournament.

With the final group on the eighth hole, six players were tied for the lead at 9-under. Yin took the lead for first time with a birdie from off the green on the 10th, displacing her fellow American Auston Kim, who had led after the first two rounds.

Kim had back-to-back bogeys on the seventh and eighth to fall out of the lead, but it could have been worse. After seeing her ball plugged in hazard off the green on the eighth hole and having to return to the fairway to hit her fifth shot, she sank a 20-foot putt for bogey to minimize the damage.

Kim finished with a 73 and was tied for sixth at 8-under, three behind Green and Lee.

“Definitely, there are a lot of birdies to be made but it’s very easy to make bogey," Green said. “So I think just limiting as many of those as possible.

“I’ve been hitting the ball into the greens, so if I can continue to do that, and even though I’m playing with Minjee, we are good friends, I don’t want to get too caught up in what her scores are.”

Yin said the margins were close in the third round.

“Good golf and good luck. Honestly there’s nothing much you can do to it," Yin said. "There’s a lot of instances today where it was like one hole, I made this unbelievable up-and-down. That’s skill and luck to me. So get lucky and get good.”

Lee won her first major in 2021 at the Evian Championship, her second at the U.S. Women’s Open in 2022 and her third at last year’s Women’s PGA Championship.

Top-ranked Jeeno Thitikul, who won last week’s tournament in her native Thailand, shot 70 Saturday that left her at 3-under. She was tied with defending champion Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson, who each shot 71, all eight strokes behind the leading Australians.

The 72-player, no-cut tournament is the second of three stops on the LPGA’s early year Asian swing, with the final one next week at Hainan Island, China.

___

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

MILWAUKEE — Mohamed Diawara got the call Friday and took advantage.

The rookie, who has been alternating rotation spots with newcomer Jeremy Sochan, returned to his pre-All-Star break form with 10 points, hitting 2 of 3 treys in the Knicks’ 127-98 win over the Bucks.

Diawara was a game-best plus-25 in just 22 minutes, and the strong performance arrived after three straight games of sparse playing time.

In those games, Sochan had risen above Diawara to ninth in the rotation. It’s an important position because coach Mike Brown typically plays nine guys.

On Friday, Diawara was ninth.

“Everybody [has been telling me to stay ready],” Diawara said. “Everybody, for real: the players, the staff. … First year, I’m a rookie, so everything is not going to be great. So I just have to stay ready and wait until my name gets called.”

Sochan, who has struggled in his limited opportunities since signing as a free agent, had two points and two rebounds in five garbage-time minutes Friday.

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“Those guys are like 10th and ninth guy, however you want to call it,” Brown said. “I’ll make the call as we go along, but everybody has to make sure they keep themselves ready.”

Karl-Anthony Towns has been rumored in trades to Milwaukee since the summer.

It’s a product of, among other things, his salary matching perfectly with that of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Depending on how this season shakes out and whether Antetokounmpo hits the trade market, Towns’ name could resurface.

He claimed he paid no attention — and won’t in the future — even after being shocked by being dealt to New York by Minnesota in 2024.

“I’m not going to have to change how I live and how I approach work, how I approach life because of one instance,” Towns said. “That’s just a bump in the road. I continue to be myself regardless of what people say, what the noise is. I’m going to work on my game. I’m going to continue to be who I am as a person.

“I’m going to approach life the way I approach it. It’s gotten me this far. It’s gotten me a beautiful fiancée, a great family that’s all healthy and happy. I mean, it’s done well. It doesn’t always need to just be about basketball. It’s gotten me well in life. It’s kept me centered. It’s kept me focused. It’s kept me engaged and motivated to continue to attack every day with the same competition and competitive spirit.”