This year's Final Four is set – we've got two teams who have never made it, one who hasn't been there since 1939, and...North Carolina. Hey, you have to have one stalwart in there, right?
In any case, Funny or Die has a delightful parody of the postgame press conferences that follow each matchup. It starts out harmlessly enough, though after a bit, the reporters gathered start asking some more peculiar questions. Enjoy!
After some thrilling games on Thursday night, Friday's Sweet 16 games were fairly boring in comparison. UCLA/Kentucky didn't really live up to the hype (which is not too big of a surprise since those games rarely do), so we were left with Florida/Wisconsin as the final game of the evening and one last chance to give us some madness. And boy, did it deliver.
Wisconsin was down eight in the closing minutes and they tied the game on a crazy shot with 2.5 seconds left in regulation. Then, in overtime, Florida found themselves trailing by five with under a minute remaining. They tied the game up at 81, then the Badgers scored on two Nigel Hayes free throws to get back ahead. NO MATTER.
Florida's Chris Chiozza raced the length of the court and hit a three, much in the same style as Wisconsin's end of regulation shot was thrown up. Just like that, we've got our first buzzer beater of the NCAA Tournament. WILD.
Man, it's a good time of year. The NCAA Tournament is among us, which means it's time for fellow Miami Hurricane and resident bracketologist Chris Hayes to chat a little March Madness. We discuss our brackets, crazy upset picks, and chat about the incredible sense of humor the NCAA selection committee has. Listen along, won't you?
Remember when Villanova's Kris Jenkins knocked down a three-pointer to beat the North Carolina Tar Heels and win the National Championship? That was good times.
Such good times, in fact, that Villanova attempted to recreate it with ESPN's Andy Katz. Jenkins, Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu put their Wildcats uniforms back on and ran through the final play 11 additional times. Jenkins hits it seven times, for a solid 63 percent. And Arcidiacono's celebration of jumping onto Jenkins' back gets progressively less enthusiastic. Enjoy!
Matt Szczur was feeling great Monday night–after all, his alma mater, the Villanova Wildcats, had just taken home a national championship after Kris Jenkins' buzzer beater knocked off the UNC Tar Heels, 77-74.
The good vibes continued into Tuesday night, when Cubs manager Joe Maddon put the outfielder into the starting lineup. According to Maddon, "Villanova wins the national championship, so I thought it was a good bet for tonight."
In news that continues to defy all odds, the terribly mediocre Syracuse Orange basketball team keep winning games. Yesterday they came back from a 15-point deficit with about nine minutes to play against a Virginia Cavaliers team simply by pressing, which made Virginia go from a slow, methodical, plodding style of play into something much more frantic.
It's a move that makes you wonder why teams don't press 100 percent of the time, since it's been proven time and again this tournament that handling the press is absurdly difficult for these college kids.
Anyway, earlier in the game, Syracuse freshman Tyler Lydon lost a shoe. NO MATTER. He promptly got back up, kicked the shoe away, and proceeded to knock down a one-shoed three-pointer. Not included in this video is the very impressive move by Michael Gbinije to pick up the shoe and toss it off the court, all while maintaining his dribble. Now that's a shoe-pendous move.
If you're like me, you're a fan of the incredibly easy to use yet full of great information goodness that is Yahoo Sports' 2016 Men’s College Basketball Tournament bracket. Fill that one out, then spend another minute or two completing one inspired by the all-new 2016 Lexus GS F, the brand’s most powerful performance sedan that goes from 0-60 in 4.5 seconds.
The best part? “GS F The Bracket” is not about who wins the game, it’s about how fast they play.
· Each round, select which matchup will reach a combined 60 points the fastest.
· Guess correctly and you could win a GS F-inspired luxury vacation.
Don’t worry about busting your bracket after the first round. Lexus’ bracket can be played until the finals. I will keep this in mind when I'm tearing up my bracket after my runner-up loses by 2:30 Central time on the first day of the whole tournament. I still hate you for last year, Iowa State.
Got any other questions? You can check out the video below. I'll even toss in my picks for the First Four and the first round, so you can choose differently: I'm taking Florida Gulf Coast and Fairleigh Dickinson tonight in a battle of America (the FGCU Eagles) and the game of chess (the FDU Knights). And once the field gets to 64 teams, I like Duke and UNC Wilmington to put up a lot of points fast.
The Monmouth Hawks are a tiny school based out of West Long Beach, NJ (yes, that's a real place). And while the members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (or the MAAC for short) may only get one bid into this year's NCAA Tournament, the Hawks have already found a way to keep things memorable. Their bench celebrations really are a thing of beauty.
After finishing third in the AdvoCare Invitational in Lake Buena Vista, FL, the Hawks made several appearances on national television. They even pulled off an upset over then-No. 17 Notre Dame, 70-68 in the first round. And the bench celebrated accordingly, with style and panache. Gotta love these kids just having fun out there.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is all about those viral web videos, and it's struck gold here: college basketball + puppies. The young pups predict the winners of the Final Four in "Puppy Predictors: 2015 Final Four Edition."
Who's taking home the championship? Well, you'll just have to watch to find out.
Villanova student Roxanne Chalifoux has had quite the tumultuous week. After her Wildcats were knocked out of the NCAA Tournament by North Carolina State, the TBS cameras caught her crying while still trudging along and playing her piccolo. Naturally, the internet had a field day with it.
Jimmy Fallon gets in on the fun, too, inviting her to play with The Tonight Show house band The Roots. She also gets a swag pack, complete with a ton of mementos and two Taylor Swift tickets. All for crying on national television. Dang. I better work on my tearing up methods. Someone grab a camera, quick.
My bracket is all but busted. If yours is in the same boat, you could use the soothing, cheerful voices of Chris Hayes and myself. We re-do our Final Four based on the current 16 (though many of our initial selections still hold), and discuss some of our favorite moments and the biggest surprises from the first weekend of the tournament. Your March hasn't been mad enough. Let's fix that.
The Kentucky Wildcats rolled to a 13-point victory over the Cincinnati Bearcats in the Round of 32, but really, the game could have been called after this play in the first half. Kentucky's Willie Cauley-Stein just demoralizes Cincinnati's Quadri Moore with a dunk. I mean...look at Moore. He still doesn't know what's going on.
This is quite the funny concept that actually stays chuckleworthy throughout. Metta World Peace's acting is probably better than it's ever been. Is that saying anything? No, but still. Baby steps. Best line: "Your office has a pool? Where do you work, Google?"
Don't you just love this time of year? The number of fires increases by 60,000% as people burn their brackets across the nation. Trendy upset picks fail, trendy title contenders fail, and things you thought were clever end up failing. How many times can I say fail? Probably as many times as the number of picks I got wrong today. So...several more "fails" are on the way.
1. Louisville easily had the most exciting region: UAB and UCLA won by identical 60-59 scores, and Cincinnati and Purdue (who were tied at 59 going into overtime) won 66-65. Then Kentucky and Hampton played. Oh well. You can't win 'em all. Unless you're Kentucky. Jacksonville was a close second, with three games coming down to the final possession.
2. UNC's Marcus Paige said "it's fun to be the underdog" after his No. 4 Tar Heels beat No. 13 Harvard. Okay, Marcus.
3. It's unfathomable that Baylor lost its game. To be up by 12 with 2:54 left and then not score again is a terrible way to finish what had been a decent performance up to that point. Terrific job by Georgia State to press and force mistakes on Baylor's end, but goodness, what a disaster.
4. Speaking of which, Georgia State coach Ron Hunter has had a rough couple of weeks. After tearing his achilles celebrating his team's victory that punched 'em a ticket to the Big Dance, Hunter had to sit on a stool with wheels for this game. When his son R.J. hit the game-winning three-pointer, Hunter's reaction was...well, not the most graceful.
5. The state of Texas went 0-5 and is out of the tournament entirely. After one day. Ohio, meanwhile, had the best state record, going 3-0 (though one of those wins was Dayton beating Boise State at home by one point, and that happened Wednesday).
6. There were a LOT of stupid plays down the stretch of games, but the dumbest has to be Yanick Moreira's goaltend at the end of the SMU-UCLA game. Bruins guard (and coach's son) Bryce Alford threw up an off-balanced, contested three-pointer that had ZERO percent chance of going in. Moreira didn't care. He was determined to touch that ball, and got called for goaltending. I don't understand why this has been controversial. It was 100% goaltending, and 100% stupid. It's also 100% sad because Moreira is a senior, and that was his final collegiate game.
7. UCLA winning doesn't validate their inclusion into the field. Just like Texas and Ole Miss losing doesn't mean people get to say "I told you so." The Bruins shouldn't have been in at all. They're making the most of their opportunity, so good on them, but they didn't play well enough to earn a bid during the season, and it's frustrating that they'll now be advancing.
8. I thought the Big 12 was supposed to be the best conference?
9. There were five games decided by one point (an NCAA record for a single day) and another by two points.
10. Combined, Kentucky, Villanova and Arizona won by 85 points. The other 13 games? A combined 61 points.
11. Ever so briefly (or maybe for a full year if there are no upsets tomorrow), the 11/6 matchup has more upsets than the 12/5. They had come in with 44 apiece, but 12-seeds went 0-2 while 11s went 1-2.
12. This cracks me up because I live in Austin: James Harden scored 50 points in a Rockets win. Every college team except one scored at least that many points. The lone exception? The Texas Longhorns, of course, who only managed 48.
13. The last time two 3-seeds lost their first game? You'd have to go back to 1995, when Villanova and Michigan State fell to Old Dominion and Weber State, respectively.
14. For how many close games there were, there were actually zero second-half buzzer beaters. The closest was the Wolfpack of North Carolina State, who hit a game winner with 0.1 seconds left. That reminds me...
15. Do you know why March Madness is so exciting? Because teams are so inconsistent and crappy down the stretch that even what appears to be a safe lead is, in fact, in peril. Great example: LSU missed their final 12 field goals and six free throws to blow it against N.C. State.
16. I'll end with my most egregious bracket selection I've ever made: I chose Iowa State to make the championship. They lost the second game of the day. Just like that, my bracket went up in flames. What's the most amazing part of all this? Every year, Yahoo! Sports' Pat Forde does a "Dream/Nightmare Scenario" for each team in the tournament, discussing basically the best and worst things that can happen for each team, with colorful metaphors and whatnot. Iowa State's dream scenario? They win the whole thing while Iowa loses in the first round. Their nightmare scenario? Beating UAB and then losing to SMU in the second round. Let me repeat that: THEY COULDN'T EVEN GET TO THEIR NIGHTMARE SCENARIO. Just a terrible display of basketball.
Well, at least one Florida State team won something. The Noles knocked off the Gators in the "Upper Part Of Florida" Rivalry Game, largely thanks to one of the most bizarre finishes ever. Florida State's Devon Bookert tried a fadeaway three to win the game. He missed. Badly. So badly, in fact, that Florida's Jacob Kurtz had an easy grab to rebound the ball and send the contest into overtime.
Which is why what happened next is so weird.
Kurtz tries to grab the ball, but somehow knocks it into the hoop. I've watched this 30 times and still don't understand how it happens. Simply incredible. Meanwhile, all the play-by-play says is "Florida State makes jumper."
Sadly, the best (i.e. the first two) days of March Madness are behind us, but I'm all about funky stats and cool college bball trivia. The folks over at CoachUp have made a cool infographic about some of the coaches that routinely make March the most exciting month of the year. Enjoy!
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Warren Buffett can rest easy. He won't lose 0.00001% of his fortune by having to pay someone a billion dollars. No perfect brackets remain in his Quicken Loans Challenge, but hey, the Top 20 folks can still win $100,000. Let's do this!
Stephen F. Austin, who hasn't lost since the Nixon Administration, earn our Best Finish of the Day in their ridiculous comeback win against VCU. The Lumberjacks were down 10 with 3:38 to play, and down four with 10 seconds left and VCU shooting a free throw. But that didn't matter ONE BIT. SFA's Desmond Haymon caught a pass with about three seconds left, launched a three, and drained it. Lumberjacks down one, right? WRONG. Haymon was fouled by VCU's JeQuan Lewis, and that four point deficit disappeared JUST LIKE DAT. In overtime, the Lumberjacks continued making awesome plays, and they eked out a 77-75 win, their 29th in a row. Incredible.
The Best Performance of the Day award is handed to Pittsburgh's Bryce Cotton. This man averaged 39.9 minutes per game during the season, and was even above 40 per game with like five games left to play. That's absurd, and what's more, he produced during those heavy minutes, scoring 36 points. Of course, Providence lost 79-77 to UNC, because heaven forbid I correctly predict an upset, but if Cotton wasn't on the Friars, this game wouldn't have even been close. As it was, it was probably the second-most entertaining game of the night.
The Worst Loss of the Day is an easy one. LOL Duke.
I should add a qualifier to our Most Boring Game of the Day: If you enjoy missed free throws, you'd absolutely love Oklahoma State/Gonzaga. I don't, personally, and seeing 61 fouls called in a game that had potential to be two entertaining squads playing against each other was kind of a bummer. Each team missed 15 free throws, and the Cowboys even adopted a "Hack a Polack" on Gonzaga's Przemek Karnowski (so dubbed by play-by-play announcer Andrew Catalon, which he then apologized for several minutes later). Karnowski went just 3 for 9 from the line, but the Zags won, so he gets the last laugh.
The Thank Goodness This Guy Is On The Team award goes to Desmond Haymon, for his aforementioned four-point play to force overtime. Seriously, even if you watched that game, stop what you're doing right now and check out the highlights again. SO GOOD.
Sorry, Baylor, your highlighter impression earns the Ugliest Uniforms award. But I won't be too harsh on you, because I actually predicted a win--unlike the pundits at ESPN, who said Nebraska would win because of their "hot" finish and Baylor's "stumbling" to the finish line. If you were scoring at home, coming into the game, Nebraska had won eight out of their last 11 games, and Baylor won nine out of their last 11 games. And these ESPN folk are all making at least six figures...sigh...
I guess the Region I Would Have Liked To Be At Live can go to Raleigh. They got to see Duke lose, Tennessee crush UMass in what had to have been the easiest upset to predict of all-time, then they watched a fairly close and entertaining Memphis/George Washington mid-major battle before seeing Virginia lose the first half against Coastal Carolina before storming back to win easily. But I love those Chanticleer unis!
We also have a new award (possibly just for today), the Get Out Of My Country award. This one goes to New Mexico. I learned a fun stat today: The Lobos have made the tournament 12 times since 1991, and have made it to the Sweet 16 precisely zero of those times. Yet I keep picking them to make the Sweet 16. After today's pathetic loss to Stanford, I got to thinking...what does New Mexico really have to offer as a state in general? Besides Breaking Bad, can you actually think of anything New Mexico does that another state doesn't do better? Sure, there's Tex-Mex, but Texas has that on lock. The Grand Canyon is Arizona. White Sands? I'll take Hawaii for that. The basketball team's incompetence has made me question the entire state. At least for the rest of March, I think they should hang out in South America.
Hope y'all's brackets ain't too busted. Happy watching over the weekend!
Ahhhhhh, the Madness. It's already begun. Of course. I was a pedestrian at best 11 for 16 in my bracket after the first day, and I have some gripes to pick. But first, let's start with a positive.
Our Best Finish Of the Day goes to the Texas Longhorns, who blew a late 12-point lead, allowing Arizona State to take the lead and then later tie the game at 85. But no worries, Texas big man Cameron Ridley made an incredibly agile play to grab a loose ball after a rebound before tossing it up with the left hand for the win. Honorable mention to Dayton, whose Vee Sanford made a ridiculous floater with 3.7 seconds left, just seconds after Ohio State's Aaron Craft made a ridiculous driving layup.
The Best Performance of the Day goes to Michigan State's Adreian Payne. He dropped a school tournament record 41 points, and also pulled in eight rebounds, in the Spartans 93-78 rout of Delaware. The Fightin' Joe Bidens were sadly one and done. Payne also finished 17 of 17 from the free throw line. Quick math says that's 100%. You know who didn't shoot 100% from the free throw line?
The North Carolina State Wolfpack. In our Worst Loss of the Day award, the Pack missed 17 free throws in the most embarrassing collapse I can remember. They were up 59-45 over Saint Louis with five minutes left, and were leading by eight points with 80 seconds left. Of course, the Billikens didn't do much better, shooting just 12 for 26 from the line. Combined, the teams were 32 for 63 on free throws, good for about 51%. And these kids get free rides to school. What a joke. Get off of my screen, NC State.
The Most Boring Game of the Day Award goes to Pitt/Colorado. Yes, Wisconsin won by 40 over American, but at least the Eagles were leading for a little bit of the first half. I'm pretty sure the state of Colorado persuaded four other states to legalize marijuana before the Buffaloes even made a field goal. I believe it was 36-9 at one point, and of course that wasn't even the biggest lead, as the Panthers won by 29. Just a disgusting display of basketball all around for Colorado.
Meanwhile, the Thank Goodness This Guy Is On The Team award is going to Luke Hancock of the Louisville Cardinals. Rick Pitino's squad almost crapped the bed against an inspired Manhattan Jaspers team (bonus points if you can tell me what a Jasper is), but fortunately the three-point specialist...well, did what he does best: he hit two clutch threes in the final couple minutes, and the Cardinals escaped with the 72-64 win.
The Albany Great Danes gave the overall #1 seed Florida Gators a great scare, but they gave our eyes an even bigger scare with the Ugliest Uniforms award. I mean, look at these things. They wouldn't be THAT bad if not for the really weird shorts. I can't tell if they're coming or going. I guess they're going, since they're out of the tournament.
Congrats, Spokane, you win the Region I Would Have Liked To Be At Live award. Harvard/Cincy, Louisville/Manhattan and San Diego State/New Mexico State all were fantastic games. Plus they got to witness the aforementioned history in the Michigan State game. That's a pretty solid haul. Here's to a fantastic Friday of madness!
If you're anything like me, your bracket has completely fallen apart, and tonight's results in the first day of Sweet 16 action didn't help. If you're also like me, you're trying to cook more often, because eating pizza and wings every day just doesn't cut it. Fortunately, the folks at HumanaVitality have offered up a healthy recipe for spinach artichoke dip. I've always liked eating the dip, and now I'll try making it own my own. My kitchen is already bracing itself. Enjoy!
