Basketball

3/17/2026 |  League tournaments can be a long grind. That could impact which teams advance in March Madness (Associated Press (AP)) Purdue had just battled through the Big Ten Tournament, beating three straight NCAA Tournament teams – the last a No. 1 seed in Michigan – to claim a grinding championship in Chicago.
“Obviously playing four games in four days is something we haven’t done before,” longtime coach Matt Painter said.

3/17/2026 |  March Madness wagering set to tip off with the games just 2 months after federal gambling charges (Associated Press (AP)) The NCAA basketball tournaments open this week and billions of dollars will run through a gambling market that has evolved from office bracket contests and illegal bookmaking operations into a booming industry where it’s legal in most states to wager on outcomes or a seemingly endless menu of statistics-based predictions within the games.

3/17/2026 |  Dick Vitale to make his NCAA Tournament broadcasting debut Tuesday in the First Four with Charles Barkley (CBS Sports) Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Vitale will make his NCAA Tournament debut behind the mic on Tuesday when No. 11 seed NC State faces No. 11 seed Texas in Dayton, Ohio, during the First Four. The winner of that game will advance to the first round of the NCAA Tournament to face No. 6 seed BYU on Thursday in Portland, Ore.

3/17/2026 |  Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg turned down $7M-$9M Kentucky offer to play for Dusty May (CBS Sports) When last year's top-ranked transfer Yaxel Lendeborg withdrew from the 2025 NBA Draft and committed to Michigan, it was the biggest recruiting win of Dusty May's coaching career. Michigan's investment in the Big Ten Player of the Year has paid dividends, as the Wolverines will head into the 2026 NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region.

3/17/2026 |  Why the NCAA Tournament Selection Process Still Doesn’t Make Sense (DEADSPIN) What we’ve got here, Keith Gill, is failure to communicate.

Or maybe I should direct my ire not at Gill, the Sun Belt Conference commissioner and this year’s NCAA Tournament selection committee chair, but at CBS for bungling the delivery of the biggest news of Selection Sunday.