UConn Completes Historic Comeback to Stun Duke No. 1 seeds had been 134-0 all time when leading by 15 or more points at halftime. Duke led 44-25 with 1:33 remaining in the first half. UConn’s in-game win probability dropped to 1.3%. And then the Huskies did what no team in tournament history had done before. … Read more
Saturday’s Elite Eight: Favorites Dominated After five days of underdogs thriving against the spread in this tournament, Saturday delivered a correction. Both favorites covered, and neither game was particularly close by the final buzzer. Illinois 71, Iowa 59. The Illini were 7.5-point favorites and won by 12. Iowa’s Cinderella run, which included upsets of defending … Read more
Two 80-79 Finals, a 15-Seed on the March, and a Sub-.500 Team in the Semis Thursday’s conference tournament quarterfinals delivered a message the public keeps ignoring: lower seeds belong in March. Across every major conference tournament, higher-seeded teams either lost outright or survived by the slimmest margins imaginable. Two ACC quarterfinals ended 80-79. A 15-seed … Read more
Four Ranked Teams Fall on Final Saturday The last Saturday of the college basketball regular season delivered exactly the kind of chaos that contrarian bettors have come to expect heading into March. Four ranked teams lost, including a 12-win Marquette squad knocking off No. 4 UConn and a shorthanded Wisconsin team burying a school-record 18 … Read more
February’s Chaos Is March’s Opportunity Three weeks from Selection Sunday, college basketball’s ranked landscape is in full upheaval. Duke just reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the AP poll for a record 148th time. Houston is on its first three-game losing streak since January 2017. Kansas suffered its largest home loss as a ranked team … Read more
The Day All Four Top Seeds Lost Saturday, February 21 was supposed to clarify the college basketball landscape three weeks before Selection Sunday. Instead, it detonated it. All four projected No. 1 seeds from the NCAA selection committee’s preliminary bracket reveal lost on the same day. Michigan, Houston, Iowa State and Kansas (the team closest … Read more
Five Top-10 Teams Fall on College Basketball’s Wildest Saturday The NCAA tournament selection committee picked a bad day to release its first bracket preview. Hours after the committee revealed its top 16 seeds on Saturday, the sport turned the projections into scrap paper. Five AP top-10 teams lost, including the No. 1 and No. 2 … Read more