March Madness - Page 3

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Defensive-minded Virginia showed it can play with a little offensive tempo, even using five guards to outpace UNC Wilmington.

The Latest on the NCAA Tournament

Villanova is the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament to start its bid to become the first repeat national champion since Florida in 2006-07.

In our final press conference, Villanova coach Jay Wright wondered if he was biased in calling Josh Hart the best player in the country after the senior scored 29 points to win his second Big East Tournament MVP and almost assure that March Madness would start with him rated as the best player and Villanova rated as the best team when March Madness starts this week.

All of the 129 teams that still have a chance at an NCAA bid should take a lesson from Providence Coach Ed Cooley’s final words in Madison Square Garden, in response to a Breitbart Sports question Thursday about how to deal with the loss that ended their six-game winning streak.

Breitbart Sports asked the last question to Billy Garrett Jr. as a player for DePaul University, as his hopes of making March Madness died, just like players from 175 other teams. The simplified conference-by-conference list of the 175 teams alive now shows the day of their next conference playoff game, and the chance they will make the tournament if they do not win the automatic bid.

Iona pulled out an 87-86 OT thriller to claim the MAAC, and South Dakota State outdid them with thrillers Monday and Tuesday to claim the Summit bid to March Madness, leaving 174 teams vying for the final 24 spots.

Jacksonville State became the 25th team to make the tournament, winning the Ohio Valley Conference title Saturday after stunning heavy favorite Belmont in the semifinals en route to their first March Madness appearance. For 23 other teams the chances of March Madness ended with conference tournament losses and a 0% chance of an at-large bid.

The Conference Basketball championships are in fact the opening rounds of March Madness for teams that do not have a chance for an at-large bid to the tournament – and the following is the conference breakdown of 284 teams that still have a chance after 67 teams were eliminated.

The NCAA’s release of the top 16 bids if March Madness started today left out Wisconsin, Wichita State, and SMU based on Value Add’s new adjustments for injured and returning players.

“Baracketology,” became an annual thing at ESPN over the last eight years. Featuring then Commander in Chief Barack Obama, a white board, a sharpie, and Andy Katz as Obama made his NCAA Championship picks during March Madness.

The NCAA may replace the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) with systems that reward blowouts in March Madness selection.

Two years after ESPN declared the Big East dead with a one-hour and 44-minute documentary, Kris Jenkins took just a second to resurrect it with a national title.

Just months after Breitbart Sports was criticized for “pretending” the Big East was almost an elite conference, Villanova improved the conference to 8-4 in the tournament — behind only the ACC (18-5) and doing it by beating a team from the only other conference with a winning record (Big 12) by a record margin 95-51.

Value Add indicates the Villanova “no stars” are the only team with four Top 200 players as they try to overcome Player of the Year Buddy Hield (Oklahoma) and then the best player in the tournament (UNC’s Brice Johnson) or the surprising Orangemen of Syracuse to give the Big East its first title in just its third year since realignment.

In February Thomas Walkup passed Buddy Hield as the most valuable player in the country according to Value Add Basketball. Friday he scored 33 points to lead Stephen F. Austin’s upset of West Virginia to make the Breitbart All-American bracket 26-6 and in the 99th percentile according to ESPN’s calculations.

We produced the bracket for all 63 picks based on looking at the analytics and then going with our gut. Here is a recap of those “gut” picks, and seven other options to let you go with our pure analytic choice, which team is hottest, most healthy, has the most NBA talent, best experienced point guard or the most All-Americans. Or you can just go with the lowest seed every time.

President Barack Obama revealed his 2016 NCAA basketball tournament brackets hours before revealing his choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Some great student-athletes will miss March Madness due to the Selection Committee or in other cases from unkind rims to sex and recruiting scandals to a questionable accusation of an assault.

Oregon destroyed Utah 88-57 in the Pac-12 Championship for their 8th straight win, while Cincinnati sweated a tournament bid after a 65-foot jump shot was banked in against them. But if the Bearcats can win a tough one against St. Joseph’s they could shock the Ducks.

The top NBA talent is packed into the East (Kentucky vs. UNC) and the South (potential Kansas vs. Maryland or Cal). Kansas has been better, is hotter now, has more experienced guards – but Maryland can erase it all with one huge upset.

As prep for our March Madness predictions, we lay out the basics for the 85 teams with even a faint hope of being one of the 68 selected Sunday. This sheet gives each team’s Sagarin rating, a plus or minus for whether they finished the season hot or cold, and the Value Add of any key players who are injured for returning from injury based on Don’s Best report.

The Breitbart Sports All-American 2013, 2014 and 2015 teams proved prophetic in March Madness brackets, and the 2016 edition announced below starts with the heated debate over whether Buddy Hield or Denzel Valentine rates as the National Player of the Year.

Another 19 teams were eliminated from March Madness by 10 p.m. Saturday (see updated status of all teams here). But Yale joined Austin Peay as the first two teams officially in the tournament with their first Ivy League title since 1962 despite both Yale and Austin Peay missing a key player.

A small crowd in Nashville yelling “Let’s go Peay” will watch one of the worst teams in basketball qualify for March Madness Saturday evening, while two of the best teams will need to win Saturday and then two more times in front of huge crowds in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to likewise get invited as the Summit League Champion to the second biggest sporting event in America behind the Super Bowl.

In an almost unheard of turn of events, more Americans watched the college basketball national title game than the college football national championship, as the ratings disaster continued for ESPN.

Charles Barkley said the key to the national championship was whether Jahlil Okafor or Frank Kaminsky was in foul trouble. Okafor endured foul trouble, yet Duke won. Duke rallied for the win only after Kaminsky dominated Okafor so bad that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski had to sit Okafor almost the entire last 12 minutes.

Rihanna headlined the March Madness Music Festival in Indianapolis on Saturday, where she debuted her long-awaited new song “American Oxygen” and unloaded with both barrels on Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” took on the media coverage and participants in March Madness in their opening sketch. The sketch begins with commentator Charles Barkley admitting he doesn’t really like college basketball, but quickly turns to the teams as Duke

After a week of hearing religious liberty attacked, my religion doesn’t let me watch the biggest college game of the year Saturday night. This from an Alabaman who drove to Indiana to see the Hoosiers upset Kentucky in a regular

Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith once again showed their ignorance of college basketball this week, complementing a player not playing, saying another player would be the key to Arizona beating Wisconsin before he was outscored 27-6, and backing the Arizona pick that dropped President Obama to 20% against the Breitbart Sports bracket.

With 14:26 to go, Notre Dame’s Pat Connaughton drove to the hoop for a dunk that gave them a 46-42 lead, and Ashley Judd covered her head. The rest of the game was a battle, and with 2:36 to go Connaughton found Jerian Grant 24 feet from the basket and Grant buried the long three-pointer to give Notre Dame a 66-64 lead.

Gonzaga’s 74-62 win increased Obama’s deficit, but different rules could give him a second chance to win his bracket. Meanwhile “Our Mother,” translated as Notre Dame, will try to upset the overwhelming favorite Kentucky just as they did when they

In his first game since yelling, “What the F… is wrong with Barack Obama?” NC State’s Anthony “Cat” Barber will go up against one of only two teams that feature two Breitbart Sports All-Americans.

College basketball’s win-or-go-home NCAA Tournament rakes in surprisingly fewer viewers than a string of “meaningless” college football bowl games.

The Occupy Movement appears to have spread to basketball courts to address concerns over new Value Add calculations showing the top 1% are now considered “more valuable” than the bottom 44%.