Coach Bruce Pearl and Auburn lost two stars to the NBA from what he considered college basketball's best frontcourt.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers on Monday ended a spring break with more room to cut taxes and boost state spending than they had even a few weeks ago but potentially facing another debate over political redistricting.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jay Wright shocked college basketball Wednesday night with his immediate resignation at Villanova, the Big East program he led to two national championships and four Final Fours in a Hall of Fame career.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Louisville basketball coach Kenny Payne has hired former Kansas great Danny Manning as an assistant, a month after he completed an interim stint at Maryland.
The 55-year-old Manning guided the Terrapins to a 15-17 finish after taking over for Mark Turgeon in December.
NEW YORK (AP) — Kansas' comeback victory over North Carolina to win the NCAA basketball championship was the most-viewed men's title game on cable television.
The Jayhawks' 72-69 win averaged 18.1 million viewers on TBS, TNT and truTV.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Great Kansas Comeback, as it will forever be known in the history books, is about more than just one stifling, scintillating 20-minute stretch of Jayhawks basketball.
The championship KU captured Monday night traced its roots back to 2020, when the Jayhawks were a team that looked very much on track for the program's fourth national title.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Best. Comeback. Ever. Sounds pretty good next to Rock Chalk, Jayhawk.
What looked like a lost cause turned into one of the sweetest wins ever for Kansas.
The Jayhawks brought their fourth NCAA title back to Allen Fieldhouse on Monday thanks to a second-half flurry that erased a 16-point deficit and eventually overcame North Carolina 72-69 in an epic battle of power programs.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Armando Bacot kept battling, locking his jaw and gritting his way through a hobbling ankle injury for the chance to help North Carolina win a national championship.
He played through bumps and box-outs, ballscreens and blocked shots.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kansas spent the first 20 minutes forcing shots and passes, missing layups and pressing the issue instead of pressing forward.
The next 20 turned into a master class in coaching by Bill Self — with a spicy dash of Remy Martin.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — David McCormack's two late baskets in the paint to help Kansas surge past North Carolina during the NCAA championship game followed a Final Four trend.
The way teams played in the post had a major influence on how the games turned out.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In a national championship game nobody at Kansas will soon forget, Bill Self went from the Hall of Fame coach who far too often failed on the big stage to the brilliant mastermind of the biggest comeback in NCAA title-game history.
KANSAS CITY (AP) — The Associated Press is republishing verbatim the story of the North Carolina-Kansas NCAA men's basketball championship game, as it was sent to the wire on the night of March 23, 1957.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The story of college basketball can be traced largely from the base of Mount Oread on the campus of Kansas, where the inventor of the game was also the school’s first coach, and across the heartland and down Tobacco Road to North Carolina, where so much of its history has been made.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — North Carolina front-court starter Armando Bacot didn't so much down-play the severity of his right ankle injury as dismiss the notion that it would stop him from playing hard against Kansas in Monday night's national championship game.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self finds himself in the same situation that longtime North Carolina coach Dean Smith once did.
Both had won national championships at their respective schools, two of the proudest in the history of basketball, and both had piled more Final Four appearances on top of them.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It should come as no shock that North Carolina and Kansas are playing for the national title. Their names, complete with their intertwined histories, are cemented on the short-short list of college basketball's greatest programs.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — North Carolina's top offensive priority, particularly early in a game, is to feed the ball to Armando Bacot in the post. Once the opposing team inevitably starts sending extra defenders at the Tar Heels' big man, Caleb Love has more space to let 3-pointers fly or drive to the basket.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Big (blue) Easy has one more bit of bedazzling in store.
North Carolina and Kansas, basketball blue blood running deep in their veins, are headed to the national championship game.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Villanova needed Justin Moore on offense, to add another scoring threat and spread the floor against Kansas' swarming interior defense. The Wildcats could have used him on defense, to rotate out on the Jayhawks' shooters and help dig down into the post.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Ochai Agbaji followed a celebrating stream of Kansas players off the floor at the Final Four, their shouts of “One more!” echoing all the way up the tunnel of the Superdome and right to the door of their locker room.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — North Carolina has won six national championships and reached more Final Fours than any program in college basketball. Duke has claimed five titles under retiring coach Mike Krzyzewski and Kansas just surpassed Kentucky for the most wins in the history of the game on its way to the Final Four.
March Madness has taken a power turn as it turns to the Final Four. No more plucky underdogs, much as we enjoyed the run by Saint Peter's. No more double-digit seeds looking for upsets.
This year's Final Four is Duke and Carolina, Kansas and Villanova, four powerhouses looking to add another national championship to their formidable resumes.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Bill Self was wading through old video of Villanova this week, trying to scout a specific action that the Wildcats use on the offensive end of the floor, when the Hall of Fame Kansas coach did something he's avoided the past four years.
This year's Final Four includes quite a collection of big-name programs — but this hasn't been a particularly dominant group this season.
In fact, the top three teams — and five of the top six — in the current Pomeroy rankings are absent.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A bunch of one-and-done phenoms brought together by Kentucky coach John Calipari stepped onto the floor into the spotlight of the cavernous Superdome 10 years ago, oozing with the kind of NBA potential that made it clear their college basketball careers were about to end at the Final Four.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — At long last, some of the cold, hard cash in the billion-dollar world of college sports is hitting the wallets of the players themselves by legitimate means. One expert estimates by the time next year's Final Four rolls around, every men's basketball and football player on a major Division I roster could be making $100,000 or more.
There’s no room for a surprise team at this Final Four.
Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Villanova have combined for 17 national championships. Each of the schools has won at least three titles, making this the first Final Four in which each of the teams already had won multiple championships.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Christian Braun's eyes opened wide when he learned that after Kansas had beaten Miami to return to the Final Four such a raging party had broken out back in Lawrence that authorities had to shut down Massachusetts Street, the popular bar and restaurant district near campus.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski refused to let his players ponder the possibility of facing North Carolina for the first time in the NCAA Tournament after the Blue Devils had punched their Final Four ticket with a win over Arkansas.
Kansas has only trailed for about 24 minutes through its first four games in the NCAA Tournament, and in both its opener against Texas Southern and its regional final against Miami, the margin of victory was more than 25 points.
For all the talk of college basketball's brave new world, it suddenly looks a lot like the old one.
So anyone asking why the same dozen programs are still playing musical chairs at the Final Four every year — Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Villanova this time around — would do well to recall how Willie Sutton answered the feds when they asked why he kept robbing banks: “Because that's where the money is.”
Coach K's final chapter will have a distinctly blue tint.
Two weeks of upsets and underdogs in the books, the Final Four is down to four blue blood programs: Kansas, Duke, North Carolina and Villanova.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — North Carolina crushed all hope of a March Madness miracle in the early going Sunday, getting 20 points and 22 rebounds from Armando Bacot in a wire-to-wire 69-49 runaway over 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s.
CHICAGO (AP) — Ochai Agbaji was all over the court. David McCormack dominated inside, and Christian Braun connected from deep.
With one dazzling finish, Kansas roared into the Final Four.
Agbaji, McCormack and Braun led the top-seeded Jayhawks to a brilliant second half in a 76-50 victory over Miami on Sunday, sending one of college basketball's top programs to the national semifinals for the 16th time.
CHICAGO (AP) — Miami's Kameron McGusty slapped hands with teammate Bensley Joseph on the way off the court and embraced teammate Charlie Moore and coach Jim Larrañaga in a long three-way hug by the scorer's table.
CHICAGO (AP) — Jordan Miller played for George Mason for three seasons before transferring to Miami. So Miller was well aware of Hurricanes coach Jim Larrañaga long before he switched schools.
“Being at George Mason, it’s hard not to hear about his success there,” Miller said Saturday.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Daryl Banks III scored the tying and go-ahead baskets that pushed 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s to the brink of the Final Four, the tiny Peacocks thriving off a home-court edge to beat third-seeded Purdue 67-64 on Friday night.
CHICAGO (AP) — Kansas' Jalen Wilson noticed the excitement on the other side.
The top-seeded Jayhawks went from leading by 13 in the second half to trailing Providence by a point with their season in danger of slipping away.
CHICAGO (AP) — When Ochai Agbaji and Kansas are rolling, they can pile up points in a hurry.
In case that doesn't happen in the Sweet 16 against Providence, the Jayhawks think they have another way to advance.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — There will be quite a reunion when Kansas and Providence join Iowa State and Miami at the Sweet 16 in Chicago this week, and it perfectly demonstrates the transient nature of college basketball these days.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Providence coach Ed Cooley heard all the chatter following his team entering the NCAA Tournament.
It helped create a narrative about the Friars: that despite earning 25 victories and winning a Big East regular-season championship, they had simply been more lucky than good because of an 11-2 record in games decided by five points or less.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self has always relied on veteran point guards to run his teams, All-Americans such as Frank Mason III and Devonte' Graham, or Tyshawn Taylor, who led an unheralded group of Jayhawks to the Final Four in 2012.
Top seeds Gonzaga, Kansas and Arizona are in. So is little Saint Peter’s, the giant killer and only the third No. 15 seed to make it this far in the NCAA Tournament.
And Coach K's farewell tour continues as he and his Duke Blue Devils made it to the Sweet 16, too.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — RJ Davis scored a career-high 30 points with a nifty layup while being fouled in overtime, and eighth-seeded North Carolina blew a 25-point second-half lead but still found a way to beat defending champion Baylor 93-86 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Remy Martin hadn't led Kansas in scoring all season coming into the NCAA Tournament.
The fifth-year senior transfer from Arizona State is 2 for 2 on the big stage.
Martin scored 20 points, Ochai Agbaji put the Jayhawks ahead for good with his first basket early in the second half, and Kansas held off Creighton 79-72 on Saturday to advance to the Sweet 16.