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Purdue, the No. 3 team in last week’s rankings, flexed its muscles and wrecked a very talented Illinois team by 16 points on Tuesday. Two days later, the Boilermakers were blown out at Michigan. Duke, last week’s No. 6 team, devastated rival North Carolina on its home court last Saturday. Two days later, the Blue Devils fouled up the defense of a baseline inbounds play and surrendered a game-winning 3-pointer to Virginia guard Reece Beekman....

The tournament leads up to the men’s national championship game on Monday, May 30, in Hartford, Conn. The marquee matchup in the second round features No. 1 Maryland (15-0) against Virginia (12-3) in a rematch of last year’s national championship game. The Cavaliers beat the Terps 17-16 in a thriller. That is the final game of the weekend at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. Delaware upset No....

Mark Emmert said Sunday that the NCAA wants to allow the big conferences with moneymaking teams to write their own rules, and those changes could solve many athletes' complaints more effectively than unionization. "To be perfectly frank, the notion of using a union-employee model to address the challenges that exist in intercollegiate athletics is something that strikes most people as a grossly inappropriate solution to the problems," Emmert said at his annual news conference, held the day before college basketball's national championship....

MORE: Seven early-season surprises | Vandy/Kansas battle for Maui Why does it matter? Because the NCAA is supposed to be an organization that puts student interests first. That is how it often sells itself. And don’t think this is an organization that hasn’t needed acceptance. The students it is supposed to consider include not only those whose eligibility may be in question, but also the members of the teams such athletes aspire to join....

Randle with the ball in his hands and some room to gather momentum can be menacing to a defense assigned to contain him, but the one advantage in that task is it’s not difficult to discern what’s coming. “I thought he was going to shoot and go, so I just ran in to crash,” Louisville All-American guard Russ Smith told us. He’d left behind UK shooting guard Aaron Harrison, but that seemed as though it would be no issue....

10:00 p.m.: We’re shutting the live blog down for now. If things get crazy we’ll start it back up again. Enjoy the Madness. 9:54 p.m.: VCU is on a casual 26-5 run. They lead SFA 56-45. The HAVOC is real, and tough to play against. 9:50 p.m.: It’s official. Nobody is going to win Warren Buffett’s $1 billion. The George Washington vs. Memphis game destroyed the last remaining perfect brackets....

North Dakota State, champions of the Summit League, gave that seed another good name by beating No. 5 Oklahoma 80-75 in overtime in Spokane, Wash. It was the school's first ever NCAA Tournament victory. MORE: Live scores | Box score | Play by play | Thursday’s best photos The Bison led by eight points at halftime and led for large stretches of the second half before Isaiah Cousins’ two free throws with 1:30 left gave the Sooners a 62-61 lead....

Stokes dominated inside as the Volunteers finally caught up in the closing minutes of regulation, then opened overtime with a three-point play that set up a 78-65 victory over Iowa on Wednesday night, finishing off the First Four. The Volunteers (22-12) head to Raleigh, N.C., where they'll play sixth-seeded Massachusetts on Friday in the Midwest Regional. MORE: Updated tourney odds | Cal Poly advances "I told our guys we've been through everything this season, keep your composure down the stretch," said coach Cuonzo Martin, who got his first NCAA tournament win in his third season at Tennessee....

Stephen F. who, you ask? If you don’t know anything about this university in Nacogdoches, Texas, you’re sure to hear more about the Lumberjacks as they head into a matchup Sunday against No. 6 Notre Dame. MORE: Top photos from Round of 64 | SN’s interactive bracket And you’ll hear plenty about the Lumberjacks’ 6-4 senior forward, Thomas Walkup, who sports a beard — naturally, because he’s a Lumberjack — and did it all Friday against WVU....

I began with a list of 10, then expanded it to a dozen in order to assure that I was as inclusive as possible and no one was left outside the group that could — even against all odds, you Seminoles — put together a memorable NCAA Tournament run. How many are left from that dandy dozen with the first two rounds of the tournament complete? Eight. So maybe what happened in the tournament’s first weekend wasn’t entirely March Madness?...

March Madness will have first-round upsets, but the best bet to winning a bracket still comes down to relying on No. 1. Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1984-85, the No. 1 seeds have dominated the tournament. • A No. 1 seed has won 23 of those 36 tournaments, including the last three four with North Carolina (2017), Villanova (2018), Virginia (2019) and Baylor (2021). • A total of 37 of the 72 championship game participants since 1984-85 were No....

With our Field of 68 bracket projection, we’re here to do our best to help you decide for yourself how those resumes stack up. This isn’t a projection of what the seed lines will look like on Selection Sunday, but it’s a guess at how the bracket would look if the season ended after games on Tuesday. Our goal is to give you the information that will be used by the selection committee — a mix of statistics and other relevant facts for every single at-large team....

Coach John Calipari already has his group playing a cohesive, unselfish and overpowering brand of basketball, and its offense is starting to catch up to its suffocating defensive efforts. Kentucky hit 12-of-26 (46.2 percent) from three-point range while holding UCLA to 19-of-71 (26.8 percent) from the floor. Still, at less than even money, we can’t recommend betting Kentucky to win the title for a couple of reasons. One is that betting UK on the money-line in every game of the tournament while rolling over your winnings from the previous game is almost certainly a more effective strategy....

MORE: NCAA scoreboard | Vegas lines, pick | Day 2’s biggest moments | Weekend matchups Michigan State Spartans (23-11) No. 7 seed, East Region Coach: Tom Izzo (20th season) Bid: At-large/Big Ten Starting lineup G Travis Trice, 6-0, Sr., 14.8 ppg, 5.4 apg G Tum Tum Nairn, 5-10, Fr., 2.2 ppg, 2.6 apg F Denzel Valentine, 6-5, Jr., 14.5 ppg, 6.1 rpg F Branden Dawson, 6-6, Sr., 11.6 ppg, 9....

Pavlo Dziuba, a forward on the University of Maryland’s Terrapins men’s basketball team, was born in Kyiv and brought the flag onto the court with him in support of his home country following Russia’s invasion last week. Dziuba’s display of support came as some international sports organizations moved to restrict Russia’s participation in competitions by banning athletes and discouraging displays of the Russian flag. The University of Maryland’s team Twitter account began posting content demonstrating its support for Dziuba and Ukraine shortly after Russia’s invasion began....

He was awarded nearly $60 million in damages from the city. The verdict came after a four-week trial. Now 21, Alonzo Yanes attended Beacon High School, a college-preparatory public school in Manhattan. Yanes sustained third-degree burns to more than 30 percent of his body after an explosion occurred during a sophomore chemistry class experiment which attempts to exemplify the color change that takes place when salt is exposed to methanol....

The portion of the population that describes itself as gay has varied over the years, from 10 percent, based on research by Alfred Kinsey and widely promoted by the National Gay Task Force in 1977, to less than 6 percent in a recent Gallup poll. The pollster who worked on the new study, George Barna, attributes the unusually high number he found to social and news media coverage that makes it “safe and cool” for young Americans to identify as LGBTQ—whether or not it represents their actual sexual orientation....

The program didn’t give specific details on the suspensions, but Reilly’s punishment may be linked to a ticket for suspected DUI in mid-March. MORE: SN Preseason Top 25 | Bowl projections Gerry, a senior named to preseason watch lists for the Jim Thorpe and Bednarik awards, recorded 79 tackles in 2015 and led the team with four interceptions. However, he was ejected for targeting in each of Nebraska’s final two games....

For every load of North Korean drugs Japan intercepts, many more are getting through. With North Korea’s economy in tatters, illegal drugs have become a major source of hard currency for Pyongyang–and Japan its market of choice. Amphetamine use is rising 20 percent a year among Japanese gang members, truck drivers and teenage girls looking for powerful diet pills. At the same time, Japanese crime syndicates dominated by ethnic Koreans are only too eager to do drug deals with the communist North....

“It is with broken hearts and the deepest sadness that we must share the terrible news that on Tuesday our friend, soul brother and band mate of over 45 years, Neil, has lost his incredibly brave three and a half year battle with brain cancer (Glioblastoma). We ask that friends, fans, and media alike understandably respect the family’s need for privacy and peace at this extremely painful and difficult time,” read a post on the official Rush Facebook page....