NCAA

INDIANAPOLIS – The UConn men’s basketball team is headed back to the national championship game for the third time in four years after taking down No. 3 seed Illinois, 71-62, in Saturday’s Final Four matchup at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Mostly, Johnny Lester wanted to stay with his position group, with two teammates to whom he felt closest. He had just wrapped up his first season starting on Washington State’s offensive line, finding a niche at left guard, and while he hadn’t turned in a perfect season, he projected to keep getting better and better with experience.

MOSCOW, Idaho – Brothers playing on the University of Idaho football team is nothing new.

PHOENIX – Lauren Betts watched the game film of UCLA’s 2025 Final Four defeat to UConn about a dozen times. She was mad and couldn’t understand how a historic season for the program had ended in such catastrophic fashion.

If an extended Division I coaching career felt out of reach for Mark Few growing up in the small Oregon community of Creswell, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame induction might as well have been an afterthought.

If Tommy Lloyd wasn’t leading a top-seeded Arizona team into the Final Four this weekend, it’s possible his head coaching tenure at Gonzaga would already be well underway.

PHOENIX – One of the first things South Carolina saw every morning during the offseason was the score of its national championship loss to UConn a year ago.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Steve Kerr, coach of the team that broke basketball as we know it, sat just behind Arizona’s bench during last week’s Sweet 16, watching his Wildcats … mostly ignore the 3-point line. It was a strange sight, to say the least.

Diallo chose UW over Gonzaga, USC and Arizona when he narrowed his list of finalists in 2023.

Before examining the candidates, one issue must be addressed: the difference between the best teams and the most successful teams.

President Donald Trump has signed a second executive order aimed at fixing college sports, this time laying out specific transfer and eligibility rules, limiting how athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness and threatening schools that violate rules with financial penalties, the White House announced Friday.

Arizona men's basketball coach Tommy Lloyd is staying with the Wildcats despite North Carolina's interest in hiring him for its head coaching vacancy, he announced Friday at a news conference previewing the Final Four.

The 2026 Final Four likely will mark the end of two eras with the NCAA Tournament field size poised to expand and the event's media partners set to contract.

The process by which Tommy Lloyd left the comforts of Spokane, where he was heir to the throne, and accepted Arizona's offer played out against a roiling backdrop in April 2021.

Tommy Lloyd’s tenure as a graduate assistant was all of two weeks old when newly appointed Gonzaga coach Mark Few phoned predecessor Dan Monson.

MOSCOW, Idaho – For diehard Idaho football fans willing to get up with the sun to watch the Vandals go through spring practice and for the slightly less committed who show up for the Saturday mid-morning workouts, the best way to measure the Vandals’ progress is to bring a stop watch.

This weekend, Washington State fans based in Spokane won’t have to make a 90-minute drive to watch their team in action.

PULLMAN – Back in January, when the leadership in Washington State’s football program was changing again and the Cougars were installing a new set of coaches and players, Matt Miller’s head was spinning.