NCAA

By The Athletic

Will Graves is in select company. The former Gonzaga walk-on has gone to three of the last six Final Fours, one as a son, one as a player and one as a graduate assistant. There are no official records kept of individuals with that background, but it is safe to say it cannot be a long list.

PULLMAN – Washington State’s running backs room is becoming a little less crowded.

The 6-foot-6 Watts, who followed first-year coach David Riley from Eastern Washington a year ago, averaged 13.7 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Cougars, who wrapped up their season Monday with a loss to Georgetown at the College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas.

Dusty Stromer didn’t wait long to enter his name in the transfer portal and didn’t need much more time to identify a new school.

Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has used the phrase “blank slate” to describe her strategic approach to the next era, particularly with regard to the rebuilt conference’s pending media rights package.

PULLMAN – Washington State forward Ethan Price hasn’t played his final college game.

Though the Cougars' season came to a crashing halt when Georgetown erased a double-digit lead to win 85-82 in the opening round of the College Basketball Crown, the Riley-era seems to have gotten off on the right foot.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida coach Todd Golden would rather face anyone but Auburn in the Final Four.

A picture is worth 1,000 … grams of protein. Or maybe a 1,000-calorie-a-day deficit. Or just a 1,000-percent effort — as a coach might say — to get one’s body in peak form.

Now this was a homecoming. A month after swinging through his native Texas with Long Island of the G League, Drew Timme came roaring back through Dallas on Monday as a member of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets.

The national pastime of complaining while being spoiled has enjoyed a revival this men’s March Madness, and now it’s left to the second Final Four with all No. 1 seeds to stem the whining. Can Duke, Houston, Auburn and Florida present some sort of classic entry into the national consciousness that redefines 2025 as something other than a lack of upsets and overtimes and Cinderellas and other madnesses? When year-long titans hog all the Final Four spots and leave no space for any charming straggler, a save-best-for-last quality can take hold, for at least such a Final Four boasts the utmost quality.

In the aftermath of Gonzaga’s 81-76 second-round loss to Houston, teammates and head coach Mark Few dished out perspective on Nembhard’s record-shattering season.

PULLMAN — Washington State will not be playing April basketball.

When the NCAA women’s basketball bracket was unveiled two weeks ago, this was the Elite Eight game everyone wanted to see.

UConn is more than Paige Bueckers.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Texas coach Vic Schaefer first met Madison Booker when Booker was a middle schooler. Even then, he could tell that the future Longhorns wing would be a special talent. On Monday in Birmingham, Booker showed why she is already regarded as one of the sport’s biggest stars despite being a sophomore.

The mass exodus that hit the Washington State football program after last season has landed in women’s basketball.

The SEC set records with 14 bids to March Madness and seven teams in the Sweet 16. It also obliterated the mark that matters more than any other: dollars earned.