March Madness | featured news

The Big East was a bust. The Jimmer lived up to the hype. There are plenty of 10s, 11s and 12s left in the bracket, along with a handful of talented freshmen and a few familiar faces from Tobacco Road. The second week of the NCAA tournament will be sprinkled with the typical blend of favorites and underdogs, the familiar and the obscure, with a notable lack of Big East flavor in that mix.

Bernard James scored 14 points, Michael Snaer added 13 and Florida State showed there's more to its game than defense with a 71-57 upset of second-seeded Notre Dame on Sunday night that put the Seminoles in the regional semifinals for the first time since 1993.

Washington led for much of the game, but North Carolina went ahead with just over four minutes remaining and managed to hang on.

With plenty of help from Pittsburgh, Butler found another way to pull off a stunning upset in the NCAA tournament.

First, Morehead State won one for the underdogs. Then, Richmond. Then, Gonzaga. A 13 seed, a 12 and an 11 turned Denver into Upset City on Thursday and gave America an early refresher on why the NCAA tournament is also known as March Madness.

The NCAA men's basketball tournament and the entirety of March Madness are considered by many to be the pinnacle of the playoff experience in sports. And by "many" we mean "those who are too daft to understand that the Stanley Cup Playoffs are superior in nearly every way."

The play-in games begin on Tuesday, March 15. The first round starts on Thursday and runs through March 17-18. The second round runs through March 19-20. The Sweet 16 games will be played on March 24 and 25, while and Elite Eight games start on March 26 and conclude on March 27. The Final Four games will be played on April 2 and the national champions will cut down the nets on April 4.

The NCAA is on the verge of expanding the men’s basketball tournament from 65 to 68 teams beginning next year and announced a new, $10.8 billion broadcasting deal with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting on Thursday that will allow every game to be shown live for the first time.

Duke ended Butler's miracle run through the NCAA basketball tournament by defeating the gritty underdogs 61-59 to win the national championship on Monday.

Yes, it's a matchup pitting a cute bulldog against a devil, America's favorite underdog against the team people love to hate.