Ncaa, College Sports | featured news

Duke is the favorite among the Final Four to win the NCAA title, while Michigan State is a longshot despite its trip to the finals last year, oddsmakers in Las Vegas said Monday....

Four teams are left on the road to the national championship. In a matchup between bluebloods and the blue-collared, South Regional champion Duke will face East Regional champ West Virginia. And in a meeting of Final Four veterans and never-beens, it will be Midwest Regional champ Michigan State against West Regional champion Butler.

Every day they walk into practice, they also walk onto a movie set -- the one where they filmed the story about the little team that gets its big chance and lives out the unthinkable dream. That's the story of "Hoosiers." That's also the story of Butler -- the team that's reminding everyone that big schools with big money don't have a monopoly on everything in big-time...

The regional finals are set after two days of games that separated the contenders from the pretenders, the upstarts from the just starting to get serious....

Durrell Summers scored 19 points and Korie Lucious hit a whirling turnaround jumper with 95 seconds left, helping fifth-seeded Michigan State survive a mid-major scare with a 59-52 win over pesky Northern Iowa in the Midwest Regional semifinals Friday night.

Michigan State (27-8) needed a half to get used to Northern Iowa's grinding style and held the Panthers to 10 free throws over the final 10:22 to send the heroes of the Heartland home empty-handed.

Nolan Smith and Jon Scheyer rescued Duke in the second half, heating up from the field after a miserable first 20 minutes and lifting the top-seeded Blue Devils to a 70-57 victory over fourth-seeded Purdue in the South Regional....

The sixth-seeded Volunteers defeated the second-seeded Buckeyes in the Edward Jones Dome to advance to the Midwest Region final.

Baylor knocked off 10th-seeded Saint Mary’s 72-49 on Friday night behind 28 points from LaceDarius Dunn and an exemplary all-around effort from Tweety Carter.

Ali Farokhmanesh’s 20-footer stretched a 1-point lead to 4, and the Panthers held on for a surprise upset.

The first ticket to the round of 16 will be punched when second-seeded Villanova tussles with West Coast Conference champion Saint Mary's at 1:05 p.m. ET on Saturday. They'll be followed by a couple of upset-minded teams trying to keep the magic moving: 13th-seeded Murray State takes on fifth-seeded Butler, and 14th seed Ohio plays No. 6 seed Tennessee.