March Madness, Ncaa Tournament | featured news

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.

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.

After tossing a big, wet blanket on one feel-good story, Duke gets to go after another. They don't call 'em the Devils for nothing. Jon Scheyer scored 23 points Saturday night to lift Duke, the team so many folks love to hate, to a 78-57 victory over West Virginia and set up a meeting against tiny Butler - a classic matchup of big vs. little, with the national title on the line.

Kansas - gone. Kentucky - gone. Syracuse - gone. Little Butler - still going....

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....