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Auburn will increase coach pay, may be targeting Tubby Smith

Sporting News

After firing basketball coach Jeff Lebo last week, Auburn is willing to significantly increase what it has paid former coaches in order to attract someone with a proven record, the Birmingham News reports.

That someone could be Minnesota's Tubby Smith, who has SEC experience at Kentucky and Georgia. A source told CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd that Auburn is "close to hiring" Smith as its new coach.

Other possible candidates are Texas-El Paso coach Tony Barbee, Missouri's Mike Anderson, former Auburn player Chuck Person, and former NBA coach Sam Mitchell.

Smith had a 45-19 record at Georgia. In his 10 seasons at Kentucky, Smith had a record of 263-83, including an NCAA Championship in 1998. His career record is 443-174.

Georgetown Stunned in Fun Day in Providence

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Twenty-one years ago, Georgetown pulled into Providence as the top seed and nearly exited as a victim of the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history.

Notre Dame's Schrader thrives on the inside (AP)

After a full season of playing inside and leading Notre Dame in rebounding, Lindsay Schrader finally concedes what she wouldn't for most of the season: she is no longer a guard. "I'm a post player," the 5-foot-10, fifth-year senior said. Schrader spent the summer working on her 3-point shot, but has attempted just one all season because she's spent much of her time this season...

Princeton takes 21-game streak to women's tourney (AP)

Atop the heap of NCAA women's basketball this season, there's Connecticut, Stanford ... and Princeton? Not even the Tigers could have envisioned that. Indeed, though, there are the Ivy League champions, carrying the nation's third-longest winning streak into their first NCAA tournament appearance, a 21-game run that trails only mighty UConn's 72 and Stanford's 22.

One look at the 63 NCAA women's tourney games (AP)

Sure, it's not going out on a limb to say Connecticut's winning its seventh national championship. But who the Huskies will play and how they get there is still up for debate. Here's one guy's sheet, a look at the 63 games and how they might pan out. It's guaranteed to remain unblemished until at least Saturday's opening-round game (seedings in parentheses, winners in...

Loyal Bozeman Rebuilds Morgan State and His Reputation

Almost two decades ago, Todd Bozeman was the uncrowned prince of Division I basketball. Now, he has led Morgan State to its second straight tournament bid.

East: Kentucky 100, East Tennessee State 71: Kentucky Slams Its Way Into Second Round

A year after missing the tournament for the first time since 1991, the Wildcats showed why anything less than an eighth national championship would be a disappointment.

East: New Mexico 62, Montana 57: New Mexico Advances Over Montana, Barely

The victory was the first tournament win for the No. 3 Lobos in 11 years, which they managed — barely — with a 62-57 victory over Montana.

Perfection for UConn women basketball 'not feasible,' but ...

Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma is not someone who spends much time thinking about yesterday or divining the ...

Midwest: Ohio 97, Georgetown 83 : Big East Is a Bust on a Day of Buzzer Magic

Georgetown trailed by as many as 19 in the second half and looked overmatched against a much less talented Ohio team.

Wake Forest tops Texas in overtime on Ishmael Smith's shot

Ishmael Smith's pull-up jumper from about 17 feet out with 1.3 seconds remaining in overtime gave ninth-seeded Wake Forest an ...

Texas was misunderstood from start to finish

NEW ORLEANS -- It's the ranking that gets everyone. That's what they always come back to when discussing this edition of Texas Longhorns basketball: No. 1 to out of the polls. No one had done that in 30 years, so this had to be some kind of disaster, right?

Jordan Hamilton gave the Longhorns life with a first-half surge, but it wasn't enough.

No, not actually. What this was, was an illusion. Texas wasn't the best team in college basketball at any point in this season, and that's so easy to see in retrospect it's like being handed an SAT booklet with all the proper ovals pre-marked.

The season ended pretty much the only way it could have: death by buzzer-beater, 81-80, in an overtime first-round NCAA Tournament game in which Texas led Wake Forest by six with only 1:08 to play in the extra period. There were missed free throws, of course, and everybody will obsess about that because of the team's dreadful record in this category, but two of the misses came from guard J'Covan Brown -- nearly a 90 percent shooter. If only crummy free-throw shooting were this team's one imperfection.

"It's been a tough run here, lately," coach Rick Barnes said afterward.

So many times, we have reminded you nothing worth learning about college basketball can be found in the polls. This is an ideal opportunity to reinforce that lesson.

The loss to Wake was the Longhorns' 10th in their final 17 games, giving them a 24-10 overall record. Texas had a similar record a year ago: 23-12. This was fitting, because the 'Horns began the season with the same fundamental issue as plagued them a year ago -- no reliable point guard -- and the situation only deteriorated from there.

Two of the four candidates to fill the position -- Varez Ward and Dogus Balbay -- missed a combined 37 games. Neither really looked like the answer before his injury, but neither could do much to improve the situation while on the bench.

Transfer Jai Lucas was unable to help at all. He played a minute against Wake, and that seemed like a lot. This left Brown in complete command, so to speak, and his moments of brilliance (such as his 20 points against Wake) were undone by a sporadic attention to orders (like failing to go after the inbounds pass when Texas was up a point with 10 seconds left and aware Wake would foul).

"Once we got late into the season, we stopped doing the little things that made us a good team," Brown said. "And Coach was trying to keep that in our minds … but we just got away from it."

Were they ever that good, though? Consider the foundation on which the Longhorns' No. 1 ranking was built: wins over Iowa, Rice, Arkansas and Colorado. The Longhorns beat Pitt -- when the Panthers were missing two of their top four scorers. There was a big game at Jerry Jones' football palace in which the 'Horns defeated North Carolina. We can see now that obviously was no big deal. There was a home win over Michigan State, which already had lost to Florida and Carolina and has been inconsistent since.

Did the Longhorns get worse as the season advanced? Perhaps a bit. Mostly, they were flawed from the beginning and hid their blemishes behind a conga line of overmatched opponents.

When they began to play the heart of their schedule in the nation's best conference, the Big 12, they lost to most of the good teams (Kansas, Baylor, Kansas State) and beat most of the bad ones (Iowa State, Nebraska, Texas Tech).

There were questions about whether they deserved a seed as high as No. 8 because of the way their season collapsed, but if nine prior defeats had been spread through the season it would have been clear this was exactly where Texas belonged.

The game against Wake showed that, as well.

This story appears in March 19's edition of Sporting News Today. If you are not receiving Sporting News Today, the only daily digital sports newspaper, sign up today.

Senior writer Mike DeCourcy covers college basketball for Sporting News. E-mail him at decourcy@sportingnews.com.

What We Learned: Washington's Pondexter wasn't ready to be finished

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- What we learned while watching the double-digit army march into the second round at the HP Pavilion …

• Isaiah Thomas had a simple, direct message for teammate Quincy Pondexter at halftime of Washington's game against Marquette.

"I told Quincy, 'You don't want this to be your last game, so act like it,' " Thomas said. "And he stepped up big, and like the captain he is, hit a big shot and put us on his back."

Pondexter, the senior who was 1-for-7 in the first half, hit six of his 10 second-half shots and finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds.

And, of course, Pondexter came up with the biggest shot of his Washington career, a bucket with 1.7 seconds left that gave the 11th-seeded Huskies an 80-78 victory against sixth-seeded Marquette. Pondexter got the ball at the top of the key with just about 20 seconds left, and he held the ball for the final shot as his teammates cleared out the lane.

"I've guarded him in a situation like that in practice, and he knows what to do," said Washington sophomore Elston Turner, who had 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting off the bench. "He feels comfortable in those situations. As soon as it got to seven seconds, I knew he'd get a good look."

And he got that good look, muscling inside on Marquette's Jimmy Butler and laying in the game-winning points.

Here's what was running through Pondexter's mind as he waited to make his move:

"Don't shoot too early. I was trying to get my teammates in the right position so when I attacked it would work out great. I just wanted to make sure we got the last shot. To calculate it all out time-wise, it's tough. But at the same time, you live for moments like this. Since I was a tiny baby, I've been practicing moments like this. My main path was to where I wanted set up to attack right, but they loaded up on that side, so I had to send Zeke to the left side in the corner. Once I attacked, either Isaiah's guy was going to help or he's going to stay with him. And he stayed with him, so I had a pretty clear path to the basket."

• What was the key to Butler's second-half surge past UTEP in the West region's 12-5 game? Butler coach Brad Stevens: "Let me be the master of the obvious and say when you hit 12 3s in a half you've got to feel good about where you're headed."

Actually, Stevens' Bulldogs only hit 10 3-pointers in the second half -- accounting for 30 of the team's 50 points in the half -- but that doesn't change the impact of Butler's long-range bombing in its 77-59 victory.

Shelvin Mack started the second 20 minutes with a pair of triples that quickly erased UTEP's six-point halftime lead. Then Willie Veasley hit one. Then Mack hit two more. Then one by Shawn Vanzant and two more by Zach Hahn.

By the time Hahn hit his second of the half, Butler had as many 3-pointers (eight) as points UTEP had scored in the half. The 31-8 run put the Bulldogs in control, both on the scoreboard and mentally.

"It was deflating," Miners guard Julyan Stone said. "It was Mack as well as everybody else, because everybody contributed to them scoring."

• The stars didn't necessarily shine in the San Jose nightcap, but No. 3 seed New Mexico and No. 14 seed Montana still treated the fans to the third great game of the day, a 62-57 victory for the Lobos.

Lobos star Darington Hobson scored 11 points, five below his average, but Ramon Martinez had 12 first-half points and Dairese Gary made six of eight free throws down the stretch to help New Mexico hold on for the win. Maybe more importantly, the Lobos only turned the ball over six times the entire game.

Grizzlies star Anthony Johnson, who scored 42 points in the Big Sky title game, didn't make his first field goal until there was 1:42 left in the game.

"Most of our game plan and preparation was for him," New Mexico coach Steve Alford said. "And I think Dairese did a great job on him."

Still, the Grizzlies were able to hang with the Lobos because big man Brian Qvale was a monster in the middle, scoring 26 points and pulling down 13 rebounds.

This story appears in March 19's edition of Sporting News Today. If you are not receiving Sporting News Today, the only daily digital sports newspaper, sign up today.

Ryan Fagan is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at rfagan@sportingnews.com.

NCAA tournament Day 1 wrap

Vols make Pearl winner on 50th birthday (AP)

The whole family came down from Massachusetts to join Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl on his 50th birthday. "He's from 20 minutes away from here, so it's really special to be here, playing in front of his old family," said his son Steven, a backup forward on the Volunteers. "All of our aunts and uncles live up here, so that's been special, and a lot of friends have come to...

N.C.A.A. Bid Means Name Recognition and More for Oakland

For Oakland University in Michigan, a trip to the N.C.A.A. tournament is about more than winning games — it spells recognition.

Top seed Kansas gets past scrappy Lehigh (AP)

Kansas coach Bill Self had to burn an early timeout, and was thrilled when his team tied the game at 12. This wasn't the way the Jayhawks wanted to start the NCAA tournament. Little Lehigh nearly took down the biggest Goliath of them all. Struggling against another Patriot League team in Oklahoma City, top-seeded Kansas survived a scare by pulling away for a 90-74 win over scrappy Lehigh and...

New Mexico gets big second half to hold off Montana 62-57

After all of Darington Hobson's big talk about a deep NCAA tournament run for New Mexico, Montana nearly shut up the Lobos right ...

East: Wake Forest 81, Texas 80: Wake Forest Outlasts Schizophrenic Texas

The Demon Deacons needed overtime to defeat the sometimes-good, sometimes-bad Longhorns.

Smith's late swish sends Wake Forest by Texas

Ishmael Smith's pull-up jumper from about 17 feet out with 1.3 seconds remaining in overtime gave ninth-seeded Wake Forest an 81-80 win over No. 8 seed Texas in the first round of the NCAA tournament Thursday night.

New Mexico Needs Big 2nd Half to Hold Off Montana

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- After all of Darington Hobson's big talk about a deep NCAA tournament run for New Mexico, Montana nearly shut up the Lobos right away.

Wake Forest Tops Texas 81-80 in OT on Smith's Shot

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- From No. 1 to one and done: Ishmael Smith's last shot meant one more collapse for Texas.

Pondexter's leaner lifts 11th-seeded Washington

Quincy Pondexter drove for a tiebreaking bank shot with 1.7 seconds left, and 11th-seeded Washington extended its remarkable late-season run into the NCAA tournament with an 80-78 victory over Marquette in the first round of the East Regional on Thursday.

Down 15, Washington rallies by Marquette (AP)

When Quincy Pondexter grabbed an offensive rebound with 34 seconds left in a tie game, Washington coach Lorenzo Romar twice considered calling a timeout to set up a final play. Romar decided to let his senior leader do it by himself -- and Pondexter wasn't about to miss a chance to add another game to his season.

Wake Forest outlasts Texas 81-80 in OT (AP)

From No. 1 to one and done: Ishmael Smith's last shot meant one more collapse for Texas. Smith's pull-up jumper from about 17 feet out with 1.3 seconds remaining in overtime gave ninth-seeded Wake Forest an 81-80 win over the eighth-seeded Longhorns in the first round of the NCAA tournament Thursday night.