We return to the Wayback Machine of NCAA basketball today, recalling two close calls between my journalism self and the Final Four. It is the one annual sports event I regret never covering in my 40 years in print journalism. To be sure, there were other big events staged annually that I never covered. The […]

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On March 27, 1939, the University of Oregon won the first NCAA basketball championship — actually, the first NCAA team championship of any sort — 46-33 over Ohio State. That has been mentioned a time or two this week as the Ducks prepare for their Final Four game Saturday with North Carolina — 1939 being […]

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If you would have told me, in January of 1974, that UCLA’s basketball team needed to have its 88-game winning streak broken, as well as its run of seven consecutive NCAA championships … I might have punched you. UCLA winning seemingly “forever” was good because … well, because I was pulling for them. And so […]

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Oh, wait. There is. Scads of it. In the NCAA Tournament, anyway. Talking the guys, here. The women might be doing it, too, but they aren’t televised where I live. I have been impressed … or at least seen this often enough over the past 10 days to take note, again … at how many […]

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The question for Lonzo Ball now is this: Just how memorable will his one-and-done NCAA Tournament be? He certainly will leave UCLA after this season, moving on to the NBA/multi-millionaire portion of his basketball career. This is Ball’s one chance to leave a lasting impression, as a freshman, on March Madness. Could he channel John […]

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I didn’t plan this. It was early on a Saturday evening and many of the regular TV options were not available, so on went the second half of West Virginia vs. Notre Dame in the NCAA basketball tournament, which I could see via ESPN GB … And nearly eight hours later I had watched much […]

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After leaving the U.S. for Abu Dhabi, in 2009, my interest in college basketball waned. As I noted in blog posts from recent years, while living in the UAE, it requires work to follow the college game from the other side of the world. Too many teams, too many games, too big a time gap […]

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This was a day when the strains inside the Buss family came out in the open and were shown to be a clear and present danger to the stability of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. Jim Buss, who ran the basketball operations side of things for the Lakers, last week was fired by his sister, […]

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A former colleague and I were talking about the rash of injuries to NBA big men, especially the seven-footers who would have been so valuable as focal points in Basketball As We Knew It of 20 years ago. That is, back when games often were dominated by massive centers scoring on dunks or layups or […]

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This is a familial train wreck waiting to happen. LaVar Ball is the father of UCLA freshman guard Lonzo Ball, a likely lottery pick in the next NBA draft. LaVar Ball tends to say colorful things pertaining to his three sons and, in particular, Lonzo, the eldest. Up to this point a year ago, anything […]

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