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🚨 Headlines
🏀 Automatic bids: Gonzaga, UNC Wilmington, Robert Morris and Saint Francis won their conference tournaments to punch their tickets to the NCAA men’s tournament, while Oregon State and Green Bay secured spots in the women’s field.
🏈 Free agency tracker: The Vikings signed Will Fries (five years, $88M) and Jonathan Allen (three years, $60M); the Colts signed Daniel Jones (one year, $14M); the Bills signed Joey Bosa (one year, $12.6M); the Ravens signed DeAndre Hopkins (one year, $6M)… Full list of moves.
🏀 Wild finish: Tyrese Haliburton pulled off a ridiculous 4-point play in the final seconds against the Bucks to lift the Pacers to a 115-114 victory in front of their home crowd. Both teams are now 36-28 on the season.
⚽️ Poch’s picks: USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino named his 23-man roster for next week’s Nations League finals, which will be his first real test since taking over as manager in September.
📺 Big number: The Celtics-Lakers clash on Saturday night in Boston drew an average of 4.61 million viewers on ABC, the largest audience for an NBA regular-season game in seven years (not including Christmas Day).
🏀 The SEC is on a collision course with history
The SEC tournament begins today in Nashville, where the champion of arguably the greatest league in men’s college basketball history will be crowned.
Chasing history: The 2011 Big East landed a record 11 teams in the NCAA tournament. This year’s SEC could get as many as 14. Yes, you read that correctly: A conference with 16 teams could realistically send 14 of them to The Big Dance.
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Locks (9): No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Florida, No. 5 Alabama, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 14 Texas A&M, No. 15 Kentucky, No. 21 Missouri, Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
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Probably in (4): Georgia, Vanderbilt, Arkansas (“Last Four Byes”) and Oklahoma (“Last Four In”) are currently projected to make the 68-team field, per Bracketology.
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On the bubble (1): Texas is currently among the “First Four Out” but could play its way in with a strong showing this week.
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Need a miracle (2): LSU and South Carolina, the league’s only teams under .500, will need to win the conference tournament to secure a spot.
Best league ever? This year’s SEC has the best non-conference winning percentage (.889) since at least 1997, and the second-best margin of victory during that time, per KenPom.
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They went 32-16 against the current KenPom top 50, including wins over the current AP No. 1 (Duke), No. 2 (Houston), No. 6 (St. John’s), No. 9 (Texas Tech) and No. 10 (Clemson) teams.
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The league is projected to land the No. 1 overall seed (Auburn), six top-4 seeds and boasts four of the six favorites (Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee) to cut down the nets.
The problem with so many great teams? An unprecedented number of bids for the SEC is bound to create a headache for the selection committee, writes Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Eisenberg.
The more NCAA tournament bids that the SEC receives, the tougher it will be for the selection committee to adhere to its bracketing principles. Opening-round matchups between teams from the same conference are flatly forbidden. Those matchups are also avoided whenever possible in the round of 32 and the Sweet 16.
“They’ll still try to avoid having teams from the same conference meet as much as possible, but the first priority is keeping everyone on their true seed line,” said David Worlock, the NCAA’s media coordinator for March Madness.
Looking ahead: Historic regular-season success doesn’t guarantee anything in the crucible that is March Madness. To wit, the two best leagues ever by non-conference scoring margin (1997 ACC and 2024 Big 12) sent a combined one team to the Elite Eight. If the 2025 SEC wants to cement its place as the best ever, it will need to show up when it matters most.
⚽️ Yamal, 17, might already be the world’s best player
Lamine Yamal sparked Barcelona into the Champions League quarterfinals on Tuesday, adding to a growing-but-already-quite-large sample size of greatness.
From Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell:
Lamine Yamal is 17 years old and sometimes — when he’s not scoring Champions League goals, or flooring defenders, or leading Barcelona to the top of La Liga — he looks it. He still wears dental braces. He gets his secondary school exam scores in June.
And at other times, he looks like the best soccer player in the world. Because even at 17, he might be. That’s no longer a reactionary, exaggerated claim.
There’s a hesitance to anoint him because there are dozens of great players whose résumés are more extensive. There is Rodri, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner. There is Mo Salah, who has had the best 2024-25 season of anybody in world football. There are Kylian Mbappé and Vinicius Jr., who have been doing Lamine-like things for much longer.
But Yamal, at least on occasion, looks like a more complete player. He leads La Liga in assists and goal-creating actions. His progressive dribbling numbers are nearly on par with Vini’s. And so is his sauce. Some of his on-ball skills are mind-boggling. His personal list of “defenders I made look silly” is already ridiculously long.
“I think it’s silly to compare him to Messi, because Messi is unique and there will never be anyone like him,” Gavi, Yamal’s Spain and Barcelona teammate, said in January. But then he continued: “Lamine, for me, is the best today.”
Keep reading.
📸 Through the lens
Cleveland — The Cavaliers were all smiles on Tuesday after beating the Nets to improve to 55-10 (tied for the fifth-best start in NBA history) and record their second 15-game winning streak of the season. The last team to do that? The 2006-07 Suns.
Ponte bucket beach, Florida – After becoming the first golfer to win The Players Championship in back-to-back years in 2024, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler returns this week for a shot at the unprecedented three-peat.
Liverpool, England — Paris Saint-Germain’s history in the Champions League is riddled with failure. That changed on Tuesday when the French club stunned Liverpool on penalties to advance to the quarterfinals.
Livigno, Italy — Xinpeng Li of Team China during a practice session at this week’s Aerials & Moguls World Cup competition in the Italian Alps, not far from where the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held. Sports photography is so cool…
⛳️ Tiger isn’t going out like this
Tiger Woods underwent surgery on Tuesday for a ruptured Achilles, an injury that will in all likelihood keep him out of all four majors this season.
From Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee:
We’re not going to see Tiger Woods playing golf any time soon. But if you think we’ll never see Tiger Woods play golf again… think again. It would be easy to declare Woods’ career over — another surgery, another lost year in a career that has precious few years left to give.
It would be easy… and it would be wrong. Tiger Woods isn’t going out like this. He’ll be back, one way or another. When he leaves the game of golf, it will be on his own terms.
This isn’t to say he’ll ever lift another trophy. Woods will almost surely end up forever three short of Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors. He’ll almost certainly remain tied with Sam Snead for most PGA Tour victories at 82. And yet… you wouldn’t bet your house against Woods, would you?
Because just when you think he’s out, he rallies back to win the U.S. Open on a broken leg, or win the Masters one more time. Woods built his career on dominance, but he sustained it on resilience. Underestimate either one, and you’d be in the clubhouse signing your scorecard well before he was.
Keep reading.
📺 Watchlist: Finals preview in Boston?
The Celtics host the Thunder tonight (7:30 pm and, espn) in a clash of title favorites as Boston’s season-long mission to repeat as champions continues.
Title odds: Boston (+220 at BetMGM) and OKC (+225) are heavy favorites to win the NBA Finals, followed by the Cavaliers (+500), Lakers (+1000), Nuggets (+1200) and Warriors (+1200).
More to watch:
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🏀 NCAAM: Lamar at McNeese (5pm, ESPN2); Navy at American (7pm, cbssn); Montana vs. Northern Colorado (11:30pm, ESPN2) … Southland, Patriot and Big Sky title games.
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🏀 Running: Montana vs. Montana State (5pm, ESPNU); Rice vs. USF (7pm, ESPNU); Wyoming vs. San Diego State (10:30 PM, CBSN) … Big Sky, AAC and MWC title games.
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⚽️ Champions League: Round of 16, second leg* (1:45-4pm, Paramount+) … Four quarterfinal spots on the line.
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🏒 NHL: Sabres at Red Wings (7:30pm, TNT); Ducks at Utah (10pm, TNT)
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🎾 Tennis: Indian Wells, Quarterfinals (2pm, Tennis) … No. 3 Coco Gauff and No. 5 Madison Keys, the two top-ranked American women, are both in action.
*Where it stands: Atlético Madrid (1-2) vs. Real Madrid; Lille (1-1) vs. Dortmund; Aston Villa (3-1) vs. Club Brugge; Arsenal (7-1) vs. PSV. Who will join Barcelona, PSG, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan in the quarterfinals?
⚾️ MLB trivia
Question: Which MLB division has three of the top five World Series favorites?
Answer at the bottom.
📸 Photo finish
Maple Leafs defenseman Simon Benoit went airborne after dropping gloves with Utah’s Michael Kesselring, then proceeded to pop his thumb back into place from the penalty box. Hockey players — they’re nothing like us!
Trivia answer: NL East. Braves (+900 at BetMGM), Phillies (+1100), Mets (+1200)
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