Michigan State coach Tom Izzo issued an apology to his team following Thursday's 73-58 loss to Baylor, saying he put the team in a difficult position with its tough schedule.  "I actually apologized to my team," Izzo told reporters. "And yet, I've always played a tough schedule. ... You know what? You can take it as an excuse, you can take it as the truth, I don't give a damn. I'm telling you what I did. ...

Repeating as champion has proved to be incredibly hard in college basketball, but it's just as difficult to have success the year after for the runner-up.  Butler made consecutive NCAA tournament finals in 2010 and 2011, but since then, the national championship runner-up has fallen at least one round short of getting back to the title game the following season. Yet it seems that trend may be coming to an end for the 2016-17 campaign. The No. ...

North Carolina announced itself as one of the top teams in college basketball with a 2016 Maui Invitational Tournament championship Wednesday night at Lahaina Civic Center. After blowout wins over Chaminade and Oklahoma State, the No. 4 Tar Heels capped their run with a 71-56 win over No. 16 Wisconsin in the tournament finals. They never trailed in three games on the Hawaiian island. Per Carolina Basketball, Joel Berry II was the tournament MVP after scoring 46 ...

All these upsets in early season, neutral-site tournaments have us wondering whether the likes of Rhode Island, Nevada or UCF can be Cinderella teams in March. The 2016 NCAA tournament was even crazier than usual. The only seed that didn't win at least one game was a No. 16, as Middle Tennessee, Stephen F. Austin, Hawaii, Yale and Arkansas-Little Rock all wreaked havoc on our annual delusions of filling out a perfect bracket. We even had ...

North Carolina led for every minute of the Maui Invitational championship game, holding Wisconsin nearly eight minutes without a point at the start on its way to a 71-56 victory on Wednesday night. The fourth-ranked Tar Heels (7-0) completed a dominant run through the field—their three victories were by a combined 90 points—despite a poor shooting effort in the first half because. They were 11-of-29 from the field in the opening 20 minutes but shot 60.7 ...

Several traditional college hoops powerhouses will take the floor, as well as some of the nation's best small schools, when the 2016 Battle 4 Atlantis kicks off Wednesday. Louisville and Michigan State headline a talented group of eight teams that make up the final round of this tournament. However, the Cardinals and Spartans could have a tough time reaching the championship game due to the threats posed by a few other schools. Let us take a look ...

Which player's absence would adversely affect his team the most? That is the question being asked here as it applies to the top 10 teams in this week's Associated Press poll. Typically, the team's best player is its most indispensable player, but that is not always the case. Sometimes another player supplies a vital service that, for whatever reason, cannot be provided by anyone else on the team. Last season, Michigan State went into a severe slump ...

The North Carolina Tar Heels advanced to the finals of the 2016 Maui Invitational on Tuesday with a commanding 107-75 victory over the Oklahoma State Cowboys. The No. 4-ranked Tar Heels moved to 6-0 with their first victory over a major-conference opponent of the season. The owners of the 1999, 2004 and 2008 Maui Invitational titles looked plenty comfortable in Maui, Hawaii, and shot 57.8 percent from the field and 47.1 percent from three-point range. It was ...

The college basketball season is just getting started, but Tuesday might have produced the biggest upset of the season. No. 3 Indiana went on the road to play Fort Wayne and suffered a 71-68 overtime loss at the hands of the Mastodons. Troy Machir of Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic noted a surprising statistic for Indiana: Alex McCarthy of Inside Indiana pointed out the importance of the game in the sold-out Allen County War Memorial Coliseum: ESPN's Scott Van Pelt also ...

With the high school basketball season coming into focus for much of the country in late November, it is time to take a look at 10 events you should be aware of on the national schedule. Times around the holidays and Martin Luther King Jr. weekend are certainly busy on the tournament- and showcase-heavy national high school basketball schedule, but there are other events on unique weekends that are on the list as well. These 10 events ...