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<description>Stories tagged march madness</description>
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<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:58:30 -0400</pubDate>
<item>
<title>Louisville Cardinals Wins 2013 NCAA Championship</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/louisville-cardinals-wins-2013-ncaa-championship/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Louisville won the 75th edition of the NCAA men's basketball championship on Monday, beating Michigan 82-76 in a pulsating final in front of more than 74,000 fans at the Georgia Dome. 

The Cardinals overcame a slow start, in which they twice trailed by 12 points in the first half, to outscore Michigan 45-38 in the second and capture their third national title after previous wins in 1980 and 1986.

Luke Hancock came off the bench and scored a career-best 22 points, including five three-pointers, while Peyton Siva added 18 points and Chane Behanan 15 for Louisville.

"We went into a war today against a great Michigan team," said Hancock, who was named the outstanding player of the tournament. "We needed to rally and we have done it a couple of games."

Trey Burke, the national player of the year, scored 24 points in a losing effort for the Wolverines while Spike Albrecht contributed 17 after coming off the bench, all in the first half.

"We fought for 40 minutes, there was never a time when we gave up," said Burke. "Louisville was just a really solid team at the end of the game."

Michigan made a flying start and built a double-digit lead before the Cardinals took control, matching the second biggest comeback in an NCAA final in the same massive building where the 'Dream Team' won Olympic gold in 1996. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:46:36 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/louisville-cardinals-wins-2013-ncaa-championship/</guid>
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<title>Nik Stauskas, March Madness and the Canadian bounce</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/nik-stauskas-march-madness-and-the-canadian-bounce/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ If Walter Gretzky had been a free-throw junkie, this would have been his dreamscape: a made-over backyard with a basketball hoop in it; painted lines on a cushioned court and a surrounding fence with a kid-sized gap in it.

It was a kindly neighbour who suggested they take out a few fence boards so the boys could squeeze through and retrieve the ball whenever it ricocheted over. That worked for a time and then the ball stopped landing in the neighbour’s yard. The boys got better the more they played. The more they played, the harder they pushed one another.

Peter, the oldest, would take his 200-plus shots per day then Nik, three years younger, would take that and more until one day he found himself the shooting guard for the University of Michigan Wolverines with a spot in the NCAA championship Final Four. Him; the Mississauga squirt who stood 5-foot-5 and vowed to be 6-foot-6 because that’s what it would take for him to be special, a big-time hoops player.

And that’s exactly what Nik Stauskas has become. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:50:30 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/nik-stauskas-march-madness-and-the-canadian-bounce/</guid>
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<title>Canadian Freshman Nik Stauskas Shoots Michigan Wolverines Into 2013 NCAA Final Four</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/canadian-freshman-nik-stauskas-shoots-michigan-wolverines-into-2013-ncaa-final-four/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ “We have this thing, ‘Shoot it deep in the bucket,’ never leave it short, give it a chance,” Stauskas said. “I shot like I know how to shoot it, and it was going in. It was never a lack of confidence.”

Stauskas finished with 22 points and 7-of-8 shooting from the field. His only miss came with 12 minutes 27 seconds left and the Wolverines leading by 58-44. As a defender rushed toward him near the baseline, he faked a shot, dribbled and missed a 15-footer.

Other than that, Stauskas never gave the nets a break.

“I was just letting them fly,” he said. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:15:59 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/canadian-freshman-nik-stauskas-shoots-michigan-wolverines-into-2013-ncaa-final-four/</guid>
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<title>Georgetown Hoyas: The Most Underachieving Four-Year Stretch Ever in the NCAA Tournament</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/georgetown-hoyas-the-most-underachieving-four-year-stretch-ever-in-the-ncaa-tournament/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Georgetown has been a 3-seed, 6-seed, 3-seed, and 2-seed in the last four NCAA Tournaments. The Hoyas have one total win (over Belmont in the opening game last year). The losses have been to 14th seeded Ohio, 11th seeded Virginia Commonwealth (which went to the Final 4), 11th  seed NC State, and now 15th seeded Florida Gulf Coast.

How does that rank among all-time tournament fizzles over a consecutive 4-year consecutive span? Well, as it turns out, at the very bottom, at least since the NCAA began seeding teams since 1978. Originally, it was a smaller 48-team field, and then in 1985 it expanded to 64 teams. We can compare Georgetown’s performance to the average for each team with the same seed over time to see how much they have underachieved.

Given the seeds the last four years, Georgetown would have been expected to have 7.4 wins, putting them a whopping 6.4 wins below where they should be. This comes in just below Arizona from 1990 to 1993 (-6.1 wins below expected), a stretch that included losses to 15-seed Santa Clara (with Steve Nash) and 14-seed East Tennessee State, along with Sweet Sixteen and 2nd Round exits as a 2-seed. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:07:00 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/georgetown-hoyas-the-most-underachieving-four-year-stretch-ever-in-the-ncaa-tournament/</guid>
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<title>Woe Canada: From 29 to 5 Canadians Let Down 2013 March Madness</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/woe-canada-from-29-to-5-canadians-let-down-2013-march-madness/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ From 29 to 5

Only five Canadians players remain as the 2013 Sweet 16 draw is set.

There were a record of 29 Canadians playing at this years NCAA tournament.

All the excited talk about Cancon in American college hoops had people saying seriously that a reasonable way to bet a bracket was to pick schools that featured Canadians.

Turns out, after the tournament was halved in the frenzy of the first four days, the red-and-white scheme proved a bad strategy. When the Madness began, there were 29 Canadians in contention. The likes of Olynyk and Pangos scored more than half their team’s points, both games, but, in the Round of 32, could not withstand the assault of three-pointers from No. 9 Wichita State. UNLV, meanwhile, lost right away, shooting badly from the field, led by a 4-for-11 performance from Bennett. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:07:05 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/woe-canada-from-29-to-5-canadians-let-down-2013-march-madness/</guid>
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<title>Florida Gulf Coast Eagles Become First 15 Seed to Advance To NCAA Sweet 16</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/florida-gulf-coast-eagles-become-first-15-seed-to-advance-to-ncaa-sweet-16/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ After pregame player introductions, Florida Gulf Coast’s Sherwood Brown began to dance as his teammates, their arms interlocked, spun in a circle around him, their speed building and building until they broke apart and scattered. 

 In a sense, that was how the Eagles hoped to play against San Diego State on Sunday night at Wells Fargo Center: fast and exciting and borderline reckless, a bunch of grown children coloring outside the lines. Why not have some fun?

Florida Gulf Coast officially turned the N.C.A.A. tournament into its own big celebration, romping to an 81-71 victory over San Diego State in the Round of 32. In the process, the upstart Eagles became the first No. 15 seed in tournament history to advance to the regional semifinals. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Mar 2013 08:29:41 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/florida-gulf-coast-eagles-become-first-15-seed-to-advance-to-ncaa-sweet-16/</guid>
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<title>How Gonzaga's Kelly Olynyk became a big man on campus</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/how-gonzagas-kelly-olynyk-became-a-big-man-on-campus/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ he young men do not immediately look like they comprise the No.1-ranked basketball team in the NCAA. Just kids. But anyone can see a rare spark in the game of the seven-foot 21-year-old, his long brown hair dancing down to his shoulders, held back off his face and behind his ears by a narrow headband. He hits one, two, three, four, five, six shots in a row, from the three-point arc, baseline. Taking passes down low, he turns, fakes, then rises like he is stepping a single stair, and plunk: dunk.

When the college hoops season began last fall, no one expected anything from Kelly Olynyk. The Canadian had played two years at Gonzaga but struggled. Last season, Olynyk made an unusual pivot. He took a red shirt, a move used mostly for 18-year-old freshmen, and played no games. Instead, beyond the glare of TV cameras, he toiled in practice and put in hours and hours to hone his body, exercises to bring rhythm and strength to a frame that had grown so quickly.

“He sacrificed,” said assistant coach Donny Daniels, outside the arena in the sun after practice. “That’s a crazy word nowadays. Very few people want to sacrifice. Kelly did.”

Today, after a jump that has awed everyone watching – “I can’t compare it to anything I’ve been involved in,” Daniels said – Olynyk is one of the best players in the country, up for all the big awards, and his name is suddenly on lists of the top potential NBA draft picks. And, most of all, his play has propelled his team, a perennial competitor but never a real contender.

This year, Olynyk has elevated Gonzaga to the No.1 ranking for the first time, usurping the likes of Duke, Indiana, and Louisville, and on Sunday Gonzaga is expected to secure a No.1 seed for March Madness, which begins next week. It will be Gonzaga’s 15th consecutive tournament appearance, a run bettered only by Kansas, Duke, and Michigan State, all three far bigger schools, but the Bulldogs have never cracked the final four. The school where John Stockton once starred is still an outlier, and the current roster includes a German and a Pole, two Canadians – Olynyk, and Kevin Pangos – and a Stockton, David, John’s son. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:48:23 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/how-gonzagas-kelly-olynyk-became-a-big-man-on-campus/</guid>
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<title>Get to know the Canadians participating in 2013 March Madness</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/get-to-know-the-canadians-participating-in-2013-march-madness/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ It’s no secret that there is suddenly an abundance of basketball players coming out of Canada to play in the NCAA. But what makes the 2013 field of Canadians participating in the NCAA Tournament even more impressive is the amount of top-end talent.

No longer are the Canadian players holding down benches or getting limited playing time. Whereas a player at a top-flight school – like Jamaal Magloire at Kentucky – used to be rare, it is now becoming the norm. There are Canadian players in the starting lineups of at least 10 schools participating in March Madness. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:37:13 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/get-to-know-the-canadians-participating-in-2013-march-madness/</guid>
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<title>2013 March Madness Teams Disappoint on Social Media</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/2013-march-madness-teams-disappoint-on-social-media/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ might sound hard to believe, but 29 out of 64 basketball teams in this year's NCAA "March Madness" competition have both a Facebook and Twitter presence.

But round a of applause goes out to teams such as the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, Georgetown, Ohio State and the University of Miami — these schools are rocking both platforms.

According to SportStream, which provides a social second-screen experience for sports fans and teams, about 45% of tourney teams have team-specific accounts on both Twitter and Facebook. As for those that don't, we're looking at you, Syracuse Orange. (And the Arizona Wildcats, New Mexico Lobos, Kansas St. Wildcats, VCU Rams and so on). ]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:28:47 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/2013-march-madness-teams-disappoint-on-social-media/</guid>
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<title>Canadian Kyle Wiltjer To Play For NCAA National Basketball Championship</title>
<link>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/canadian-kyle-wiltjer-to-play-for-ncaa-national-basketball-championship/</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Quick, can you name the last Canadian basketball player to win a NCAA National Men`s Basketball National Championship?

How about Jamal Magloire? The Toronto native (Eastern Commerce) played a vital role in the Wildcats 1998 championship game. 

Now Canadian Kyle Wiltjer will hope to do the same with another dominant Wildcats squad that features six potential NBA prospects.

Like father, like son.

Six-foot-11 second-round Chicago Bulls draft pick Greg Wiltjer came out of Sidney, B.C., and won a Canadian Interuniversity Sport title with the University of Victoria.

Now Kyle Wiltjer, a freshman with the University of Kentucky Wildcats, will have a chance to win a university title of his own. ]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:32:57 -0400</pubDate>
<guid>http://basketballbuzz.ca/ncaa/canadian-kyle-wiltjer-to-play-for-ncaa-national-basketball-championship/</guid>
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