HEADLINES
🏀 Expansion coming soon? The NBA will hold a vote at next week’s Board of Governors meetings to explore adding expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle as soon as 2028. The vote is reportedly trending toward approval, as “a growing number of owners are believed to support expansion,” per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
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⚾️ Venezuela 4, Italy 2: Venezuela rallied for the victory with three runs in the seventh inning — on four consecutive two-out hits — to advance to their first World Baseball Classic final, where they’ll take on Team USA tonight for the championship.
🏀 Kerr’s 600th victory: The Warriors’ win on Monday was the 600th of Steve Kerr’s career in just his 943rd game, making him the fourth-fastest head coach in NBA history to reach that milestone. Only Phil Jackson (805), Pat Riley (832) and Gregg Popovich (887) got there quicker.
🏈 NFL offseason moves: The Jets traded QB Justin Fields to the Chiefs, where he’ll back up Patrick Mahomes; the 49ers signed WR Christian Kirk to a one-year, $6 million deal; six-time Pro-Bowl CB Darius Slay Jr. is retiring after 13 seasons.
🏀 Tide star arrested: Alabama junior Aden Holloway, the team’s second-leading scorer, is expected to miss the NCAA tournament after being arrested on Monday for possession of more than a pound of marijuana. The fourth-seeded Tide open play on Friday against Hofstra.
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See what else is trending on Yahoo Sports.
CHAOS IS PRIMED TO MAKE A COMEBACK
Arkansas, an SEC program coached by John Calipari, was the only double-digit seed to reach the Sweet 16 last year. (Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Last year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament was historically chalky. Was that a sign of the times in a sport whose talent gap has never been wider, or a momentary blip set to vanish as quickly as it appeared? We’re betting on — and, let’s be honest, hoping for — the latter.
From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken:
If being shocked by the outcome of an NCAA tournament game is what gets you out of bed in the morning, last March turned into a deep sleep.
The first round saw just seven upsets, and a few of them barely qualified as upsets. For the first time since 2017, no teams seeded No. 13, 14, 15 or 16 won a first-round game. The only double-digit seed to advance to the second week was Arkansas, an underachieving regular season team with one of the most expensive rosters in college basketball — hardly the mid-major Cinderella many of us crave.
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And by the time the Final Four came around, the bracket was as chalky as it gets, with all No. 1 seeds advancing for just the second time in tournament history.
After that kind of tournament, where each of the Sweet 16 teams came from a power conference, it was natural to wonder whether mid-majors are on the verge of extinction in this event. Between the Frankenstein mega-conferences that resulted from the last round of realignment to the huge financial disparities that incentivize top mid-major players to transfer up to the power leagues, it’s fair to wonder whether last year’s tournament is about to become the norm.
Former Duke star and current Tennessee State head coach Nolan Smith during a game earlier this season. (Bryan Lynn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
I’m not so sure. Neither is Tennessee State’s Nolan Smith, a 37-year-old, first-time head coach who lived most of his basketball life among heavyweights like Duke, Louisville and Memphis but now finds himself leading a No. 15 seed out of the Ohio Valley Conference against No. 2 seed Iowa State.
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“I think what you’re up against is just some very expensive rosters and some very cheap rosters, right?” Smith told Yahoo Sports in a phone interview this weekend. “But when they get between them lines, those very expensive rosters have to wake up and play the game. And they’re waking up with some fat pockets. So you might catch them on a day where they’re feeling real soft. I think no matter what, you’ve got to play the game.”
Even in an era of head-spinning, systemic change in college sports, Smith’s belief in the enduring, equalizing ability of the bracket mirrors my assumption about the NCAA tournament. As long as the mid- and low-majors are allowed to play and the games are 40 minutes long with a scoreboard that starts at 0-0, there will not be a significant difference in the number of upsets over time.
And the reason is simple: The NCAA tournament chaos has never followed a formula or made much sense on a spreadsheet. Why would it start now?
Loyola Chicago’s run to the 2018 Final Four won’t soon be forgotten. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
Yes, the sport has changed significantly over the past few years. There are fewer mid-major programs that can keep their cores together for multiple seasons and build an experience advantage over the one-and-done factories. Any freshman or sophomore that shows a hint of promise at the lower levels will get identified and poached by the big-spending programs in the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big East or Big 12.
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If you go back and look at some of the great mid-major juggernauts, like the Wichita State run from 2013-17 or Loyola Chicago from 2018-21, it would be almost impossible to replicate in this environment. You’re simply not getting players like Fred VanVleet or Cameron Krutwig, who would be worth millions of dollars to a power conference program, to stay four years in the Missouri Valley Conference.
But the NCAA tournament is still an event defined by variance. In a single-elimination tournament, a 40-minute basketball game played on a neutral court with unfamiliar refs brings a level of discomfort and pressure that 18-to-22-year-olds often don’t handle well no matter how much they’re being paid. And sometimes, teams with nothing to lose can get on that stage and start making low-percentage shots by the bundle.
That’s how the tournament has always been and how it will hopefully always be. Whatever must transpire for a mega-upset doesn’t need to be sustainable or even explainable. It just has to happen once to shock the world.
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BIG NUMBERS
Macario celebrates a goal during last year’s FA Cup Final. (Catherine Ivill/AMA/Getty Images)
⚽️ $8 million
The San Diego Wave have won the Catarina Macario sweepstakes, signing the USWNT and Chelsea star to a five-year contract worth $8 million, the largest ever in women’s professional soccer. The NWSL club also paid a $300,000 transfer fee to trigger her release from the Blues.
Homecoming: Macario was born in Brazil but moved to San Diego in 2011 at the age of 12. Now, after four years at Stanford, three years with Lyon and three years with Chelsea — as well as 29 appearances for the USWNT — the forward will return home and join the Wave immediately.
🏈 23rd stop
Josh Johnson, 39, signed a one-year deal with the Bengals to back up Joe Burrow, marking the journeyman QB’s 23rd stop in the NFL since being drafted by the Buccaneers in 2008. He’s had at least one stint with a record 14 different teams, not including the time he spent in the UFL, XFL and AAF.
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Johnson’s NFL journey: Bucs (2008-11), 49ers (2012), Browns (2012), Bengals (2013), 49ers (2014), Bengals (2015), Jets (2015), Colts (2015), Bills (2015), Ravens (2016), Giants (2016), Texans (2017), Raiders (2018), Redskins (2018), Lions (2019), 49ers (2020), Jets (2021), Ravens (2021), Broncos (2022), 49ers (2022), Ravens (2023-24), Commanders (2025), Bengals (2026).
Embiid has spent more than half of this season in street clothes. (Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
🏀 485 games
10 years in, Joel Embiid’s career has finally hit a point that, unfortunately, has long seemed inevitable: The oft-injured center has now missed as many regular-season games as he’s played (485). In other words, he’s spent exactly half of his career on the bench.
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What if? The 7-foot Cameroonian has won two scoring titles and an MVP award, but his career will likely always be remembered for what he didn’t accomplish. He is literally the NBA’s all-time leader in points scored per 36 minutes (31.3), yet his once-limitless ceiling continues falling with each passing year as he cements his place as one of the biggest “what-ifs” in NBA history.
⚽️ 16 years, 73 days
Arsenal midfielder Max Dowman found the net in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Everton, becoming the youngest player to score a goal in Premier League history (16 years, 73 days). The previous record was set by Everton’s James Vaughan (16 years, 270 days) in 2005, nearly five years before Dowman was born!
What they’re saying: “I think he created a different energy in the stadium,” Gunners manager Mike Arteta said after the game. “It’s not only the goal that he scored. I think he changed the game. Every time he got the ball, he made things happen. It looked like we were more of a threat. To do that at that age, in this context, with this pressure, it is just not normal.”
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GOAL OF THE YEAR?
(Giphy)
Former Maple Leafs prospect Semyon Der-Arguchintsev pulled off what might be the goal of the year in a shootout on Monday for the KHL’s Moscow Dynamo.
On second thought, after watching that again, is it… the best goal of all time? How did he do that!?!
SCHOOLS SENDING BOTH TEAMS TO THE DANCE
(Yahoo Sports)
Since the NCAA women’s tournament debuted in 1982, there have been 15 instances in which one school sent both its men’s and women’s teams to the Final Four in the same year. Who’s got the best chance of joining that exclusive club in the next couple weeks?
The contenders: As seen above, a whopping 30 schools got bids to both the men’s and women’s tournaments. Just eight of them, though, saw both teams earn top-six seeds — an arbitrary but reasonable cutoff for consideration in this exercise.
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Michigan: Men (No. 1 seed), Women (No. 2 seed)
UConn*: Men (2); Women (1)
Vanderbilt: Men (5), Women (2)
Michigan State: Men (3), Women (5)
Louisville: Men (6), Women (3)
Alabama: Men (4), Women (6)
North Carolina: Men (6), Women (4)
Any dark horses? Among the other 22 schools, UCLA has to be the most likely to crash the party. The women are a juggernaut 1-seed on a 25-game winning streak, while the men are a 7-seed that have won six of eight coming into the tournament.
*Alone at the top: It’s no surprise to see the Huskies so high on that list, as UConn is the only school to send both teams to the Final Four more than once, doing so five times (!!). That includes 2004 and 2014, when both the men and women won the championship.
WATCHLIST: TUESDAY, MARCH 17
(Yahoo Sports)
⚾️ World Baseball Classic Final
A champion will be crowned tonight in Miami (8pm ET, Fox), where Team USA faces Venezuela for the title. Mets rookie Nolan McLean will start for the Americans, who will be the home team after winning a coin flip, while D-Backs veteran Eduardo Rodríguez will start for Venezuela.
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What’s at stake: Team USA seeks its second title after winning in 2017 and falling just short in 2023. Venezuela — which boasts more active major leaguers than any country outside of the U.S. and Dominican Republic — seeks its first, as well as a bit of redemption after the Americans knocked them out in the quarterfinals three years ago.
🏀 First Four
The NCAA tournament begins tonight in Dayton, where No. 16 UMBC faces No. 16 Howard (6:40pm, truTV) for the right to play No. 1 Michigan, and No. 11 Texas faces No. 11 NC State (9:15pm, truTV) for the right to play No. 6 BYU.
Notes: This is the Longhorns’ second straight year in the First Four as an 11-seed, losing to Xavier last March; the Wolfpack also last appeared in the tournament as an 11-seed in 2024… when they made it all the way to the Final Four; UMBC last made the tournament in 2018, when they stunned Virginia for the first-ever 16-over-1 upset; Howard, making its third appearance in the last four years, has never won a game in the tourney.
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⚽️ Champions League
The first four quarterfinal spots will be decided in today’s Round of 16 second-leg matches across England and Portugal, where Norwegian darling Bodø/Glimt bring a 3-0 lead — and a five-game winning streak — into their clash with Sporting CP (1:45pm, CBSSN).
The rest: A trio of Premier League clubs, including two facing three-goal deficits, host today’s other matches: Chelsea (down 2-5) vs. PSG (4pm, Paramount+); Manchester City (down 0-3) vs. Real Madrid (4pm, Paramount+); Arsenal (tied 1-1) vs. Bayer Leverkusen (4pm, Paramount+).
More to watch:
⛳️ TGL semifinals: Atlanta Drive vs. Los Angeles Golf Club (6:30pm, ESPN); Jupiter Links vs. Boston Common Golf Club (9pm, ESPN) … Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Cantlay, Akshay Bhatia, Max Homa, Hideki Matsuyama and more compete for spots in the final.
🏀 NBA: Cavaliers at Bucks (8pm, NBC); 76ers at Nuggets (10pm, NBC) … Nikola Jokić has posted four straight triple-doubles, and 27 total across 52 games this season.
🏒 NHL: Wild at Blackhawks (7:30pm, TNT); Lightning at Kraken (10pm, TNT) … Tampa’s Nikita Kucherov is third in the league with 106 points (34 goals, 72 assists).
Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events happening in your city. Get tickets now!
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MARCH MADNESS TRIVIA
(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
In the last 50 years, just three teams west of Texas have won the men’s NCAA basketball tournament.
Question: Can you name them?
Hint: 1990, 1995, 1997
Answer at the bottom.
FILL OUT YOUR BRACKET!
Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem is back! Start a bracket and enter for a chance to win $25K in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. Create your brackets now.
Trivia answer: UNLV (1990), UCLA (1995), Arizona (1997)