Just the fact that Tiana Mangakahia is returning to the court for Syracuse this season would be remarkable in and of itself. Mangakahia, a fifth-year senior from Brisbane, Australia, had considered entering the 2019 WNBA draft. But she decided instead to return to Syracuse and play her senior season in 2019-20. Then everything changed. Mangakahia […]
When news broke of the death of John Thompson Jr., the longtime Georgetown men’s basketball coach, the college basketball world eulogized a titan of a bygone, halcyon era of the sport. It remembered the iconic towel draped over his shoulder, how his Hoyas shut down Manley Field House, how — with an all-Black starting five […]
When the NCAA men’s basketball tournament was officially canceled on March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic, it marked the end of one of the most unpredictable — and wide-open — seasons in recent memory. We saw a record number of teams grab the top spot in the Associated Press rankings in the first few […]
Muffet McGraw had done it all in coaching, so now she’s moving on. The legendary Notre Dame women’s basketball coach announced on April 22 that she would step down, ushering in a new era led by McGraw’s former player and assistant, Niele Ivey. In her 38-year career, McGraw won 936 games, finishing sixth all-time in […]
Though there are no actual games to be played, FiveThirtyEight is still taking a shot at a little March Madness. We built an NCAA Tournament bracket, using ESPN’s Bracketology, and we’re simulating the results of each game by using a simple “100-sided dice roll” against our forecast probabilities. We’ve played out our first and second […]