What happened in the NCAA Men's Tournament second round

As college basketball players head to NCAA Tournament arenas on their team buses, many will slip on headphones, zone out to a song and absorb the vibes. Coaches also sometimes take a small moment from poring over last-minute scouting reports to escape to a melody filtering through their airpods.

These soundtracks, perhaps subconsciously, serve an objective, too. Music can settle our nerves — or pump us up. A specific banger can provide a dose of confidence. A sentimental song might remind us of our grand purpose. “Music is the shorthand of emotion,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote.

So as March Madness gets underway, The Athletic wondered what these tournament-bound stars will be listening to before they compete in some of the most important games in their lives. We asked women’s and men’s tournament players and coaches to share their pre-game playlists. Players’ tastes ranged from Nicki Minaj to Veeze to even Elvis Presley. Coaches ranged from Gospel to AC/DC.

You won’t achieve the same jump shot as these athletes by listening to their hype music, but these playlists will get you ready (from your couch) for tip-off.

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Washington State +6.5 (-105) vs. Iowa State

Be sure to shop around as there are some +7s out there, but I’m going to take BetMGM’s price of +6.5 -105. This should be a slow-paced game with both teams being very strong on defense. The key for Washington State staying within this number is its ability to get after the offensive glass. Iowa State isn’t great on the defensive glass and forces a ton of tough shots. This is a matchup that needs to be exploited if Washington State has hopes of pulling off the upset. Luckily for us, they just have to stay within two possessions.

Continue reading for score projections for every game.

SPOKANE, Wash. — Once the guys for whom it means more finally ran out of chances, a guard named August from a town known for horse racing spun around, untucked his jersey and climbed atop a courtside table. He smiled with his mouth open and said nothing.

He quickly was joined by a kid from Morocco who likes to fish, who pointed and yelled at everyone he saw. Behind them, the lefty Greek sharpshooter from the Chicago suburbs ran into the arms of the 7-foot center who went from freshman backup to a spot on Team Israel and the All-Ivy League squad in one year. In front of them, a scruffy 16-year NBA veteran who slung his 6-foot-11 frame over a guardrail hustled in for a hug. The head coach came by last, arms out wide, leaning into a vigorous multi-human scrum that knocked off his lapel pin and included an elbow to a writer’s head.

Yale 78, Auburn 76 at Spokane Arena on Friday was at once a result and a revival and another episode in an ongoing, hilarious reckoning. An eclectic No. 13 seed beating a No. 4 seed overloaded with size and athleticism and talent. An Ivy League champion ousting an SEC champion, and not by accident. A forever March moment for a player whose girlfriend is more famous than him. The airy whimsy of the NCAA Tournament triumphing, yet again, over the sulfur cloud threatening it. The sword drawn from the stone, then driven right back through a bigger one.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore,” said Chris Dudley, the aforementioned former pro and overjoyed alum sporting a Yale polo shirt, still on the lookout for his next hug. “This is a good team. It’s a real good team. We got great players. Just ’cause you go to a good school, doesn’t mean you can’t hoop.”

It’s of course a little bit of a surprise, and that’s the point. Assumptions are built into this event. Teams are assigned numbers and, with them, expectations. And then something like Yale happens. A junior guard named John Poulakidas, who abused his mini-hoop as a kid so much that it chipped the door it hung on, whose recruiting got fogged up by a pandemic, who heads to the gym to shoot after logging starter’s minutes in games, drops in a career-high 28 points. And Auburn, ranked seventh in the final Associated Press poll and considered a worthy threat to defending national champion UConn in the East Region, loses in the Round of 64 for the first time.

There are those who would warp the structure of the NCAA Tournament essentially to the detriment of the Yales of the world, probably because the Yales of the world keep doing this stuff. The Bulldogs did it in 2016, too, upsetting Baylor in the first round. With formidable but offensively challenged San Diego State awaiting Sunday, it’s not far-fetched to believe the Bulldogs can be the second straight Ivy League team to reach the Sweet 16, after Princeton in 2023. “That’s what makes March Madness special,” Yale big man Danny Wolf said Friday. “It’s games like this.”

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The Grand Canyon Antelopes made program history Saturday night in Spokane. The 12-seed upset No. 5 Saint Mary’s 75-66, advancing to the round of 32 for the first time in a Division I NCAA Tournament.

The Antelopes are not your typical WAC team, as they are loaded with high-major talent, including star Tyon Grant-Foster, a former four-star recruit who went to Kansas. Grant-Foster led all scorers with 22 points to go along with eight rebounds in his team’s first-round win against the Gaels. Grant-Foster has scored at least 20 points in six of Grand Canyon’s last eight games.

He started his career at Indiana Hills Community College in Iowa before spending one season at his home-state school Kansas (2020-21) and one at DePaul (2021-22). Grant-Foster was rushed to the hospital after collapsing in the locker room at halftime of his season opener at DePaul. He had to be resuscitated and was revived three more times on the way to the hospital. He missed the rest of the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons before returning to the court this year at GCU.

This is Grand Canyon’s third trip to the men’s NCAA Tournament at the Division I level. The Antelopes’ first appearance was 2021, when they lost in the first round to Iowa.

With Grand Canyon’s victory, the 11 and 12 seeds in the NCAA Tournament went 5-3 against the 5 and 6 seeds. The Antelopes will take on Alabama in the round of 32.

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INDIANAPOLIS — In the sideline huddle on the bench, there wasn’t time for Colorado’s players to wallow in self-pity. Here they were, locked in a tie after having blown a 13-point lead to Florida in less than five minutes, and the only thing that mattered was what came next. One play with 6.1 seconds remaining to reach the second round of the NCAA Tournament. And what a play it was.

Colorado point guard KJ Simpson set a back screen, slipped out into the right corner, created space on his defender with a dribble and buried a jumper that bounced around the rim from the baseline with 1.7 seconds left to help the 10th-seeded Buffaloes escape with a scintillating 102-100 victory against No. 7 seed Florida. The game ended Friday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with Gators guard Walter Clayton Jr. missing a half-court heave off the backboard and with Buffaloes players wildly celebrating after one of the most entertaining games of this NCAA Tournament.

“Just a hell of a game in March,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. “What else can you say?”

Both teams came into the day ranked in the top 25 nationally in offensive efficiency, according to KenPom, and they lived up to those marks. Florida (24-12) shot 51.5 percent from the field. Colorado (26-10) shot 63 percent. It became the first NCAA Tournament game in which both teams scored at least 100 points during regulation since No. 9 UAB defeated No. 8 Washington 102-100 in 2004.

Colorado, which had to beat Boise State two nights earlier in a First Four game just to reach the Round of 64, certainly didn’t look tired, matching Florida’s quick pace step for step. The teams entered halftime tied at 45. They traded the lead back and forth before Colorado opened up a 92-79 lead with 4:49 remaining on big man Eddie Lampkin’s free throws.

But Florida quickly chipped away to make it a one-possession game. After Colorado’s Cody Williams made one of two free throws to give the Buffaloes a 100-97 lead, Clayton Jr. — who scored a game-high 33 points — buried a pullup 3-pointer to tie the score with 9.5 seconds remaining.

“Obviously, we just got a little bit more aggressive defensively,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “For us to cut that thing and tie it being down 13, I’m really proud of the way we responded.”

Boyle smartly chose to put the ball in the hands of his first-team All-Pac-12 point guard. Simpson set a backscreen for Lampkin, who scored 21 points, to get the team’s leading rebounder under the basket to clean up a miss. Instead, Simpson drilled a shot that Colorado guard Tristan da Silva called a “Kawhi Leonard type of game-winner,” referencing Leonard’s Game 7 buzzer-beater from the right baseline that helped the Toronto Raptors beat the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 and advance to the Eastern Conference finals in 2019.

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A year ago, as the nation got swept up in the story of plucky No. 15 seed Princeton’s run to the Sweet 16, Northwestern coach Chris Collins had a front-row seat.

His Wildcats shared the Sacramento site with the Tigers, practicing and playing on parallel tracks as both teams won their first-round games and stayed through the weekend. Of course Collins understood the buzz surrounding a 15-over-2 upset. Of course he, too, was intrigued by a player named Ryan Langborg, who drained four 3s and scored 22 points to lead Princeton over No. 7 seed Missouri and into the Sweet 16. In Princeton’s three NCAA Tournament games, Langborg shot nearly 50 percent from the field.

“You’re focused on what you’re doing, but you have an eye (out),” Collins recalled Friday. “We’re all hoops junkies. So, you’re watching games and seeing what’s going on. We knew he was playing so well.”

The Ivy League has a rule that bars graduate students from playing, so even though Langborg was lighting it up — he scored 26 points in a Sweet 16 loss to Creighton — he wouldn’t be able to stay at Princeton after he graduated that spring, regardless of his attachment to the school or his rising stock.

So Langborg took to the transfer portal ahead of his final year of eligibility. Collins said he and his staff were “hoping and praying” they could land the perfect complement to the strong nucleus they had returning to Evanston. They needed a wing who could score and also defend.

Neither side could have envisioned just how productive a marriage it would be, but those vows turned into a memory of a lifetime at Barclays Center on Friday afternoon as Langborg scored a career-high 27 points — including 12 in a runaway overtime period — to lead No. 9 Northwestern past No. 8 Florida Atlantic 77-65 and into the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t know what it is about the NCAA Tournament with Ryan Langborg, but I’m glad he’s on my team this go-around,” Collins said, smiling.

Said star guard Boo Buie, “He was balling today, man. He was balling.”

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INDIANAPOLIS – At halftime of Wednesday’s First Four game between Montana State and Grambling, producers flashed the following tweet:

The CBS studio crew had a good chuckle over it, and host Adam Lefkoe asked, “How do we think Purdue is feeling right now?”

Inside Monument Hall, a sublevel ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Indianapolis, Purdue was feeling just fine. The men’s basketball staff and a handful of players were scattered among roundtables, watching the play-in game on a big screen. They saw the tweet, heard the chuckles. They stared stoically ahead, saying nothing. They have been the butt of the joke for 370 days. They’ve owned it, sat in it, stewed in it. They can’t undo it. “But,’’ as Ethan Morton said a few days earlier after a practice at Mackey Arena, “there aren’t many times in your life you get a do-over.’’

The do-over is now done, a 78-50 pasting of 16th-seeded Grambling State on Friday that perhaps took a little longer to get rolling than some would have liked, but nonetheless rid the Boilers of one demon. There are still more to come; Purdue is not just guilty of losing to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson last year, but a host of March offenses. But this was, if not the most important game on the hierarchy — that’s down the road on the calendar, in the regional final — the most damning crime to pardon. The FDU loss was served up as everything that is wrong with Purdue. Much like Virginia, after its first-round loss to UMBC, the Boilers’ very way of doing business was questioned.

It would be a lie to say they didn’t entertain those questions at least briefly; it is the sort of loss that makes you search your soul for answers. But Matt Painter held strong in his belief that losing to Fairleigh Dickinson was not a sign of systemic failure. More than once he told his team that in a 10-game series against the Black Knights, the Boilers would win nine.

That, however, should not be misinterpreted. Purdue maybe didn’t make wholesale changes; but that doesn’t mean they ignored the loss altogether. You take your time, you lick your wounds and then you go get it right,’’ says Elliott Bloom, Purdue’s director of basketball operations. “We did things this year that we’ve never done before. Was that a reaction to what happened? Probably. There was an unspoken chip but also just a sense of, we’re going to get this right.’’

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. — As James Madison players watched film all week to prepare for their first-round matchup against No. 5 Wisconsin, they scouted their foe and sized up its strengths and weaknesses. And nothing really intimidated them.

“It’s a really good matchup for us,” forward T.J. Bickerstaff said on the eve of the game. “Just following our game plan and listening to our coaches — we should be fine.”

What followed was not surprising to those in the film sessions or anyone who watched these 12th-seeded Dukes all season long. In front of a raucous JMU-heavy crowd, they jumped all over the Badgers from the opening tip, forcing turnovers, pushing the ball in transition and setting the pace and physicality against a Big Ten foe.

When the buzzer sounded, it was James Madison 72, Wisconsin 61.

As it turns out, the Dukes were more than fine. They secured the program’s first NCAA tournament win since 1983, and they’ll face No. 4 Duke on Sunday with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line.

JMU’s win over Wisconsin was the fifth game won by the lower seed in the South region, the most of any region in this year’s bracket. After a regular season marked by court storms and upsets, it seemed only fitting to see yet another double-digit seed advance to the second round. This one, though, was an upset on paper that didn’t feel like it in all actuality.

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Jack Gohlke, Oakland: Gohlke had a breakout performance Thursday night against No. 3 Kentucky. The senior guard converted 10 3-pointers, guiding the Golden Grizzlies to the upset. The Division II transfer will look to provide more of that March magic Saturday against No. 11 NC State.

Caleb Love, Arizona: Love’s tournament got off to a fast start Thursday, recording a double-double of 18 points and 11 rebounds against No. 15 Long Beach State. The 6-foot-4 guard was the Pac-12 Player of the Year with career highs in scoring (18.1 points per game), effective field goal shooting percentage (51.0) and win shares (4.8).

Jermaine Couisnard, Oregon: Couisnard made Ducks program history Thursday, scoring 40 points against South Carolina. The 6-foot-4 guard averaged 16.1 points per game on 40 percent shooting from the floor during the season. Is another high-scoring performance in the cards Saturday night in Pittsburgh against Creighton?

Armando Bacot, North Carolina: Bacot put up a double-double of 20 points and 15 rebounds on Thursday in North Carolina’s win over Wagner. Bacot is now second in North Carolina history in points scored, behind only Tyler Hansbrough. The 6-foot-11 forward will need another big game if the Tar Heels are going to defeat Tom Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans in Charlotte.