What to watch: Pitino finished at Louisville?
College basketball’s regular season is ending; its conference tournaments have begun. The most mad time of March is near. But before we jump ahead to Selection Sunday, which is a week away, USA TODAY Sports college basketball reporter Nicole Auerbach tells what to watch for this weekend, the last of the regular season:
1 WILL SATURDAY BE RICK PITINO’S LAST GAME WITH LOUISVILLE?
The Cardinals play at Virginia on Saturday, and the coaching world is rife with speculation this is it for Pitino at Louisville.
He has hinted that he’s probably sticking around, but with the NCAA investigating his program for its escort scandal, does he want to stay for the fallout? Or get out before an already-bleak situation turns worse?
The ball appears to be in the Hall of Famer’s court, as he has had support from athletics director Tom Jurich since the beginning of the scandal. Might the 63year-old coach elsewhere? It appears to be his call.
2 LSU-KENTUCKY II
Two story lines all season have been centered on Ben Simmons, LSU and their NCAA tournament prospects:
Is the season a disappointment if LSU doesn’t make the field with the presumed No. 1 pick in the 2016 NBA draft? Yes.
Will March Madness go on if Simmons doesn’t participate. Yes.
Still, LSU is not eliminated yet (though it likely must win the Southeastern Conference tournament, which brings an automatic bid), and it faces surging Kentucky on Saturday in one of the most anticipated games of the weekend, particularly with Kentucky’s Skal Labissiere coming off his best game. Can LSU sweep the Wildcats?
3 WHO WILL SECURE THE NCAA TOURNAMENT’S FIRST BIDS?
The Ohio Valley and Atlantic Sun crown tournament champions this weekend and kick off a wild week-long stretch of conference tournament title games. For some fans, championship week is better than the NCAA tournament. To others, that is blasphemy.
4 CAN YALE END A 54-YEAR NCAA TOURNAMENT DROUGHT?
The Bulldogs — no strangers to heartbreak this time of year — are poised to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1962 ... as long as they win their final two games (against Cornell and Columbia) and Princeton drops one of its final three. If the Tigers win all three, then Yale is headed for a dreaded one-game playoff, because the Ivy League does not have a postseason tournament to determine its champ. Last year, Yale lost its regular-season finale on a last-second layup, then fell to Harvard in a one-game playoff. Can the Bulldogs finally break through?
5 BOSTON COLLEGE’S QUEST TO AVOID FUTILITY
The Eagles came oh-so-close to beating North Carolina State on Wednesday, losing at the buzzer when the Wolfpack scored a layup on an inbounds pass. So instead of having its first conference win in its pocket, Boston College heads into the weekend trying to avoid making the wrong kind of history. If the Eagles fall to Clemson on Saturday, Boston College will become the first major-conference school to go winless in conference play in football and men’s basketball in the same school year since World War II.