Ncaa Basketball Tournament

The scoreboard tells only one story, and it showed that Purdue was right there with Connecticut for a good portion of this West Regional semifinal. No matter the hot start that nearly made this another laugher, no matter how well UConn matched up against the Boilermakers, no matter how much the Huskies felt like they were in control, there was a bottom line to deal with well into the second half. "They are not going away, fellas," Coach Jim Calhoun recalled saying to his players.

"Our league is better than your league" has been a parlor game played out for decades in bars and on talk radio. But seriously, have you checked out the Big East? This year, there is no debate: Their league is better than yours. In fact, there may have never, in the history of assemblages, been a league quite like it. The Big East is the NFL's Black and Blue division combined with the American League East combined with the Southeastern Conference in college football.

Here's a look at today's NCAA tournament regional championship games. Times are Pacific: No. 3 Missouri (31-6) vs. No. 1 Connecticut (30-4), 1:30 p.m. -- The happiest man in America today might be Jimmy Sexton, the agent for hot-as-lava Missouri Coach Mike Anderson.

Louisville didn't need to worry about wearing down Arizona. The Cardinals' defense acted as an immediate Taser against the Wildcats, who were lifeless from the tipoff in aggressive Louisville's 103-64 victory Friday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in a Midwest Regional semifinal game. Top-seeded Louisville put on its most impressive performance of the NCAA tournament against No. 12-seeded Arizona to advance to Sunday's regional final against second-seeded Michigan State.

Scottie Reynolds of Villanova joined Tyus Edney of UCLA in the annals of NCAA tournament last-second dribble-drives toward camera flashes and forever. Reynolds' floater with 0.5 seconds left Saturday lifted Villanova to a 78-76 victory over Pittsburgh in the East Regional final at TD Banknorth Garden. "Oh man," the junior hero said afterward, "there's so many emotions going through my head. It's something you think about as kid."

It wasn't a short, sweet, four-game, two-week trip to college basketball's grand stage. It wasn't as simple as winning two games in Philadelphia, two more in Arizona, throwing on some hats, doing a few dances, grabbing a trophy and moving on to Detroit. But Connecticut, single-minded and tenacious, is back in the Final Four for the third time. On Saturday afternoon at cavernous University of Phoenix Stadium, the top-seeded Huskies outlasted No.

Maryland senior Marissa Coleman scored a career-high 42 points, including the go-ahead basket with 27.9 seconds left, as the Terrapins rallied from 18 down to beat Vanderbilt 78-74 on Saturday in Raleigh, N.C. The No. 1-seeded team in the Raleigh Regional used a late 15-3 run to erase an 11-point deficit and didn't lead until Demauria Liles made a layup with 2:07 left.

Upon further review, amateur basketball in Los Angeles may not have completely dried up. The Pacific 10 Conference might even want to re-hang its shingle while our local coaches, Ben Howland and Tim Floyd -- especially Floyd -- should feel better about their upcoming performance reviews. Huh?

On one half of the court, Michigan State's Travis Walton strayed from teammates' embraces to an isolated area. He crouched while clasping a Final Four cap and stared at the ceiling, saying a prayer while wearing a look of disbelief. In another corner, Louisville's Terrence Williams appeared just as stunned, wandering along the baseline searching for answers and avoiding the postgame handshake line. Neither player seemed to grasp what had happened after No.

Blake Griffin had just made the play of the game, and perhaps this NCAA tournament, an extraterrestrial -- he reached into the heavens -- one-handed dunk of an Austin Johnson lob pass. But Ty Lawson countered in less than eight seconds, slicing through the defense for a runner in the lane. That second-half sequence was Sunday's NCAA South Regional final in a capsule: The brilliance of Oklahoma's Griffin against the precision of North Carolina's Tar Heels.