April 2026

There were 1,683 posts published in April 2026 (this is page 160 of 169).

Big men, bigger lineups: how length, size got Illinois, UConn, Arizona, Michigan to the Final Four

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Tarris Reed Jr. sat at his locker Thursday, fielding questions about his run as the interior-scoring, rebound-snagging force in UConn’s latest Final Four push.

Yet he wasn’t the main attraction.

That’s because across the room, an even bigger gaggle of reporters waited for freshman guard Braylon Mullins — the Indiana kid who hit an all-timer of a shot to send the Huskies back to the sport’s biggest stage — to return for his own round of interviews.

“Guards are the ones that hit the big shots,” Reed said Thursday when asked about big men getting their due, adding with a grin: “We just do our job, we do the dirty work — and we’re used to doing it our whole life so we have fun doing it.”

Maybe so, but there’s no minimalizing the impact of size this week in Indianapolis. Not with the Final Four boasting its biggest quartet of teams going back roughly two decades, starting with guys such as Reed, Michigan’s Aday Mara, Arizona’s Koa Peat and Illinois’ 7-foot Ivisic twins as anchors to lineups with size radiating all the way out to the perimeter.

Length, height and bulk

The average height of the Final Four teams is nearly 79.1 inches, or roughly 6 feet 6, according to KenPom’s analytics site. That edges last year’s average of nearly 78.3 inches for the biggest of any Final Four going back to the start of KenPom’s data in 2007.

Illinois (28-8) is Division I’s tallest team with an average roster height of nearly 6-7 (80 inches), while Arizona (36-2) is seventh at nearly 6-6 (79 inches). Michigan (35-3) and UConn (33-5) are in the top 30 nationally with nearly identical averages slightly behind the Wildcats.

Consider it a sign of the premium each team put on building a roster to overwhelm teams inside, on the glass and with game-altering length spanning the gaps between.

That kind of size, strength and wingspan creates trouble cascading through the matchups. ACC Network analyst Luke Hancock said teams are also thriving by finding power forwards and centers capable of stepping outside to stretch defenses further and create space, eliminating the ability for a defense to simply collapse on a lone big man.

“Guards still win in March,” said Hancock, the most outstanding player of the 2013 Final Four in Louisville’s later-vacated title run. “But I think these guys have become almost like a necessary component. If you want to win championships, you need a big 4 and a monster 5.”

And it’s manifesting in several ways as March Madness reaches its final act.

Defensive edge

The Illini have had the best defensive tournament efficiency of the Final Four teams while dominating the glass to complete those stops. Their roster includes an influx of European talent, including Tomislav (7-1) and Zvonimir Ivisic (7-2), as well as 6-9 forward David Mirkovic from Montenegro.

The Illini also brings 6-9, 235-pound graduate Ben Humrichous off the bench, while the outlier in the big lineup is 6-2 senior guard Kylan Boswell as a strong backcourt defender.

The South Region champion has allowed .976 points per possession in the NCAA Tournament to lead the remaining four teams. Throw in the fact that Illinois is outrebounding opponents by 16.3 per game, and it’s been a perfectly timed boost to an already elite offense with those forwards and centers capable of hitting from behind the arc, too.

“Playing in the summer, you could tell it’s a little bit harder to do some things just because you’ve got Z at the rim, who’s 7-foot-2 and a great shot blocker,” 6-6 forward Jake Davis said. “You got Tommy down there. So anybody you’re going up against in practice is super tall. … We’ve just got a bunch of length everywhere. And you could tell early on that we could cause problems for other teams.”

Reed’s presence

The Illini will be tested against Reed, a 6-foot-11, 265-pound senior whose scoring (21.8) and rebounding (13.5) averages in the tournament are the best of any player still standing.

That included opening the tournament with a video game-type stat line of 31 points and 27 rebounds against Furman, making him the first player with 30-plus points and 25-plus rebounds in an NCAA Tournament game since Houston’s Elvin Hayes did it twice in 1968.

He’s coming off a 26-point showing in the comeback from 19 down to stun Duke in the Elite Eight.

“He’s a monster,” said UConn senior Alex Karaban, who was part of the Huskies’ 2023 and 2024 title winners. “He’s been so dominant. He’s really playing like the most dominant player in college basketball right now.”

Wearing them down

When it comes to the No. 1 seeds, the Wolverines have hummed with 90-plus points in four tournament wins. The Wildcats have been right behind in offensive efficiency despite being shooting fewer 3-pointers than just about every other Division I team all season.

Their meeting Saturday matches strengths.

Michigan has used the 7-3, 255-pound Mara to protect the paint, flanked by a pair of versatile 6-9 forwards in Associated Press first-team All-American Yaxel Lendeborg (240 pounds) and Morez Johnson Jr. (250).

“Our size definitely makes it tougher for smaller guards,” Lendeborg said. “Because we’re so versatile … we can switch and guard point guards, make their life a little harder. And you know, we’re all strong bodies too. So we try to wear down teams.

“And then, toward the end of the game, that’s when we usually make our runs when we need it.”

Michigan will be tested against the Wildcats with 7-2 center Motiejus Krivas (10.4 points, 8.2 rebounds) and Peat, a 6-8, 235-pound freshman considered a strong NBA prospect.

“If you don’t have the big to defend other bigs, you can’t compete at this level in my opinion,” Hancock said.

“How do you make it so you’re really tough to guard and you have an advantage? It’s the 4-men in this Final Four who are just so talented and the diversity of their skill sets — they can do so many things. That is the ultimate to me.”

___

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

Twins take Royals’ Steven Cruz deep three times in the ninth inning of 5-1 win over Kansas City

Kody Clemens and Josh Bell hit back-to-back home runs in the ninth inning as the Minnesota Twins defeated the Kansas City Royals 5-1 on Thursday.

The Twins actually hit three home runs in four batters in the ninth, with Matt Wallner going deep before a Victor Caratini groundout preceded Clemens’ and Bell’s power display.

Steven Cruz served up all three homers for the Royals, having taken the ball for the ninth inning with his team down 2-1.

With Minnesota leading 1-0 in the eighth, John Schreiber walked Bell and Royce Lewis to begin the top half of the inning. After striking out Tristan Gray, he intentionally walked Trevor Larnach to face Byron Buxton in a right. vs. right matchup.

Buxton lifted a low, outside cutter to center field for a sacrifice fly to give the Twins a 2-0 lead.

Facing Cole Sands in the bottom of the frame, the Royals cut the deficit to 2-1 on consecutive singles by Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr., followed by a sacrifice fly from Vinnie Pasquantino. Sands then got Salvador Perez to ground out before Taylor Rogers took over for the Twins. He struck out Jac Caglianone on four pitches to end the inning.

Cruz took over for Schreiber in the top of the ninth, and the Twins’ home run parade began. He struck out one batter while allowing three hits, all of them home runs.

The Royals put two runners on with no outs in the bottom of the ninth against Twins reliever Justin Topa. Jonathan India reached base to lead off the frame on a throwing error by Lewis, then Isaac Collins drew a walk on five pitches, all of which were out of the strike zone.

Lane Thomas then grounded into a 6-4-3 double play, and Kyle Isbel struck out on three pitches, the third being a changeup in the dirt.

For the Twins, Taj Bradley picked up the win, having thrown six scoreless innings with five hits and three strikeouts. He also became the first Minnesota pitcher to hit 100 mph since pitch tracking began in 2008. Cole Ragans took the loss for Kansas City despite allowing just one run across six innings with eight strikeouts.

Minnesota earned only its second win of the season, improving to 2-4. The loss dropped the Royals to 3-3, a half-game behind the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central in these early days of the 2026 MLB season.

Where to watch Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Golden State Warriors: Live stream, start time, TV channel, odds for Thursday, April 2

The Cleveland Cavaliers can clinch a playoff berth in the Eastern Conference with a victory over the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors are still missing star guard Stephen Curry, who is expected to return next week. The Cavs are currently seeded third in the East while Golden State appears headed for the West’s play-in tournament.

  • Cleveland Cavaliers: 47-29 (No. 2 in Central Division)

  • Golden State Warriors: 36-40 (No. 4 in Pacific Division)

  • Spread: Golden State Warriors +10.5

  • Moneyline: Golden State Warriors +360 / Cleveland Cavaliers -475

  • Over/Under: 227.5

Must-see TV? The alarming data behind the NBA’s star outage for national games

Thursday night was supposed to be a marquee matchup featuring the NBA’s brightest young stars. 

On one side, there’s Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, an electrifying superstar on and off the court. On the other, Detroit Pistons point guard Cade Cunningham, the face of the dominant No. 1 seed in the East. A game between two playoff teams, but moreso, a showcase of the NBA’s next big American star.

Unfortunately, we won’t get that matchup. Cunningham is too injured to play, sidelined with a collapsed lung suffered in a March game against the pitiful Washington Wizards. And Edwards will miss the game with right knee pain and an illness.

It’s yet another example of NBA fans not being able to watch the intended star showcase the NBA and its players had wanted. Rather than Cunningham’s face on league promotions, it’ll be Jalen Duren, a burgeoning All-Star but hardly a household name or widely recognizable to the average sports fan.

Cade Cunningham (right) has been sidelined with a collapsed lung. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Luckily for NBA fans, the later blockbuster should live up to its box-office billing. The top-seeded OKC Thunder will be facing the surging Los Angeles Lakers and the injury report is sparkling clean. Which is key because, although it will be the third matchup of the season between these two teams, it’s notably the first one in which the stars on both sides will be healthy enough to give it a go. We might finally get LeBron and Luka going against SGA, Chet and JDub.

Man, this feels rare, doesn’t it? More often, the typical national TV game is an injury-scarred Timberwolves-Pistons matchup rather than the star-studded Thunder-Lakers.

NBA fans should cherish the later national TV game’s star power. Because it is incredibly uncommon in today’s NBA for both teams to be fully staffed. 

For the first time, we studied the data and found out how rare it actually is. And the results should have everyone in league circles worried about the long-term effects of star outages on the NBA’s biggest marketing platforms. A question hanging over all of it: How long will fans continue to tune in when the stars are consistently missing?

For NBA fans, the new TV deal should be seen as a major win. By adding Amazon Prime and NBC/Peacock to the mix, the average fan will have access to dozens more games beyond what’s available locally or tucked away on League Pass. Ratings on national TV games are up 13% this season, according to Sports Media Watch tracking, thanks in part to adding NBC’s large audience to the mix.

But NBA fans who are just tuning in to the season might have trouble seeing familiar faces. 

This season, star availability has plummeted from about 80% last season to just around 60%. Chances are, if you want to watch the big game, and you actually want to see all the stars playing, you won’t be in luck.

For weeks, Yahoo Sports has been tracking the star power on national TV games in order to get a stronger sense of the NBA fan experience and better understand the depths of the concerning injury crisis. 

In a typical week during the season, there are multiple games broadcast on either Prime, NBC’s family of channels (including Peacock) and Disney (ESPN or ABC) in which there is at least one star on both rosters. To determine what classifies as a star, we turned to the NBA’s official Player Participation Policy established in 2023, which defines a star player as one that is an All-Star or All-NBA player in the current season or any of the previous three seasons. 

This criteria works as a handy catch-all. For example, the Philadelphia 76ers boast three stars in Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Paul George — tied for the most such stars on one roster. Some overachieving squads may fall through the cracks, like, say, the Charlotte Hornets, who have zero players who qualify (LaMelo Ball was an All-Star too long ago to qualify and the sharpshooting Kon Knueppel isn’t yet an All-Star). But generally, these parameters do a fine job of approximating a team’s star power, which is why the NBA and the NBPA agreed to put it in ink within official league rules. 

These are the marquee matchups, the ones on the NBA schedule that are largely protected by the league’s schedule-makers and TV partners to ensure that the games aren’t being played on back-to-back sets, which tend to see more star absences than usual. In effect, they’re de facto playoff games folded into the 82-game slate. The idea is to give the biggest games the best chance of healthy stars.

All in all, Yahoo Sports determined there were 220 national TV games with at least one star on both sides of the matchup. 

Of those 220 games, what would you guess is the number of times that both teams suited up their full complement of stars?

Would you guess 200? 

Maybe 150? 

It’s less than 100. Way less.

Turns out, only 72 of the 220 games featured all of the stars on the rosters.

That’s 32.7%. Less than one-third of the national TV games. 

Said another way: About two out of three national TV games will have at least one star player in street clothes.

In other team sports, this may not be such a problem. After all, baseball fans are conditioned to not see Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge on their screens when they tune in to the big game; any individual baseball player is rarely on screen even if they’re playing in the game.

The NBA? The whole brand is built on seeing the stars. And really seeing them. Unlike the NFL, there are no helmets and facemasks in the NBA that shield the stars and keep the audience at a distance. There are no shoulder pads. When Anthony Edwards flexes and roars into the crowd, fans can practically feel it.

These days, the feeling that fans typically get is disappointment.

What’s also interesting is that the star availability varies by TV network. According to the Yahoo Sports study, in nine of the exclusively Peacock (non-NBC) games with stars on both sides, only one of them featured all the stars, a full star percentage of 11%. But for ABC games, which are on Disney’s biggest network platform, the full-star percentage checked in at 43%, more than triple that of Peacock. (ABC’s full-star percentage was the highest of the channels.)

Sometimes a TV partner strikes out completely. Take for instance, on Feb. 5, the NBA scheduled the Golden State Warriors against the Phoenix Suns on Amazon Prime — a star-studded matchup that the Average Joe Sports Fan would reasonably expect to see Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler and Devin Booker facing off with two teams in the playoff hunt. None of those stars played. Curry was out with knee soreness. Butler had torn his ACL. Booker (ankle) and his high-scoring teammate, Jalen Green, (hip) were injured. Instead, the game was promoted with Dillon Brooks and Brandin Podziemski leading the way.

On that front, it’s easy to understand if Amazon TV execs were frustrated with the state of affairs in its first season as a league partner. The Warriors-Suns game came in a stretch of the schedule in which six straight Prime games from Jan. 23 to Feb. 6 saw at least one star sidelined (in games in which both teams had star players). In fact, there have been 22 Prime doubleheader nights that had at least one star rostered on both teams, and in only two of those 22 Prime doubleheaders did we see the full slate of stars. They occurred months ago in December.

The more star power, the higher likelihood there’s a player missing in action. The 32.7% full-star playing figure dwindles to 27.7% when there are multiple stars rostered on each side of a national TV game. In the five marquee games with a trio of stars on the rosters, only one came through (Cleveland at Philadelphia on ESPN in mid-January).

A stroll through social media on these nights reveals a swarm of jilted fans. Placing blame on the players feels misguided, though it’s easier to criticize familiar faces than anonymous medical personnel or league execs. The game is faster than it has been in decades. The 3-point shot stretches the demands beyond anything we grew up with. Furthermore, players enter the league with excessive AAU and youth sport miles on the tires that wear the tread thin.

So what does the league do?

If the league wants to raise that 33% in any meaningful way, it should think long and hard about making every game feel bigger. 

One way to do that: reduce the number of games on the schedule. Adjust the schedule in such a way that we can get rid of back-to-backs, reduce in-game injuries (you can’t get injured if you don’t play) and rebuild the trust in the audience. Like I suggested in January, make the game a 58-game season. It wouldn’t guarantee 0% star outages. Only a zero-game schedule can do that. But it’s hard to imagine a world in which star players aren’t substantially healthier, fresher and bouncier in a 58-game schedule with no back-to-backs.

Trust is hard to find in today’s media environment. I’m a kid of the ‘90s. There were no cell phones or WiFi. I trusted my TV programming because it delivered. I knew when “The Simpsons” were on and what channel it was on (Fox was 5 in my neck of the woods). 

In the same way, I knew when the big game was on. I could reach for the trusty TV Guide book on my coffee table or flip on the Cablevision channel on my cable that scrolled the shows. There wasn’t any searching or flipping between streaming apps and choosing profiles and inputting passwords. I knew what channel the game was on (ESPN was 36 and NBC was 4). 

It was quick. It was reliable. It was easy. Nowadays, I can’t blame my 14-year-old nephew who would rather wait until the day after to check the highlights on YouTube. I get his frustration when every time he wants to see Giannis play, it might be Kevin Porter Jr.’s face on the thumbnail instead because Giannis is sidelined. When I was his age, the biggest stars regularly played 82 games or damn near close. It was genuinely jarring to see my favorite players in street clothes. Now, it’s surprising to see when they’re not.

In a competitive media environment, trust in the product is everything. When I fell in love with the NBA, I was captivated by the marketing campaign line: “The NBA: Where Amazing Happens.” ”Lately, it feels more and more like “The NBA: Where A Missing Star Happens.” And that’s a shame.