Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

‘Gutsy’ Caps blank Bruins, move within a win of securing playoff spot

Six-run sixth inning dooms the Nationals to a series loss in Oakland

Mitchell Parker wins his MLB debut as Nationals hold off Dodgers

Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed.      

In photos: Fire breaks out at Denmark stock exchange building

Britain's Cameron urges Israel not to retaliate against Iran

Ask Amy: Skip beloved camp reunion to stay with girlfriend?

Carolyn Hax: Mom yearns for her kids to feel the same freedoms of her youth

Miss Manners: How do I avoid my neighbor’s awful poetry?

What the United States needs to do after Iran’s attack on Israel

Measles is more contagious than the coronavirus. And it’s back. 

One way to get China to clean up faster: build a ‘climate club’

Lake Mead visitors caught on video destroying ancient rock formations

Delta eclipse flight from Dallas veered off path of totality

A fashion writer’s secret to travel style? It’s black and blue.

Sydney’s second knife attack in days being investigated as terrorist act

‘Hero’ who confronted Sydney attacker offered permanent residency

Middle East conflict live updates: Israel’s military chief warns Iran will ‘face consequences’ for attack 

A tech-stock bubble and burst, all within three weeks

Yellen: U.S. will levy sanctions against Iran over attack on Israel

Election 2024 latest news: Biden heading to Pa. for first of three days in battleground state

Seeking motivation, high school athletes run with shelter dogs

Fire chief adopts puppy from fire scene: ‘I was so sad he’d been burned’

They got their son a pet octopus. Weeks later, there were 50 more.

Chatbots’ flaws aren’t stopping tech giants from putting them everywhere

What’s with all the black-and-white logos for apps?

U.S. gives Samsung $6.4 billion to build chip factories in Texas

Election 2024 latest news on the presidential race

US President Joe Biden Departure

Michael Conroy

INDIANAPOLIS — Just as one of the most riveting, pulsating games in the whole lunatic history of March Madness seemed bound for a second overtime, and just as Lucas Oil Stadium seemed primed to witness five more minutes of basketball of rarefied caliber, a Gonzaga freshman of an otherworldly smoothness breezed across the half-court line but not by much. He let one fly like all Stephen Curry. The ball traveled its 40-ish feet, the red lights squared the backboard, and the horn sounded.

Then it became disorienting to stop gasping and start figuring out the ending. Then coaches and players would greet each other with various levels of congratulation, consolation and confusion. Then the so-called losers of this national semifinal, those winners from UCLA, would trudge off the court with dazed expressions. Had Jalen Suggs’s storybook shot just smacked the backboard and dived right down to take a 90-90 donnybrook and tilt it, <a href="http://stats.washingtonpost.com/cbk/boxscore.asp?gamecode=202104030233&home=233&vis=606&final=true&itid=lk_inline_manual_6" target=_blank>93-90, to Gonzaga</a>? Had the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/04/02/paige-bueckers-jalen-suggs-friendship/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4" target=_blank>Minnesotan</a> with a soaring future — and a present not so bad, either — really charged across the court and hopped upon a table to revel like mad while everybody else tried to process the thing?

“I mean, it was nuts,” Suggs would say. “And I still can’t speak. I have so many things going on in my head. I just can’t believe that happened.”

He had ample company there after a game of such quality that it took all its own ramifications and shoved them into afterthoughts. It somehow dwarfed the fact the Bulldogs (31-0) reached a perch none of the thousands of men’s college teams since 1979 had accessed. It made momentary minutiae of the fact that when Gonzaga tips off against Baylor on Monday night in the final of everyone’s daydreams, it will become the first team since Larry Bird’s Indiana State to do so with an unbeaten record of which most don’t dare daydream.

How could anybody mull all that when they’d just gotten done absorbing both a shot that called to mind Kris Jenkins’s ultimate winner for Villanova in 2016, but also a marvel of a play three seconds before that? That’s when UCLA’s Johnny Juzang, the revelation of this men’s NCAA tournament, had made another of his fearless attacks, missed and followed that miss to tie the score, 90-90. That’s when Gonzaga’s Corey Kispert hurried the ball out of bounds and Suggs said, “ ‘Corey, Corey, come here,’ ” he said, “and I got as many dribbles as I can, tried to get as close as I can.”

Baylor dominates Houston from the start to reach national title game

“What a great college basketball game,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few began.

“I just told them they’ve got to let the last shot go,” second-year UCLA coach Mick Cronin said of his players.

“Man, that is something you practice on your mini-hoop as a kid or in the gym just messing around,” Suggs said.

“There’s no regrets,” Juzang said, “just everybody fought to the last play, and the last shot is the last shot.”

“It was crazy,” Few said of the locker room afterward. “Euphoric. Guys were happy as, you know, you could ever be.”

They had the adrenaline of having weathered the mighty in weathering the Bruins (22-10), those alleged Lilliputians from Los Angeles who had charged all the way from a beleaguered stage pretournament and from a No. 11 seed and from the hard wilds of the play-in round to give the winner by far its most adamant task across its winning four-plus months.

While Gonzaga has crushed its foes, Indiana had close calls on its way to perfection in 1976

They got 29 points from Juzang, the Los Angeleno who boomeranged to UCLA by transfer from Kentucky, and whom Suggs called “a special player” and of whom Few said, “Juzang is just a big-time player, hits big-time, tough shots.” They got a muscular 14 points and 10 rebounds from Cody Riley. They got 19 points from Jaime Jaquez Jr., including a three-point shot from the right corner with 48 seconds left in overtime that narrowed the score to 90-88. They got expert direction and repeated jolts of electricity from point guard Tyger Campbell, who had 17 points and seven assists. Having bested Michigan with defense, 51-49, to get here, they almost bested Gonzaga with offense. In a masterpiece in which both teams hovered in the high 50s in shooting percentage, landing on 58.7 (Gonzaga) and 57.6 (UCLA), they got big play after big play to wipe out a 66-59 deficit and reach 81-81 by the closing of regulation.

All through, they managed to avoid the psychic and scoreboard damage dealt so many other opponents of a Gonzaga team that had won 27 straight games by double digits. They trailed only 45-44 at halftime, which accounted for a smallish victory worthy of a smallish trophy. They forced Gonzaga to explore its many options in the utmost show of its collaborative nature: Drew Timme with 25 points, including six in the post to start the overtime; Joel Ayayi with 22 and leadership; Suggs with 16 and six assists; Kispert with 15 points and five assists; Andrew Nembhard with 11 points, eight assists and a gutsy three-point shot with 75 seconds left in the overtime.

Stanford and Arizona finally get the national spotlight after being overshadowed all tournament

With each chunk of time that went by without getting smashed into the floor, the Bruins could sustain hope without delusion, until they drove Gonzaga to the verge of the springtime pain that has become a rude annual visitor after winters of hope across 22 straight March Madness berths. They even might have dredged a memory that one searing turn of that pain, in the 2006 Sweet 16, came from UCLA itself, which scored the last 11 points of a Gonzagan nightmare.

A ferocious fight of beauty against beauty carried on to the end of regulation. Juzang splashed down a three-point shot for a 77-75 lead with 2:57 left. Suggs hit a sweet 12-foot turnaround for 77-77 at 2:27. Suggs wreaked a multifaceted work of art when he blocked a Riley dunk and hurled a bounce pass downcourt to a charging 6-foot-10 Timme for a dunk at 1:55. Then Juzang hit a pull-up. Then Kispert made a second-chance basket. Then Jaquez made two free throws, all by the 0:43 mark. Then they stopped each other, including Timme’s draw of a charging foul on Juzang, until they went to overtime.

Then after Timme’s three shots and Nembhard’s shot and Jaquez’s three-point shot and Juzang’s follow, they headed for a second overtime.

“Oh god,” Suggs said. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

UCLA v Gonzaga

Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs gives up about five inches and 20 pounds to UCLA forward Cody Riley. But that didn’t stop Suggs from elevating to get a piece of Riley’s would-be go-ahead dunk in the final two minutes of regulation .

Suggs corralled the ball, led the break then weaved a pass to Drew Timme which pushed Gonzaga ahead.

With the teams tied at 81, Johnny Juzang had the ball in the closing seconds of the game but he was called for a charge as he drove to the rim. Gonzaga leads 87-83 in overtime.

Glynn A. Hill

Johnny Juzang has now scored 20 points or more in eight games this season. Four of those games have come during the NCAA tournament. The sophomore, who also has five rebounds and two assists, has scored 21 points on 9-for-13 shooting.

The Bruins have a 71-70 lead over Gonzaga with 6:04 left to play after a Tyger Campbell layup.

The top-seeded Bulldogs outscored 11th-seeded UCLA 15-8 to close the half and take a 45-44 lead in the second national semifinal at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

A first half featuring 11 lead changes remained close throughout, with UCLA taking the largest lead for either team when Johnny Juzang sank a jumper to put the Bruins ahead by six with 4:34 left.

Juzang scored 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field, and UCLA made 57 percent of its shots from the floor as the team controlled the pace and drained difficult shots to remain close and hold a slight advantage throughout the half.

Corey Kispert’s jumper put Gonzaga back on top four seconds before halftime. Joel Ayayi, who leads the team with 16 points, has made all six of his shots from the field. The Bulldogs made 60.7 percent of their shots in the half.

APTOPIX NCAA Final Four UCLA Gonzaga Basketball

UCLA led Gonzaga by as much as four about halfway through the first half. It’s controlling the pace against Bulldogs and making 50 percent its shots from the field and from three-point range.

The Bruins, who have slowed down the tempo, lead 27-25 with 8:25 remaining in the half.

NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament - Final Four - Practice Sessions

NCAA tournament results: Norfolk State, 98-55; Oklahoma, 87-71; Creighton, 83-65; USC, 85-66

Elite Eight: Leading scorer and rebounder Drew Timme took over early, scoring 11 of his game-high 23 points in the first eight minutes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/30/gonzaga-beats-usc-elite-eight/?itid=lk_inline_manual_61" target=_blank>of an 85-66 rout</a>.

Gonzaga, the nation’s top team throughout this season, has statistically been one of the best of all time.

Timme’s skill was on full display against No. 8 Oklahoma in the second round, where he scored a season-high 30 points and tied a season high with 13 rebounds — his fifth double-double this season.

Freshman Jalen Suggs returned to form against USC, nearly recording a triple-double (18 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists) to improve upon less-than-stellar showings earlier in the tournament. Forward Corey Kispert, the third member of the Bulldogs’ all-American trio next to Suggs and Timme, is one of the nation’s best three-point shooters, making 45.3 percent of his shots from distance.

Gonzaga, which boasts a 24-point average margin of victory during this year’s tournament, has won 29 of its 30 games by double-digits this season. Its closest contest was a five-point win over West Virginia on Dec. 2. The Bulldogs are looking to finish the first first perfect season in men’s college basketball since 1976.

NCAA tournament results: Michigan State, 86-80; BYU, 73-62; Abilene Christian, 67-47; Alabama, 88-78; Michigan, 51-49

Elite Eight: Johnny Juzang scored more than half of UCLA’s 51 points in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/31/ucla-beats-michigan-elite-eight/?itid=lk_inline_manual_69" target=_blank>low-scoring victory over top-seeded Michigan</a>.

The Bruins have won more games in the tournament than they did in the final 40 days of the season. After a four-game losing streak that included an early exit in the Pac-12 tournament, No. 11 UCLA has become just the second First Four team to make the Final Four. VCU was the first when it won five games before losing to Butler in the 2011 Final Four. The Bruins await a more daunting foe in undefeated Gonzaga, which comfortably dispatched their rivals from Southern California in the Elite Eight.

The Trojans defeated UCLA on Feb. 6. Since then, Juzang has picked up his scoring and in recent weeks has lifted the team. After scoring at least 20 points once before the loss, he has done so six times since then, with three of those performances coming in the NCAA tournament.

He scored 23 points as the Bruins survived Michigan State in the First Four. Despite an ankle injury he suffered late in that game, he contributed 27 points against sixth-seeded BYU in the first full round, shooting 62.5 percent from the field and 42.9 percent from three-point range. Juzang made just 5 of 18 shots (13 points on 27.8 percent shooting) as the Bruins relied on other contributors including Jaime Jaquez Jr. to outlast No. 2 Alabama in overtime in the Sweet 16. Juzang is averaging 21.6 points per game in the tournament.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/30/gonzaga-beats-usc-elite-eight/?itid=sf_sports&itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_74">Gonzaga’s Final Four matchup with UCLA</a> on Saturday seems only apt, considering that the undefeated Bulldogs already are being compared to some of the greatest men’s college basketball teams of all time, among them John Wooden’s Bruins teams of yore. But figuring out a way to statistically compare modern teams with those from an era without a three-point shot or shot clock can be difficult.

Enter <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/index4837.html?p=37">the Simple Rating System (SRS)</a>, which we can use to compare teams from different eras. In essence, a team’s SRS number represents how many points per game it would be better or worse than an average team from that season, after adjusting for strength of schedule.

An average team would have an SRS of zero. Gonzaga’s SRS entering the Final Four is 28.23. Here’s how that compares with the dynastic UCLA teams of the 1960s and ’70s, when the Bruins won 10 of 12 national titles, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/04/01/gonzaga-ucla-history-stat-comparison/?itid=lk_inline_manual_77" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Matt Bonesteel

INDIANAPOLIS — The 1975-76 Indiana men’s basketball team has lingered in conversation for so long as the last in the sport to go unbeaten that it can seem the Hoosiers must have been some impenetrable castle surrounded by a wide moat. Surely they won everything without too much tension. Their games must have been decisive enough that their fans would live just as long as they would have had they not followed them and spent winter nights doing something else, such as bowling.

Well, the funny thing about those Hoosiers (32-0) who went wire-to-wire at No. 1 is their dissimilarity to Gonzaga, which has gone wire-to-almost-wire at No. 1 this season and aims to equal Indiana at this Final Four. The Bulldogs (30-0) famously have won by double digits every time but one, which might not be fun for their victims but at least spares them walking around life wincing every now and then about the what-ifs. Regarding Bob Knight’s most famous team, it can be striking to anyone who didn’t live in Indiana or follow the team game by game to go poring into the details of game accounts.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/04/03/1976-indiana-perfect-season-gonzaga/?itid=lk_inline_manual_81" target=_blank>Read the full story</a>

Chuck Culpepper

Associated Press Sports Editors, project writing, 2016, series on Middle East female athletes

Associated Press Sports Editors, finalist, project writing, 2011, series from the Philippines on boxer Manny Pacquiao

Associated Press Sports Editors, finalist, event story, 2008, on the British Open

American Society of Newspaper Editors, finalist, feature, 2004, on Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering

Associated Press Sports Editors, finalist, columnists, 2001

Associated Press Sports Editors, feature, 1998, on college football player who wrestled alligators

Associated Press Sports Editors, feature, 1997, on high school football player who missed crucial PAT

Associated Press Sports Editors, event story, 1996, on weightlifting at Atlanta Olympics 

Associated Press Sports Editors, finalist, beat writing, 2017, college football 

The Year's Best Sportswriting (Anthology), 2021, Marshall University 50th anniversary ceremony

The Year's Best Sportswriting (Anthology), 2022, Kansas-Texas football game

Lisa Ben Award, 2022, feature writing 

Bloody Confused: A Clueless American Sportswriter Seeks Solace In English Soccer

University of Virginia, BA in rhetoric and communication studies

Chuck Culpepper covers national college sports as well as some tennis, golf and international sports for The Washington Post. He wrote previously for Sports On Earth/USA Today, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Los Angeles Times (while London-based), Newsday, the Oregonian, the Lexington Herald-Leader and, from age 14, the Suffolk Sun/Virginian-Pilot.

Howard University, BA in Journalism

Glynn is a general assignment and breaking news reporter for The Washington Post. He previously worked for the Houston Chronicle, where he covered business, education, government and sports.

George Washington University, BA in history and journalism

Matt Bonesteel spent the first 17 years of his Washington Post career writing and editing. In 2014, Bonesteel pivoted from the newspaper to online and now he blogs for the Early Lead and other Web-based products owned by The Post.

washpost

Gonzaga stays undefeated with buzzer-beater in overtime to top UCLA

the-washington-post

College Basketball

College Football

College Sports

iptc-media/sport

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline/soccer

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline/American_football

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline/basketball

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline/volleyball

iptc-media/sport/competition_discipline/athletics_track_and_field

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Basketball_legacyaux_k77

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Optum KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_College Sports_legacyaux_fsk

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

advertising/B2_Health and Beauty_legacyaux_3fv

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Natural Gas, Electricity and Energy Services 11.18.14_legacyaux_2o1

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Sports_legacyaux_sns

advertising/B2_Women's Beauty_legacyaux_9jv

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client KWs : FBI

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Novo Nordisk KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Capital Concerts KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Aetna KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - INCLUDES ANY 

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

prism://prism.query/site,/sports/colleges&limit=20

This is your source for DC, Virginia and Maryland college sports news and info. Get the latest schedules, stats, and rosters for local schools. Stay updated on the latest sports news from your favorite DC area college teams!

prism://prism.query/site,/sports/colleges/maryland&limit=3

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/maryland/

prism://prism.query/ap-articles-by-site-id,/sports/colleges&limit=5

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/sports&limit=20

Sports

The Washington Post Sports section provides sports news, video, scores, analysis and updates about high school, college, and pro sports teams, including the Capitals, Nationals, Washington Football Team, United and Wizards. Post Sports also offers blogs and discussions about the latest sports news.

Gonzaga stays undefeated with buzzer-beater in overtime to top UCLA

Live coverage contributors

What to read about college basketball