NCAA

Duke, Michigan, Arizona and defending national champion Florida are the No. 1 seeds in the 2026 men’s basketball NCAA Tournament, with Duke claiming the No. 1 overall seed in the 68-team bracket and topping the East Region.

A couple of former Greater Spokane League stars will make their NCAA Tournament debuts.

MOSCOW, Idaho – The Vandals look at their first round NCAA opponent, Oklahoma, and see a more heralded version of themselves.

Vandals face Kelvin Sampson and his 2025 runner-up Cougars in their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1990.

The Idaho men’s basketball team received its save the date for the NCAA Tournament when the Vandals made a surprise run through the Big Sky Conference Tournament. On Sunday, Idaho got its formal invitation to join the Big Dance for the first time in 36 years.

Mark Few would strongly advise against it, but if you looked past Gonzaga’s first-round NCAA Tournament opponent, the storylines and matchup possibilities start to get increasingly more compelling.

(3) Gonzaga

(4) Oklahoma

Gonzaga earned the No. 3 seed in the West region, beginning its tournament run in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday.

Gonzaga fans may not have known exactly how to interpret what they were seeing from Davis Fogle during the early stages of the wing’s freshman season.

After a riveting regular season and fortnight of conference tournaments, Selection Sunday takes center stage with 68 seeds and 32 first-round matchups in the balance – for what might be the final time.

The unknowns typically outweigh the certainties on Selection Sunday eve, but Gonzaga players and coaches still went to sleep Saturday feeling significantly better about their NCAA Tournament outlook than they did each of the last two years.

Gonzaga’s legendary run to the 1999 Elite Eight built the foundation for one of the most inconceivable stories in college basketball history.

The spring of 2021 was absolute chaos in college basketball: 61 of 365 Division I teams changed head coaches.

When Graham Ike was announced as the Most Outstanding Player of the West Coast Conference Tournament for the second consecutive year, his Gonzaga teammates all started jumping around and flashing signs.

If the Zags have any regret, it's rooted in the financial terms of the Pac-12's media rights deal – everyone always hopes for more money – and not the construction of the conference.

When a college basketball team is a double-digit seed to the NCAA Tournament, projecting where said team lands is like trying to throw darts blindfolded.

The reason this feels largely new to the Zags is, well, it is for 11 of 12 players. UConn transfer guard Ines Bettencourt was on two teams in Bristol, Connecticut, that played in the NCAA Tournament including the Final Four in 2022-23.

PULLMAN – The most sober assessment of this Washington State season, the most salient summary of the reason the Cougars’ season petered out in nondescript fashion last weekend, may have come from their starting power forward.