VCU falls to Illinois, 76-55: Promising season ends in Round of 32
VCU losing starting guard Nyk Lewis in the first minute wasn’t why the Rams lost to #3 seed Illinois on Saturday, but it sure didn’t help.
VCU losing starting guard Nyk Lewis in the first minute wasn’t why the Rams lost to #3 seed Illinois on Saturday, but it sure didn’t help.
I wrote on Thursday, on the train to Philly, about the one concern I had for UVA Basketball heading into its first-round NCAA Tournament game – that for seven of the nine rotation guys, it would be their first NCAA Tournament game.
Kymora Johnson had 28 points, Sa’Myah Smith had 22, and #10 seed Virginia outlasted #7 seed Georgia, 82-73, in OT, on a day when temperatures in the Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, which doesn’t have AC, got into the low 80s.
Allison Sheets, a fourth-year UVA nursing student, is heretofore to be known as Alli Brackets, by being among the final 0.01 percent of folks with a perfect bracket in the 2026 ESPN NCAA Tournament Bracket Challenge.
Ideally, Tennessee runs its offense through the duo of senior point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie and freshman power forward Nate Ament, but Ament, a sublime talent, is limited by a gimpy right ankle.
Virginia’s 57-55 win over Arizona State in Thursday’s First Four ended at 11:17 p.m. Postgame interviews, getting on the bus, maybe they got back to the hotel by 1 a.m.
What was Sam Lewis thinking, tossing the ball at TJ Burch after Burch was whistled for a reach-in foul with 5:32 to go, Wright State up one, 68-67.

Home sales in Virginia were up 12 percent in February from January, with a staggering median sales price: $410,000. These numbers were reported on Friday by the Virginia Association of REALTORS® in its February 2026 Virginia Home Sales Report.
We didn’t seem to have any media out in Iowa City for the Virginia-Arizona State First Four game in the 2026 Women’s NCAA Tournament.
Local Democrats are bound and determined to f—k up the 2026 midterms, to a point where I’m wondering if it will do us any good to pass the redistricting referendum, and still lose to the feckless Ben Cline.
We don’t take press releases or official statements as the final word. Digging in to get the whole story takes time and resources.