The most indispensable player to North Carolina's national title hopes may be unavailable for the rest of the NCAA tournament.

Kendall Marshall, North Carolina's starting point guard, suffered fractured right wrist driving to the rim late in the Tar Heels' round of 32 victory over Creighton on Sunday. North Carolina is officially listing his status for the rest of the NCAA tournament as "unknown," which suggests the school hasn't yet ruled out Marshall trying to play through the injury since it is his non-shooting wrist that's hurt.

"Kendall has a fractured wrist and that's all I can tell you," North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. " We don't know.  He's got a fracture of the scaphoid bone of the right wrist.  And you can ask any question you want, but I just told you all we know.  We do not know anything else.  So be intelligent and don't ask.  We'll speak to the hand specialist tonight with Kendall and his family and we'll see what happens after that."

If Marshall is done for the season or plays at far less than full strength, it's very difficult to envision North Carolina even challenging for a national championship.

North Carolina's other primary ball handler, Dexter Strickland, suffered a season-ending right knee injury against Virginia Tech in January, as did combo guard Leslie McDonald during the summer. That leaves seldom-used reserve Stillman White as the only other player with experience at point guard on the roster.

[ Pat Forde: Kentucky still going strong on run for title]

White has done a serviceable job spelling Marshall for a few minutes per half in Strickland's absence, but it's difficult to envision North Carolina playing him 30 minutes per game the rest of the tournament. Instead what the Tar Heels may have to have either small forward Harrison Barnes or shooting guard Reggie Bullock handle the ball more frequently and play out of position.

Marshall, one of the nation's top point guards, did not leave the game after suffering the injury on Sunday, scoring 18 points and dishing out 11 assists in 36 minutes. The only sign of injury he showed was that he shook hands with Creighton players left-handed after the game to protect the wrist.

Alex Johnson (Getty Images)

One week after erupting with joy at being the last team to hear its name called during last Sunday's NCAA tournament selection show, North Carolina State certainly hasn't wasted that opportunity.

The 11th-seeded Wolfpack followed up their minor upset of San Diego State by toppling third-seeded Georgetown 66-63 on Sunday to advance to their first Sweet 16 since 2005. They'll face either second-seeded Kansas or Purdue on Friday in Saint Louis.

"It has been a nice ride," first-year NC State coach Mark Gottfried told reporters after the game. "And the good thing about our team is I think they're a hungry bunch.  They are hungry right now.  I don't see a satisfied group at all in our locker room."

[ Related: N.C. State's new coach is winning over players and fans ]

It's a testament to Gottfried that he has NC State making noise in March the year before his heralded 2012 recruiting class arrives.

Former NC State coach Sidney Lowe recruited some talented prospects to Raleigh during his four-year tenure, but he never molded them into a winning team, going a dreadful 19-45 in ACC play. Gottfried took those leftover spare parts and assembled a functional engine, one that is running far more smoothly in March than it did earlier in the season.

Although NC State failed to beat ACC contenders North Carolina, Duke or Florida State during the regular season, the Wolfpack showed late-season signs they could be dangerous in March if they slipped into the field. They led Duke by 20 at Cameron Indoor Stadium before collapsing, they beat Miami and Virginia leading up to Selection Sunday and they fell to North Carolina in the ACC tournament semifinals in part due to a disputed no-call on an apparent Kendall Marshall charge.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Moments after turning in one of his finest performances of the season on college basketball's grandest stage, Louisville guard Russ Smith celebrated in a way only he could.

Smith gave Rick Pitino bunny ears on national television as the legendary Cardinals coach was explaining to a TBS sideline reporter how his team had defeated New Mexico 59-56 to reach the Sweet 16.

The postgame antics from Smith made for an ideal finish to a day that perfectly summed up the erratic yet irreverent Brooklyn-born guard.

On the one hand, the 5-foot-10 Smith botched a breakaway dunk and briefly got benched for mouthing off during a huddle. On the other hand, he also scored a team-high 17 points and sank all three of his attempts from behind the arc to help propel the Cardinals to a Sweet 16 matchup with either Michigan State or Saint Louis next week.

It was enough to make Pitino compare coaching Smith to the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" during his postgame press conference.

Frank Martin is best known for his intimidating glare, so it was jarring to see the fiery Kansas State coach so vulnerable after Saturday's 75-59 loss to Syracuse.

Asked about senior Jamar Samuels being held out of the final game of his college career due to NCAA eligibility concerns, Martin's eyes welled with tears and he had to pause to collective himself after answering.

"Here's what I told him when we got information yesterday," Martin said. "I said, 'If this is the worst thing that ever happens to you in your lifetime, you're going to be one of the luckiest human beings to ever walk on the face of the earth.' After that I choked up 'cause, you know, I'm all about kids, man."

Kansas State made the decision to sit Samuels on Friday night less than 24 hours before tipping off against Syracuse. The university declined to reveal what prompted the NCAA to look into Samuels' eligibility, though athletic director John Currie told CBS Sports the issue was not academic-related, nor did it stem from any incident during the team's stay in Pittsburgh.

[ Related: Reason behind Samuels' suspension ]

"As a university, we have to take a stance and protect our university," Martin said. "Unfortunately it put him in a tough spot. He's, in my opinion, done nothing wrong.  You always have to err on the side of caution and not do something and look back on it, and then regret your decision."

Even though the Border War between Kansas and Missouri formally ended on the floor with the two teams splitting a pair of games this season, the animosity between the two programs won't die just because they're in two separate conferences.

Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger offered further proof of that Saturday when he gleefully addressed a group of Jayhawks alumni in Omaha after Missouri's stunning upset loss at the hands of 15th-seeded Norfolk State. Without ever saying the name "Missouri" once, Zenger made it very clear he was pleased with the Tigers' early exit.

"Karma, karma, karma," Zenger said. "Learn how to handle success. The Jayhawks nation knows how to handle success. Five times I believe, we've handled it really, really well."

Zenger certainly wasn't the only Kansas fan in Omaha who seemed to be more pleased with the Tigers' loss than the Jayhawks' routine win over 15th-seeded Detroit.

They celebrated with smiles, high fives and fist pumps when Phil Pressey's desperation three at the buzzer missed the mark. And they wildly applauded Norfolk State's players when they came out of the tunnel during the Kansas-Detroit game.

If Notre Dame's Jerian Grant caught the highlights of Thursday's game between UNC Asheville and Syracuse, he certainly didn't learn from them.

The sophomore guard committed an identical mistake to the one Bulldogs' guard J.P. Primm made in a crucial moment Thursday, essentially torpedoing Notre Dame's hopes of forcing overtime against 10th-seeded Xavier and advancing to the Round 0f 32.

Notre Dame's Eric Atkins appeared to sink the front end of a 1-and-1 attempt with 2.8 seconds to go and the Irish down two when referees waived off the free throw and called a lane violation on Grant. TV replays showed it was the correct call because Grant left his position behind the 3-point arc too early, running in for a rebound before the ball hit the rim.

"You always hear that you never — you can't call that at the end of a game or it's just let the kids play the game out," Grant said. "And it hurts to lose on a call that — I mean, we didn't lose on that call, but it hurts to end the game like that."

Whether you agree the call should have been made likely depends on how you think referees should call the final seconds of a close game.

Those who want a game called the same way throughout will applaud the refs for making the correct call no matter the implications. Those who'd prefer to see referees make a game-changing call only when egregiously necessary will bemoan that the lane violation on a made free throw needlessly robbed the players of the chance to determine the outcome of the game.

The call was particularly significant because of the potential for the winner of Friday's game to make a substantial NCAA tournament run. As a result of second-seeded Duke's stunning loss earlier in the day, either the Irish or the Musketeers needed only to beat 15th-seeded Lehigh to advance to the Sweet 16.

VCU BracketPORTLAND, Ore. — Before his team's first NCAA tournament game since last year's stunning run from the First Four to the Final Four, VCU coach Shaka Smart wanted to make sure the Rams were mentally ready to make another push.

Smart handed each player a laminated copy of VCU's NCAA tournament bracket with the 12th-seeded Rams already meeting their preseason goal of advancing to the Sweet 16. Then he had each player sign a bigger version on the locker room wall, an exercise meant to help the players visualize their goal and commit to expending maximum effort to achieve it.

"When they signed, they're saying, 'I'm all in. I'm going to do everything it takes to accomplish this goal,'" Smart said.

VCU indeed lived up to that pledge in an impressive 62-59 upset victory over fifth-seeded Wichita State. The Rams stifled a normally efficient Shockers' offense with their signature "havoc" defense, holding Wichita State to 38 percent shooting and 20 points below its season scoring average.

The bracket on the wall is just one of many motivational tactics Smart has used during his highly successful three-year run at VCU.

Last season, he lit the February page of a calendar on fire after the Rams skidded into March on a slump. Then this fall, he handed out wallet-sized cards that read "It's over" on one side and "Own today" on the other to remind his players not to be satisfied with what they accomplished a year ago.

De'Mon Brooks and Wayne Blackshear (Getty Images)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Again the selection committee shipped Louisville out West. Again the Cardinals received a No. 4 seed. Again their opponent was a potentially feisty No. 13 seed.

Yes, there were a lot of similarities between Louisville's opening-round loss to Morehead State last March and its game against Davidson on Thursday, but the outcome wasn't one of them. The Cardinals avoided a second straight early NCAA tournament exit, dispatching the Wildcats 69-62 to earn a Round of 32 matchup with either fifth-seeded New Mexico or 12th-seeded Long Beach State.

"We're real proud of our effort," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. "We wanted to really pressure them without trapping to try to take their legs out a little bit, because they're such a great shooting team, that if you let them have their legs you could be in for a long night."

If 3-point shooting was what made Davidson a potential upset candidate entering play on Thursday, then it's not difficult to determine why the Wildcats'  hopes of a victory didn't materialize. A Davidson team that averages 78.4 points per game and was among the national leaders in made threes per game sank only 4 of 19 from behind the arc and needed almost 32 minutes to reach 40 points.

Credit Louisville's length and defensive pressure for taking the Wildcats out of any semblance of offensive rhythm even with  shot-blocking 7-footer Gorgui Dieng only logging 19 minutes as a result of foul trouble.  Davidson's De'Mon Brooks, the Southern Conference Player of the Year, made just 1 of 7 shots for five points, 11 below his season average.

"I think it was a combination of Louisville's great defense and us missing shots," Davidson coach Bob McKillop said. "There were several times we had wide-open looks and just didn't knock them down.