AP110403046540

It's as time-honored a tradition at the women's Final Four as UConn or Tennessee cutting down the nets.

No matter where the event is held, the floor gets more garish every year.

This year's attempt at a retro court at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis is as big a mess as any of the past designs. Whose idea was the flashlight-shaped paint that looks like something off a Sorry! board? And why is the floor a sickly yellow color with faded maroon trim that looks like it was drawn in with crayons?

It's difficult to say whether this year's court is worse than previous ones because there have been so many odd designs to choose from.

Related: Get Connecticut and Butler Finals gear

There was the grapefruit-covered court in St. Petersburg in 2008. There was the two-tone Gateway Arch that spread across the entire floor in St. Louis in 2009. And there were the painted-in multi-colored 3-point arcs last year in San Antonio.

Fullscreen capture 442011 101441 AM

If the reviews on Twitter on Sunday night were any indication, this

If Kemba Walker's array of shots in the lane and Jeremy Lamb's buttery jump shot are the best things about watching UConn basketball, then Alex Oriakhi's pregame dance routine is a not-so-distant third.

CBS aired this video of the sophomore big man doing his seizure-like version of the Harlem Shake before Saturday's national semifinal against Kentucky as his teammates clap in a circle around him. That the Harlem Shake is a few years past its prime as a dance craze doesn't bother the Huskies since their 10-game win streak coincides with Oriakhi unveiling his pregame dance.

"I've been doing it since the Big East tournament, so I'm not going to stop," Oriakhi said Sunday. "It's a good luck dance."

Amazingly enough, Oriakhi isn't the only UConn player to gain Internet fame as a result of a cheesy dance move. This move earlier in the NCAA tournament from Lamb has become a fan favorite and garnered more than 30,000 hits on YouTube so far.

Walker and fellow guard Shabazz Napier were asked

109918927

At a time when instant feedback has become the norm in America, the backlash against Missouri's coaching hire still came shockingly swiftly.

Word leaked just before midnight on Sunday night that Missouri was close to an agreement with Miami coach Frank Haith. Within hours, irate Tigers fans flooded Internet forums with threads calling for athletic director Mike Alden's firing and launched phone and email campaigns urging the school's board of curators not to approve Haith's contract.

The negativity of Missouri fans toward the hiring is a product of both Haith's seven mediocre seasons at Miami and of raised expectations after a failed bid to pluck Matt Painter from Purdue.

Once Painter pulled out of the running for the Missouri job last week, the thought was the Tigers would turn their attention to VCU coach Shaka Smart or perhaps a more affordable but still desirable candidate like Wichita State's Gregg Marshall. Instead the choice was Haith, who has amassed a forgettable 129-101

111504681

If there's still interest in a rematch between two-time defending national champion UConn and the Stanford team that handed the Huskies their lone regular-season loss, perhaps the NCAA can quickly arrange a third-place game.

uspw_5252152(2)Otherwise neither of those two juggernauts will be playing Tuesday night thanks to a pair of improbable upsets on Sunday at the women's Final Four.

First, Texas A&M overcame a 10-point deficit in the final six minutes to stun top-seeded Stanford, 63-62, and secure its first-ever appearance in the national title game. Then Notre Dame joined the Aggies by surviving a furious UConn rally to clinch a 72-63 victory in the fourth meeting of the season between the two Big East rivals.

As a result, Connecticut will not win a third straight title, three-time national player of the year Maya Moore's career ends in defeat and women's basketball will have a champion besides UConn or Tennessee for just the fifth time in the last 17 years.

"This is what women's basketball

AP071228022159When Larry Krystkowiak stepped away from the head coaching job at his alma mater Montana to become a Milwaukee Bucks assistant in 2006, it appeared he was content to leave the college game behind.

Five years later, a job opened up that was attractive enough to him to lure him back.

Krystkowiak will be introduced as Utah's next head coach at a news conference on Monday afternoon. It's a job that's a good fit for him, according to Montana coach Wayne Tinkle, Krystkowiak's former college teammate and successor with the Grizzlies.

"I thought it was the perfect storm," Tinkle said by phone on Sunday. "He loves Salt Lake City, the team is transitioning into the Pac-10 and it was the chance to be a head coach again. I think it all came together for him at the right time, so I'm thrilled for him."

Krystkowiak inherits a program that has endured two straight losing seasons and has not been able to recapture the success of the Rick Majerus era. Neither Ray Giacoletti nor Jim Boylen have been

Fullscreen capture 432011 65527 AMFullscreen capture 432011 71250 AM

Just because Kentucky isn't actually going to win college basketball's 2011 national title doesn't mean fans can't buy a T-shirt that says the Wildcats did.

Fanscloset.com has been selling several Kentucky national championship T-shirts since the Wildcats advanced to the Final Four last weekend. They were still available for purchase on Sunday morning even though the Wildcats were eliminated from title contention Saturday night with a 56-55 loss to UConn.

For those who are going to claim these T-shirts are a jinx, Kentucky isn't the only school that had national championship gear on sale early. Kohl's is selling this Nike T-shirt proclaiming Butler as 2011 champs.

Great shirts, guys. Would it have killed you to wait until Monday night to begin selling them?

Once Kentucky regained possession down two in the closing seconds of Saturday's Final Four matchup with UConn, coach John Calipari had to make perhaps the most important decision of his two-year tenure in Lexington.

Would the Wildcats turn to point guard Brandon Knight to bail them out with a clutch shot as he's done so many times already this season. Or would Kentucky put the ball in someone else's hands since Knight looked gassed much of the second half and couldn't find the range on his jump shot?

Nobody should have been too surprised Kentucky played through Knight yet again, but this time the freshman point guard had no magic left.

The combination of UConn hedging on a high ball screen and then Kemba Walker's fierce defense prevented Knight from finding a lane to the rim, so he passed to teammate DeAndre Liggins spotted up behind the arc. Liggins missed a heavily contested 3-pointer over the outstretched arms of Jeremy Lamb, enabling UConn to secure a 56-55 victory and advance to

111451209

When Gordon Hayward, Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard led Butler to its first-ever appearance in the national title game last spring, it seemed like the culmination of a once-in-a-generation Hoosiers-like run for the mid-major powerhouse.

Who would have thought then that the Bulldogs would be back just 12 months later?

For the second consecutive year, Butler will play the role of America's darlings against a big-name program in the national championship game. The Bulldogs earned a date against either Kentucky or UConn by winning a battle of Cinderellas on Saturday, ousting upstart VCU 70-62 in the first of two national semifinals.

They did it by punishing VCU on the glass, 48-32. They did it by limiting the streak-shooting Rams to pedestrian 36.4 percent 3-point shooting. And they did it by riding the offensive heroics of Mack, who scored 24 points on 8-for-11 shooting, hit 5 of 6 from behind the arc and set up a crucial Shawn Vanzant 3-pointer with a sweet pass out of a double team with