13 hours Ago
The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’ s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Great things sometimes come in fours.
Will the Final Four provide a chaotic end to a chalky men’s NCAA Tournament? The Sweet 16 and Elite Eight showed signs, even as a few lower seeds found themselves getting shot out of cannons by the four No. 1s — Auburn , Duke , Houston and Florida — that reached San Antonio. The average margin in the regional rounds was 10.
9 points, but five of the 12 games between the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight came down to two possessions or fewer. Now there’s no cannon fodder left . This is probably the most stacked Final Four ever.
The other candidate is 2008, the lone previous year to feature four No. 1 seeds. In both years, the No.
1s equal the four top teams in Sports Reference’s Simple Rating System. But SRS would favor all four 2025 teams over 2008’s best team and eventual champ, Kansas. Advertisement My favorite subplot: Each semifinal pits an old-school NCAA rulebreaker against a millennial coach who will never know a world where he might get himself ousted over “impermissible phone calls” to recruits, as Kelvin Sampson did once upon a time at Indiana.
Arguably, Sampson resigned under pressure over alleged lies , but bear with me and go read Joe Rexrode’s story about Sampson at Houston, fellow NCAA outlaw Bruce Pearl at Auburn and relative infants Jon Scheyer at Duke and Todd Golden at Florida. What do we make of each semifinal? Auburn and Florida get things started tonight at 6:09 p.m.
ET on CBS . Duke and Houston follow around 8:49 p.m.
ET. One more story for the road: CJ Moore’s collection of coaches’ perspectives on the semis. Next, our women’s final is now set.
Staley vs. Auriemma to crown a champion The favorites looked like ..
. well, the favorites. Neither of the Final Four matchups in the women’s NCAA Tournament provided much intrigue last night.
No. 1 South Carolina pulled away in a 17-point win over No. 1 Texas , while No.
2 UConn dominated in a 34-point shellacking of No. 1 UCLA : Paige Bueckers. Basketball wizard.
🪄 [image or embed] — Daniel Thompson ( @dr-thompson.bsky.social ) April 4, 2025 at 10:23 PM A few storylines to watch Sunday: Speaking of greatness: Ovechkin ties Gretzky The Great Eight has tied the Great One.
Alex Ovechkin ripped home a pair of one-timers in last night’s win over the Blackhawks to match Wayne Gretzky atop the NHL all-time goals leaderboard. Ovechkin reached the 894-goal mark in 1,486 games, one less than the 1,487 games it took the GOAT. Oh, and Gretzky took it all in from a suite in Capital One Arena.
Read his comments on Ovechkin’s chase here . Much more on Ovi in tomorrow’s edition of The Pulse. More news: The NBA fined Grizzlies guard Ja Morant $75,000 for repeatedly using finger-gun gestures despite a warning from the league.
More on Morant’s head-scratching choice . The Pistons are playoff-bound for the first time since 2019. Good for Detroit.
Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang is investing $25 million in U.S. soccer for the development of women’s soccer – six months after pledging an additional $30 million .
Unsurprisingly, Torpedo bat sales are skyrocketing. Yes, they’re expensive . 📺 MLB : Reds at Brewers 7 p.
m. ET on FS1 Though it is not this newsletter’s policy to promote April NL Central baseball, this particular national TV spot includes Elly De La Cruz on one side and Jackson Chourio on the other. 📺 UFL: Memphis Showboats at D.
C. Defenders 8 p.m.
ET on ABC The spring football league of the moment, ready-made for those of you going through pigskin withdrawal. The Defenders have Lynn Bowden, the former Kentucky star, at a million different positions . Very fun player! Elsewhere Chris Vannini’s story on Birmingham going for this league’s fourth title in a row, now under longtime college coach Skip Holtz, son of Lou.
Advertisement 📺 Formula 1: Japanese Grand Prix 1 a.m. ET Sunday on ESPN Red Bull has already swapped out new driver Liam Lawson, sending him to the second-team Racing Bulls in favor of Yuki Tsunoda.
It’s a ruthless business . McLaren has won the year’s first two grands prix, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri splitting them. The Athletic ’s weekly sports news quiz .
Popsicle/ice pop molds, like these , which help me nefariously sneak veggies into my daughter’s diet. — Chris Branch Xero “barefoot” running sandals. — Jason Kirk Rebecca Tauber’s story on how the woman with a near-perfect men’s NCAA Tournament bracket made her picks.
This handy guide to groceries worth stocking up on when they’re on sale. — Torrey Hart I started Assassin’s Creed: Shadows this week (Just in time for the Japanese GP 🇯🇵). As a certified history nerd who someday wants to overcome his fear of heights, I love this series.
The ninja main character is noticeably short, too, so it’s just nice to see myself represented in a video game. — Patrick Iversen These Vietnamese American garlic noodles from J. Kenji López-Alt – Alex Kirshner Those three-minute key-moment MLB highlight packages when your team actually wins.
Sublime. — Chris Sprow Marcus Thompson on LeBron James’ telling reaction to the Warriors’ win Thursday. Adventure time.
Spotify recommended a song titled, “・-・・ ・ - ・・ - --・ ---.” It linked me to an IG page, which led me to a compilation from 2020. But when I plugged the code into Google — nothing.
A morse code translation site: “Cannot translate these characters.” Then I realized they were the wrong dashes and dots. I typed it in manually (.
-.. .
– .. – –.
—) and got “LETITGO.” Back to Google. “LETITGO” + the name of the label that had appeared along the way.
And I found it. The artist is Peter Broderick. — Levi Weaver Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday : Our newser on the Cowboys’ acquisition of Joe Milton from the Patriots.
Most-read on the website yesterday : Britt Ghiroli’s fun story on some MLB players’ frugal tendencies . Ticketing links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication. (Top photo: Patrick Smith / Getty Images).
