UCLA to play Minnesota in NCAA men’s basketball tournament
Game set for Friday
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—UCLA received the sixth seed in the South Region and will play 11th-seeded Minnesota Friday in Austin, Texas, in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
“We had hoped that we were going to go to San Jose,” Bruin coach Ben Howland said today after the tournament bracket was announced. “That was obviously our first choice cause it’s closest to home, best for our fans to be able to support their team.”
Two Pacific-12 Conference will play in San Jose—California and Oregon. Another Pac-12 team, Arizona, will play in Salt Lake City.
“They have the opportunity for their fans to get to their games a lot easier than ours,” Howland said.
If UCLA defeats the Golden Gophers, it would face the winner of Friday’s game between third-seeded Florida and 14th-seeded Northwestern St. next Sunday.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Steve Alford was introduced today as UCLA’s head basketball coach, saying accepting the job was a “leap of faith” for him and his family, but the allure of the university’s storied basketball tradition was hard to pass up.
“When a place like UCLA calls — when you think of excellence and when you think of college basketball at its pinnacle, it’s UCLA basketball,” Alford told reporters in Westwood.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — USC has reached an agreement with Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield to become its men’s basketball coach, athletic director Pat Haden announced.
Another team will earn an automatic bid into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament with a conference tournament victory Wednesday.
Bucknell and Lafayette were scheduled to meet in the Patriot League final at 7:30 p.m. EST.
The winner will join the teams that have already automatically qualified for the NCAA field:
• Belmont (Ohio Valley Conference)
• Creighton (Missouri Valley)
• Davidson (Southern)
• Florida Gulf Coast (Atlantic Sun)
• Gonzaga (West Coast)
• Harvard (Ivy League)
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Amid questions on whether it’s appropriate for a rich man’s son to receive free tuition, the son of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs is defending the $54,000-a-year football scholarship he received from UCLA.
Justin Combs, 18, says he worked for it, and UCLA is pointing out that athletic scholarships do not come from pools of funds earmarked for poor but deserving students.
WESTWOOD, Calif.—A funeral will be held Friday for Edgar Lacey, a starting forward on UCLA's 1965 NCAA championship team who quit the squad in 1968 after being benched during a landmark game against Houston.
Lacey died last week at the age of 66, said UCLA Sports Information Director Marc Dellins, who did not have further details.
The funeral will be held 10 a.m. Friday at Calvary Chapel in Downey, located at 12808 Woodruff Ave.
