Alabama, Houston top final AP Top 25 ahead of March Madness Ole Miss hires former Texas coach Chris Beard Kansas coach Bill Self out of hospital after heart procedure Will Wade hired by McNeese State a year after LSU firing amid probe March Madness: Alabama, Houston, Kansas, Purdue the 1 seeds South Carolina No. 1 overall seed in women’s NCAA Tournament

The No. 1 overall seed for March Madness is also No. 1 in the final AP Top 25 rankings.

Alabama, fresh off the SEC Tournament title and regular season crown, moved up to first place on Monday, earning 48 of 61 first-place votes, beating Houston, who lost in the American Athletic Conference Finals without star quarterback Marcus Sasser. Alabama also spent a week at number one last month.

“We’ve set goals for the summer: regular season, tournament (leagues), obviously the national championship,” Crimson Tide guard Javon Quinerley said. “I’ll make sure our guys are ready to play no matter who we face.”

It will be Texas A&M-Corpus Christi or Southeast Missouri State in the Top Four game on Tuesday night. The winner will play Crimson Tide on Thursday in Birmingham, an hour from their Tuscaloosa campus.

Alabama, ranked No. 1 in the Southern Region, will take on West Virginia or Maryland for a spot in the Sweet 16 with a win.

And how nice it would be for the team that got through the ring: Former teammate Darius Miles and another man were charged with murder for the January shooting, an interrogator testified to star freshman Brandon Miller, Miles asked for a gun that night, and police also said that Jayden Bradley was at the scene.

“Beating the teams we had to beat to get here was tough,” Alabama coach Nate Oates said last week. “So proud of the guys, proud of their efforts, proud that they were able to really focus. Received greater psychological stability.

Houston still received nine first-place votes and was No. 2 after losing to Memphis in the AAC Tournament Finals, where Sasser injured his groin in the semi-final round. He hasn’t played in the championship and his status will be closely watched ahead of the Cougars’ first NCAA game against Northern Kentucky.

The first seed in the East Region, Purdue took three top spots and finished third in the AP Poll after the Big Ten regular season champion also won his conference tournament. Kansas, which is expecting Bill Self to return to the NCAA Tournament after a medical scare, was fourth after receiving the No. 1 seed in the West.

Texas crushed the Jayhawks in the Big 12 Finals to round out the top five.

Marquette remained in 6th place after the title in the Big East tournament. UCLA picked up one first place and a seventh-place finish after losing the Pac-12 Tournament Finals to Arizona, who finished 8th. Gonzaga and the University of California, Connecticut round out the top ten.

“We have a dedicated team. We’re not going to do what our past teams did, which is maybe wallow in a loss,” said Husky coach Dan Hurley, whose team lost to the Golden Eagles in the semi-finals of the Big East tournament. “We’re going to recover very quickly and get ready to run next week.”

RISE AND FALL

Duke made the biggest jump in the final poll since beating Virginia for the ACC Tournament title, moving up nine spots to 12th, the Blue Devils’ highest since the third week of the season. Freshman coach John Scheyer ranked them fifth in the East in the NCAA Tournament.

UCLA, the runner-up in the West, dropped five spots to seventh in the final poll.

AND FROM

Memphis received almost no votes last week, but the AAC Tournament victory allowed Penny Hardaway’s team to vote in 24th place for the first time this season. 25, having spent the first four weeks in the School History Survey in January and February.

The Tigers and Owls entered the AP Poll with Creighton, who lost to Xavier in the Big East semi-finals, and Kentucky, who lost to Vanderbilt in the quarter-final round of the SEC tournament.

CONFERENCE WATCH

Widely considered the toughest league in the country, the Big 12 features two teams in the top five and five in the top 25. In the league, seven schools head to the NCAA Tournament after Oklahoma State was left in a bubble.

The SEC, which tied the Big Ten in NCAA filings with eight, had four teams in the final top 25. The Big East and the ACC each had three teams, although the Big East had two in the top 10 and the ACC’s leading team was Duke at No. 12.

OXFORD, Mississippi. Mississippi hired Chris Byrd as a basketball coach five weeks after he was fired from Texas after being arrested for domestic violence.

The Rebels announced Byrd’s hiring on Monday and will feature him Tuesday at a public event at the SBJ Pavilion. Beard has been named Conference Coach of the Year four times and was named AP National Coach of the Year in 2019.

But his two-year stay at his alma mater in Texas came to an abrupt end in January, although the domestic crime charges were dropped on February 15. reasonable doubt.

Texas suspended Byrd after his December 12 arrest and fired him three weeks later when Texas officials told Byrd’s attorney that he was “not right” to run the program. Byrd was arrested when his fiancée, Randy True, called 911 and told officers that Byrd had strangled, bitten, and hit her during an altercation at his home.

She later said that Beard was not strangling her, but was defending herself, and that she never intended to arrest and prosecute Beard.

Beard replaces Kermit Davis, who was expelled on February 24 after going 74-79 for nearly five full seasons.

“We have carefully evaluated a number of outstanding candidates and there is no doubt that Coach Bird is one of the best coaches in the country,” said Keith Carter, the school’s vice chancellor of athletics. “After doing due diligence and talking to several people on and off the court, it was clear that he was the right person to lead our team to greatness.”

Beard has directed three different NCAA Tournament programs since 2016, including the 2019 Championship and the Elite Eight a year earlier at Texas Institute of Technology. He is 237-98 as a head coach and 11-5 in the NCAA Tournament.

“I’m honored to join the Ole Miss family and excited to get started at this great university,” said Beard, who was 29-13 in Texas. “I cannot express how grateful I am to Chancellor (Glenn) Boyce, Keith Carter and the rest of the selection committee for their belief that I will lead this program. I really look forward to being an active part of the Oxford community.”

Bird spent five seasons at Texas Tech, scoring 112-55 in a program that had suffered five losing seasons in the previous six years. The Red Raiders made their first Elite Eight in their second season and made it to the National Championship game in 2019.

Beard led Little Rock to a 30-5 record and the Sun Belt Conference title in his only season, advancing to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

LAWRENCE, Kansas. Kansas Coach Bill Self has been released from a hospital in the Kansas City area where he was recuperating from a procedure to treat a blocked artery in his heart, and the Hall of Famer will rejoin the No. 3 Jayhawks for the defense. his NCAA championship.

His longtime assistant Norm Roberts said Self would likely return to the office to begin training for Howard. Here’s who the Jayhawks’ best players will open against in the NCAA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa, after the selection committee unexpectedly placed them in the Western Region.

“He was talking to the guys today and they were so excited to hear his voice,” Roberts said. “He spoke and achieved it, as usual. He said: “Guys, I’m back. I’m ready to go.’ And he was just talking about what we need to do to be successful.”

Self went to the emergency room shortly after watching the Jayhawks in the final shootout before the Big 12 quarterfinals, complaining of chest tightness and balance problems.

Dr. Mark Wylie, head of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Kansas Health System, said Self, 60, had a standard heart catheterization and two stents placed to treat clogged arteries.

“Coach Self responded well to the procedure and is expected to make a full recovery,” Wylie said.

Roberts also served as interim coach at the start of the season while Self served a four-game suspension imposed by the school. Kansas beat West Virginia and Iowa State in the Big 12 with Roberts back on the bench before losing to seventh-seeded Texas 76-56 in the championship game.

Now Self is back.

“I am so grateful to the wonderful health care staff at the University of Kansas for the excellent care I have received,” Self said in a statement. “I’m proud of our team and coaching staff for how they handled this challenge and I’m happy to be back with them when the season hits.”

Self is 581-130 in two decades with Kansas and 788-235 in 30 seasons as a head coach, including stops in Oral Roberts, Tulsa and Illinois. He led the Jayhawks to the national title in 2008 by defeating Memphis in overtime. Kansas then hung a sixth championship banner at Allen Fieldhouse after beating North Carolina last April.

The Jayhawks, who won the Big 12 title in the regular season, were hardly bothered by their lackluster loss to Texas when they also didn’t have injured quarterback Kevin McCallar Jr. Instead, they looked forward to the NCAA Tournament and got both. McCallar and their coach are back on the court.

“He’s one of the greatest coaches of all time, so that’s a big bonus for us,” Jayhawks defenseman Dajuan Harris Jr. said. “We missed him last weekend. Coach Rob is great, but having (Himself) back is great for us. He has been in March Madness for a long time. He knows what he’s doing. We just have to watch his back.”

Will Wade, who was fired from LSU last year because…