March Madness live: NCAA Tournament schedule, scores, highlights and more

Wisconsin star Nigel Hayes has a celebrity crush and wants the media to help. We’re not quite sure that we qualify, but we’re suckers for young kids finding love -- especially Hayes, who’s one of the most fun guys in basketball.

Hayes dedicated his entire post-game press conference to Lea Michele, saying:

Miami picked one heck of a way to stop Wichita State’s comeback in its tracks. Up to this point the Canes were on their heels -- reeling from a push by the Shockers. Miami’s answer to stop the bleeding: A casual half court alley-oop.

Momentum is back in Miami’s control, but this moment will last forever.

Yale shocked the world when it beat top 25 mainstay Baylor on Thursday. Can the 12th-seeded Bulldogs keep dancing and topple Duke in the second round of the NCAA Tournament?

The Ivy League champions trailed for less than a minute in the second half in the biggest victory in Yale basketball history. The Bulldogs led by as many as 13 points and then withstood a furious Baylor rally to win their first NCAA Tournament game ever. Makai Mason stepped into a starring role in his first appearance at the big dance, scoring 31 points thanks in part to an 11-of-11 performance at the free throw line.

Normally we’re happy to get one team we can call a Cinderella, an underdog with a great story who goes on to win a shocking game and get their name inscribed in March lore.

This year, we got, like, six. The first round of the NCAA Tournament was the most ridiculous in recent memory. It’s the first time 10 double-digit seeds have ever made it out of the first round. And it’s not just double-digit seeds: We got a 13-seed, a 14-seed and a 15-seed still alive. We had buzzer-beaters, we had the most popular national title pick in the field eliminated. Everything is going bonkers.

The 2016 NCAA Tournament kicked off in earnest on Thursday when a pair of 12-seeds brought their own madness to the world’s most famous bracket. Yale and Little Rock both scored big upsets by defeating five-seeds Baylor and Purdue, respectively. Can South Dakota State, the first round’s last remaining 12 seed, pull off a similar feat by beating Maryland on Friday?

South Dakota State-Maryland isn’t the only interesting matchup on Friday’s slate. Wisconsin, coming off a pair of Final Four runs in the past two seasons, will try to keep its streak of big dance success alive when the Badgers face Pittsburgh. Gary Payton II will attempt to make his lone trip to the NCAA Tournament worthwhile by leading Oregon State over VCU. Syracuse will look to prove it belongs in the bracket when it plays Dayton -- and those are just three of the 7-10 games the Selection Committee has in store for day two.

It was a good day to be a 12 seed.

Baylor used a late comeback to pull within a single point with 16 seconds remaining. Yale guard Nick Victor’s missed free throw gave the favored Bears a chance to tie or win this game with one final shot as the clock ran down. However, Lester Medford’s lost the ball on his last-ditch drive to the basket, allowing Yale to escape with the win.

Providence got nine lives against USC in the final game of Thursday night, and the Friars won on the ninth. After a series of miscues and missed free throws late by the Trojans, Providence had one final chance inbounding the ball under its own basket with three seconds remaining. It wasn’t Kris Dunn or Ben Bentil, but sophomore wing Rodney Bullock who made the game-winning layup off a nice play by coach Ed Cooley.

Providence 70, USC 69, final. That means we’ve got UNC vs. Providence on Saturday in the round of 32. Should be a good one.

UNC-Wilmington coach Kevin Keatts showed his team highlights of Duke’s previous first-round upsets in the NCAA Tournament to schools like Mercer, Lehigh and VCU before the Seahawks took on the Blue Devils. So far, it’s working. UNC-Wilmington leads 43-40 at the half.

Every year, lots of people watch March Madness who don’t watch college basketball throughout the year. If you are one of these people, you might be asking: Who is that player on Duke that looks exactly like Ted Cruz?

Grayson Allen is a basketball player for Duke. He is a player that was destined to be hated because he is good and plays for Duke. This season he has tripped a couple people and probably traveled on this game-winner.

Gatorade was invented at the University of Florida. Of course they drink that. But with the Florida women’s team ready to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, which is sponsored by Powerade, the team has to get creative. All those Powerade bottles shown above are filled with Gatorade, and even though everyone can see right through it, that’s the way it has to be. Welcome to corporate America!

It’s the same thing for cups, too, if you were wondering.

Three of the four No. 1 seeds will get started on Thursday. Virginia, Kansas, and North Carolina should all dispatch their opponents with little trouble, but there are intriguing games up and down the schedule. Perrenial tournament force UConn is only a No. 9 seed this year, but they’re coming off a conference tournament win and will play No. 8 Colorado in the first round. The winner of that will go on to face Kansas, barring the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history on the part of Austin Peay.

College basketball bluebloods Kentucky, Arizona, and Indiana are all in action as well, but won’t be able to go through the motions and expect to breeze into the second round. Arizona has to take care of business against a tough Wichita State team, and Indiana has a very lively Chattanooga team on their plate that went 29-5 this year. Stony Brook won the America East and went 26-6 this year, but has a tall order ahead of them in a Kentucky team that appears to be pretty grumpy about being slotted in as a No. 4 seed.

March Madness is here, and so are the two greatest days in sports, as the 32 first round NCAA Tournament games will be played on Thursday and Friday.

Each day will have 16 games, starting around noon ET and wrapping up around midnight. The games will be split up on four networks — CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV. (Don’t know what truTV is? We’ve got you covered). The games will also be split up at eight different locations — Providence, Rhode Island; Raleigh, North Carolina; Des Moines, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; St. Louis, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Brooklyn, New York and Spokane, Washington.

The Iona Gaels men’s basketball team got off to a slow start in the 2015-16 season. They dropped 6 of their first 10 games and were struggling to find their rhythm. But Tim Cluess, their head coach, is of the philosophy that the measure of true character is what you do when you fail. His players could have felt sorry for themselves, packed it in, and quit ... or they could bounce back, work harder, and make good things happen. His team chose the latter.

This is the story of how -- behind the veteran leadership of seniors A.J. English, Aaron Rountree, Isaiah Williams, and Ibn Muhammad -- Iona was able to turn their season around despite the early losses and injuries like the broken hand suffered by English, their leading scorer. But Iona ultimately rallied together, with their unbreakable bond propelling them to a late-season surge.