Baylor dominates Gonzaga to win NCAA crown

LOS ANGELES -- The Baylor Bears ended the Gonzaga Bulldogs' quest for an unbeaten NCAA championship season on Monday, clinching the US college basketball title with a 86-70 victory.

The Waco, Texas-based Baylor University team sealed their first ever "March Madness" title with a dominant performance against the Bulldogs, who were aiming to crown an undefeated season with a championship.

Monday's defeat at Indianapolis's Lucas Oil Stadium came just two days after Gonzaga's exhilarating semi-final victory over UCLA on Saturday, when Jalen Suggs' buzzer-beater sealed a 93-90 win.

For long periods on Monday, it looked as if Gonzaga were still nursing a hangover from that win, with Baylor dominating in all departments to build a comfortable lead well before the end.

Jared Butler led the Baylor scoring with 22 points, seven assists and three rebounds, while MaCio Teague had 19 points with two rebounds.

Baylor laid the foundations for success with a blistering start, jumping into a 9-0 lead that they never relinquished.

The Bears had surged into a 19-point lead midway through the first half and also led by 20 points at one stage in the second.

Baylor Bears coach Scott Drew said the fast start reflected his team's "culture of joy."

"They came out and fed off of each other and got off to a great start, and defensively we're pretty good," Drew said.

"Our guys have been motivated all year. It's a player-led team. We're so blessed to have unbelievable leadership. We play with a culture of joy.

"If you're going to war and I'm coaching, then I'm taking these guys."

Gonzaga, meanwhile, were left shattered in defeat, with Saturday's hero Suggs -- who led the Bulldogs' scoring with 22 points -- in tears.

"We just couldn't get anything going, you have to give credit to Baylor," said Gonzaga coach Mark Few.

"They were just so aggressive defensively we couldn't get anything going on the offensive end. Hats off to them. They dominated both ends of the ball all night."

Few had words of solace for his players, who had won 31 straight games this season by an average of 22.4 points.

"You can't go 31-0 and get to the last night and get beat and feel bad about it," Few said. "It was an unbelievable run we've been on. I just said to them this will pass, and they've got to remember what an amazing accomplishment it was just getting to this point."

Agence France-Presse

Fil-Am sets sights on NCAA finals in historic campaign

SAN FRANCISCO, California -- A rising college hoop star is aiming to be the second Filipino-American to win an NCAA championship in nearly half a century.

Virginia Cavaliers freshman point guard Kihei Clark hopes to tie with compatriot Raymond Townsend, whose UCLA Buins won the US collegiate basketball crown in 1975.

Clark has been a vital cog for the Virginia Cavaliers in this NCAA tournament, playing a crucial role in the final minutes with excellent defense and hitting clutch shots.

In the Cavaliers' last game in the Elite Eight vs Purdue, Clark made the game-tying assist to send the match into overtime and made the final two free throws that the sealed win.

"It's really exciting... There's no words that can explain the emotions as we're going through," Clark's Filipina mother, Sharon Simeon-Clark, told ABS-CBN News.

Clark's mother said she was praying for a miracle before her son made the game-tying assist.

"We're very proud of him. But oh my gosh, it was amazing! We couldn't even believe what just happened," she said.

Addressing Filipino fans, Clark said: "Thank you for the support I really appreciate the support I get out there, it means a lot to me to get so much support from the Philippines."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Advertisers bet big on March Madness as live sports ratings wane

The annual NCAA men's basketball tournament is still among the biggest draws on the sports calendar for advertisers looking to get in front of large audiences, even as TV ratings drop for some major U.S. sporting events.

The past 12 months have brought a slew of close finishes for major sports championships. But with the exceptions of the National Basketball Association's Finals last June and Major League Baseball's World Series in the fall, the audiences were not as large as hoped for, underscoring that in today's shifted- viewing environment, live sports are no longer bulletproof.

Even February's Super Bowl, the first to go into overtime, fell victim to the NFL's season-long ratings decline.

That has put more scrutiny on pricey ad buys for big-time sporting events. Yet advertisers are still willing to fork over major dollars to get in front of the events' large audiences, which include young males, among the most-coveted and hardest-to-reach demographic.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's three-week tournament is the second-largest generator of national TV ad dollars among all U.S. sports' post-seasons, trailing only the NFL.

It also is among the priciest ad buys in television. While CBS Corp and Time Warner’s Turner Sports, which have jointly aired the tournament since 2011, do not comment on ad rates, the price for 30 seconds of airtime during the April 3 National Championship game ranges from $1.2 million to more than $1.5 million, according to three sources with knowledge of negotiations.

Last year's National Championship game averaged around $1.4 million for a 30-second spot, according to ad-tracking firm Kantar Media, and the tournament brought in more than $1.2 billion for CBS and Turner.

But betting big on a major sporting events that under-deliver, especially with rising ad costs, puts marketers in a bind.

"You're not necessarily going to get fired for putting more money on YouTube or more money in Google search, Facebook or even Snapchat at it this point in time," said a media buyer who requested anonymity. "Yet they may question you when you say you’re going to spend $5 million on a Super Bowl spot, or $1.5 on the NCAA tourney and have it fall flat or be an unexciting game or have it underdeliver."

For the entire 2017 tournament, ad rates are up by "mid single-digit increases" according to John Bogusz, executive vice president of sports sales and marketing at CBS.

Some of that is buoyed by the tournament having 19 different corporate sponsors, three more than last year, that have ad buys throughout the tournament.

“We got this major jump start in ad sales, because we have upwards of 60 percent of our advertisers already in,” said Jon Diament, executive vice president for Turner Sports ad sales.

(Reporting by Tim Baysinger; Editing by Anna Driver and Dan Grebler)

source: news.abs-cbn.com