U.S. college basketball's defending national champions, the Connecticut Huskies, have been eliminated from this year's championship tournament.
The 10th-seeded North Carolina State Wolfpack upset Connecticut, a regional second-seed this year. A drive to the basket by Julius Hodge with just four seconds left Sunday sealed the 65-62 win for NC State.
The Wolfpack's triumph was the only big upset in second-round play Sunday - eight games that rounded out the field for the tournament's so-called) Sweet 16 round.
Two of NC State's close neighbors in North Carolina, Duke and the University of North Carolina, are regional number-one seeds in the tournament, and they also won on Sunday. The three campuses are all within 36 kilometers of each other.
The North Carolina Tar Heels crushed Iowa State, 92-65, and the Duke Blue Devils survived a tough 63-55 win over Mississippi State.
For Duke's coach, Mike Krzyzewski, the win was his 66th career victory in national tournament play, a coaching record. Krzyzewski surpassed a mark set by former North Carolina coach Dean Smith.
In other NCAA games Sunday, second-seed Oklahoma State held off Southern Illinois, 85-77. Fourth-seed Louisville cruised by Georgia Tech, 76-54. Fifth-seed Villanova pulled off a mild upset by defeating fourth-seed Florida, 76-65. And the two teams that pulled off the biggest upsets in the first round were sent home: Vermont dropped a 72-61 decision to fifth-seed Michigan State, and Bucknell was ousted by sixth-seed Wisconsin, 71-62.
The next round of tournament play, on Thursday and Friday, will reduce the field of 16 remaining teams to eight, and the Final Four will be set by next Sunday. The men's basketball semifinals are on April 2, with the national championship game two days later in St. Louis, Missouri.
