Top seed Houston sinks Purdue with last-second layup
Mar 28, 2025; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Purdue Boilermakers guard Fletcher Loyer (2) reacts against the Houston Cougars in the first half during a Midwest Regional semifinal of the 2025 NCAA tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Robert Goddin-Imagn Images INDIANAPOLIS — At a quarter ’til 1 a.m. local time, Houston guard Milos Uzan dropped in a game-winning layup and the Cougars grabbed the final Elite Eight spot in a 62-60 thriller over Purdue in the late-night Midwest Region semifinal that began Friday.
With the game tied at 60, top-seeded Houston began its final possession with 2.8 seconds left and the ball out of bounds to the right of the basket it was attacking. Uzan inbounded the ball to Joseph Tugler in the lane and stepped in to catch a pass from Tugler and lay it in with the clock reading 0.9.
Purdue’s subsequent inbounds pass was caught by Braden Smith moving from left to right on the Boilermakers’ side of halfcourt, but a final heave fell short.
Uzan had 22 points and six assists for the Cougars (33-4), and Emanuel Sharp scored 17 points. Houston will play second-seeded Tennessee on Sunday afternoon in the Midwest Region final, the Cougars’ first appearance in the Elite Eight since 2022.
Houston leading scorer LJ Cryer was 1 of 11 from the field when he popped to the right off of a flare screen to connect on his first 3-pointer of the game for a 60-55 lead with 3:34 to go.
Purdue called its last timeout with 2:32 remaining, and Smith found Trey Kaufman-Renn on a high pick-and-roll for his 14th assist of the game to whittle the deficit to 60-57.
In the last minute, Kaufman-Renn gave Purdue an extra possession with an offensive rebound of Smith’s missed 3-point attempt, and Smith, the Big Ten Player of the Year, made the most of it.
He would get a 15th assist to keep the Boilermakers in position to win and advance to a regional final against Tennessee for the second consecutive season.
Smith dribbled the ball at edge of the March Madness logo as the clock ticked under 40 seconds and attacked across the top of the key, into the lane before finding Heide for another chance from the corner directly across the floor from Purdue’s bench. Hedie atoned with a game-tying trey to even the game at 60-all.
The Boilermakers stacked defensive stops and fought back to make it a two-point game with under four minutes to play after falling behind by double figures.
Heide drained his second 3-pointer of the game, an NBA range shot beyond the top of the key, and Kaufman-Renn put in two free throws with 4:17 left to erase most of Houston’s largest lead of the game.
Uzan found the gas pedal with foul trouble factoring into head coach Matt Painter’s Purdue lineup combinations. He canned his career-best fifth 3-pointer of the night to hike the Houston lead to 53-46, then made the lead 10 with his sixth make in nine attempts.
Smith played all 40 minutes for the third consecutive NCAA Tournament game and had seven points and Kaufman-Renn had 14 points and five rebounds. Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer had 16 points after scoring 12 of the Boilermakers first 16.
Coming off of a 30-point game against Gonzaga in the second round, Cryer was held scoreless in the first half and missed all six of his shots.
Purdue led 31-29 at halftime, having held Houston to 9-of-30 shooting (30 percent).
–Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media
Sports
Sharks beat Oilers to halt five-game slide
Feb 28, 2026; San Jose, California, USA; Edmonton Oilers left wing Zach Hyman (18) scores a goal against San Jose Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov (30) during the first period at SAP Center at San Jose. Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images Shakir Mukhamadullin scored the game-winner on a slap shot midway through the third period as the San Jose Sharks defeated the visiting Edmonton Oilers 5-4 on Saturday.
Michael Misa had a goal and an assist, and 12 different players recorded points for the Sharks, who ended a five-game losing streak, their second longest of the season.
Connor McDavid, the NHL’s leading scorer, led Edmonton with three assists, while Evan Bouchard had a goal and two assists.
Macklin Celebrini opened the scoring 8:34 into the first period for San Jose. Oilers goaltender Connor Ingam, who made 28 saves, lost his stick on the previous sequence. He thought the puck had been cleared far enough away from his zone to retrieve it, but the Sharks’ Will Smith retrieved it and sent it over to Celebrini for his team-leading 29th of the season.
Misa and Barclay Goodrow also scored in the first period as the Sharks recorded three goals in the opening 20 minutes for the second straight time against Edmonton this season.
Last time, on Jan. 29th, the Oilers would score four unanswered goals, including an equalizer with 59 seconds left by Bouchard and the winner with 1:06 remaining in overtime by Zach Hyman.
Leon Draisaitl scored off an assist from McDavid on the Oilers’ league-leading power play in the first as Edmonton trailed by two goals heading into the second period.
Bouchard tallied his 17th goal of the season to get Edmonton within one in the second period, scoring off assists from McDavid and Mattias Ekholm.
The goal gave Bouchard 20 points in his last 10 games. The last defenseman to do that for the Oilers was legendary Paul Coffey in 1986.
Trent Frederic evened the game at 3 at 2:54 into the third on a wrister from Matt Savoie, who drove the puck all the way up the ice past Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov before feeding the former Boston Bruin for the easy finish.
Askarov made 20 saves for San Jose.
The teams then traded goals, with San Jose first retaking the lead as Alexander Wennberg scored on a wrister less than three minutes after Frederic’s equalizer, with Jake Walman evening the game again for the Oilers less than two minutes after that.
The scoring frenzy concluded with Mukhamadullin’s winner at the 9:27 mark of the third period, after William Eklund found him at the point for the powerful slap shot.
The Oilers have scored 17 goals in three games since coming back from the Olympics but have now lost two of those contests.
–Field Level Media
Entertainment
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
As reported by 404 Media, online service Tea App Green Flags will scrub negative posts from anonymous gossip app Tea and similar online forums where women post about negative experiences they’ve had with men they’ve dated.
According to 404 Media’s interview with Tea App Green Flags’ founder, simply identified as Jay, the company launched two years ago to tackle posts on the many Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His focus has turned to Tea in the past year.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told 404 Media. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn’t fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters.”
Tea App Green Flags’ site claims to have removed over 2,500 posts from the Tea App for over 759 clients. Most of the service’s clients are men, although Jay noted that occasionally the wives and girlfriends of men posted on the app will reach out.
Prospective Tea App Green Flags clients must provide their name, age, location, and photo to the service, as well links to specific posts targeting them. According to Tea App Green Flags’ FAQs, they can only remove posts with direct references to a client. On average, the site says, a Tea App “takedown campaign” will take 21 – 30 days. The lengths of other takedowns depend on the platform.
Price-wise, it costs $1.99 to report one Tea account and up to $79.99 to report 25 of them. The company also offers “24/7 Reputation Monitoring,” which costs $19.99 per month and alerts clients when they appear on Tea or Facebook.
Mashable Trend Report
Jay would not share the details of the takedown process with 404 Media. Tea does have a free form for takedown requests on its website, and says that it will “only reply to takedown requests submitted via the takedown portal.”
Jay emphasized to 404 Media that Tea App Green Flags does not extend its services to people who have been accused of sexual assault multiple times on Tea, or who have been accused by one person using their real name and photo in a Facebook group.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they’re very bad,” Jay told 404 Media. “So we say, ‘we’re not doing this.’ We can’t take a rap for that. We’re ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Tea markets itself as presenting “dating safety tools that protect women.” In July 2025, it was the target of a large-scale cyberattack that exposed thousands of user images including drivers’ licenses, leaving users vulnerable to doxxing and harassment. These images were provided as verification for accounts, although the app itself is otherwise anonymous.
Jay claimed to 404 Media that Tea’s anonymity “causes a cesspool of defamation,” and that he would prefer if women shared their faces, even if they are speaking out against dangerous men who have done them harm.
While Tea is meant to be a women-only app, Tea App Green Flags is proof of men’s infiltration of these online dating spaces. (Tea itself was founded by a man: Sean Cook.)
“I have a Tea app account. I’m a dude,” Jay told 404 Media. “All my reps have Tea app accounts. They’re men.”
Mashable has reached out to Tea for further comment.
Sports
Minnesota United holds off FC Cincinnati in historically cold matchup
Feb 21, 2026; Austin, Texas, USA; Minnesota United forward Kelvin Yeboah (9) stops during the first half against Austin FC at Q2 Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Dustin Safranek-Imagn Images Kelvin Yeboah scored in the 66th minute and Drake Callender made four saves as Minnesota United presented Cameron Knowles his first victory as head coach with a 1-0 shutout of FC Cincinnati on Saturday afternoon in Saint Paul, Minn.
Roman Celentano finished with four saves for FC Cincinnati (1-1-0, 3 points).
Yeboah, who scored the tying goal in the 90th minute in Minnesota’s season opening 2-2 draw at Austin FC, headed in a rebound of a Tomas Chancalay free kick from the top left edge of the box for the game-winner. Chancalay’s shot caromed off the far right post into the middle of the box where Yeboah drilled in a hard header.
The score was set up when a free kick was awarded after Cincinnati’s Gerardo Valenzuela tripped Joaquin Pereyra just inches outside the penalty box.
Cincinnati, which opened the season with a 2-0 victory over Atlanta United, nearly tied it five minutes later on a curling left-footed shot from the middle of the box by Obinna Nwobodo that was heading for the right corner of the goal, but Callender made a diving one-arm save to knock it wide of the post.
Chancalay had a chance to extend the lead in the 83rd minute when he went in on a breakaway, but Celentano made a leaping two-hand deflection of his left-footed shot from the left side of the box that was ticketed for the top right corner of the goal.
Minnesota United (1-1-0, 4 points) moved into first place in the Western Conference with the win. Star striker James Rodriguez, who won the Golden Boot playing for Colombia in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, dressed but did not make his debut for the Loons.
The temperature at kickoff was 20 degrees with a wind-chill of 11 making it the coldest game played in team history for Cincinnati.
–Field Level Media
Sharks beat Oilers to halt five-game slide
Men are paying to have negative posts removed from Tea app
