The polls aren’t as important in college hoops as they are in college football, of course, but they’re still fun to discuss. So here’s our weekly look at a few of the teams making moves—both good and bad.
Moving up: Iowa State Last week: not ranked in either poll
This week: No. 21 AP, unranked coaches Thoughts … Watching the Cyclones hang with, and then storm past, the seventh-ranked Michigan Wolverines on Sunday afternoon, it was hard to fathom how this team was so underrated....

With that said, man, he could have picked a better day to drop this bomb on us. MORE: Ranking the Final Four teams’ chances to win it all North Carolina’s official men’s basketball Twitter account caused a stir Thursday morning when it sent out a press release announcing that Williams has retired from coaching. The 70-year-old is scheduled to address the media during a 4 p.m. ET news conference on Thursday....

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told reporters that the weapons—believed to be surface-to-ship cruise missiles fired by fighter jets flying near the eastern coastal town of Munchon—flew more than 90 miles before splashing into the water, the Yonhap News Agency reported. The test began at around 7 a.m. local time and lasted some 40 minutes. The JCS noted that North Korean fighter jets also conducted flight tests above the eastern city of Wonsan and fired a variety of air-to-ground missiles off the eastern coast, which also landed in the sea....

Federal authorities said Wednesday the programmers were indicted for conducting a series of hacks to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion from financial institutions and companies around the world in a money laundering scheme. The three programmers have also been accused of creating and using “malicious cryptocurrency applications,” according to a press release from the Justice Department. “North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading bank robbers,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the Justice Department’s National Security Division....

Line: Northern Iowa -6.5, Total: 110.5 (current NCAA Tournament spreads and totals) Northern Iowa Panthers Record: 30-3 ATS: 19-9-3 OVER/UNDER: 14-12 Overview: The Missouri Valley champs have been against-the-spread stalwarts all season long, and it hasn’t much mattered whether they’ve been favorites (15-8-3 ATS) or underdogs (4-1 ATS) – the Panthers just keep cashing tickets. And we’re not even sure the betting market has noticed – over Northern Iowa’s last 14 games, the team is 10-2-2 ATS, far outpacing its Vegas rating....

Paul Clement striking out on his own Neil led Norwich to promotion from the Championship in 2015, but they were subsequently relegated from the Premier League under the 35-year-old’s leadership. The Canaries have been around the top six for most of the season, but results including a 5-1 thrashing at fellow promotion hopefuls Sheffield Wednesday on March 3 leave the club nine points adrift of the play-off places. It is their form that now sees Neil pay the price, with the club announcing his departure on Friday....

While Rizzo acknowledged that he coveted many players on the Red Sox roster, and that Boston represented a “reasonable match on paper,” he ultimately felt that the Red Sox gave him an offer he could very much refuse. MORE: Nationals’ problems continue | Nats defense turns comically inept “I dont think we laughed away any of them,” Rizzo told the Herald. “We took them all serious. We were fortunate to be in a position where we didn’t have to move the player and if we would’ve got the right deal we would’ve....

In fact, there’s less to this blueprint than meets the eye. No Western military planners ever believed the “no first use” principle anyway, and clearly we’re much farther from nuclear war with Moscow now than we were when it was promulgated. The calls for a better and stronger army may sound grand, but the reality is that as many as 120 soldiers desert every week; highflown military rhetoric will hardly change their minds....

Bill Clinton grasps the point, but the politics of the Russian issue are now moving strongly against more help. GOP senators have begun using the Ames spy case as an excuse to hold up a paltry $1.7 billion in aid. This marks a new level of geopolitical myopia. The amount we’ve pledged to Russia represents less than 1 percent of the defense budget, and less than 5 percent (in constant dollars) of what we spent on the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War II....

According to the NCAA, the misconduct resulted in the athletes playing while ineligible — one during the 2012-13 season and the other two during the 2013-14 season. MORE: Is Brian Kelly’s job secure? Including a one-year probation for the program, Notre Dame must vacate wins from the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. The Irish appeared in the BCS National Championship game in January 2013 and lost, 42-14, to Alabama after a 12-0 regular season....

“Miami,” he said, “is really good. Was that brief?” That’s just it heading into Saturday’s showdown between No. 3 Notre Dame and No. 7 Miami at Hard Rock Stadium. Miami is really good under second-year coach Mark Richt. Notre Dame is really good, too. The College Football Playoff implications make this a great matchup: a game that defines the next step in the playoff chase. MORE: Ranking 16 great Miami-ND matchups...

Srdjan Djokovic was seen standing with a man holding a Russian flag carrying Putin’s face. The man was also wearing a T-shirt printed with the pro-war Z symbol. The tennis tournament, being played at Melbourne Park, banned Russian and Belarusian flags and symbols after a Russian flag was displayed during Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl’s game against Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova on the opening day. Djokovic won through to the semi-final of the men’s tournament on Wednesday, after defeating Russian Andrey Rublev....

Canadian player Vasek Pospisil tweeted a photo of PTPA members standing on a court at Flushing Meadows in New York, site of the 2020 U.S. Open, which is scheduled to begin Monday. Pospisil and ATP world No. 1 men’s player Novak Djokovic are leading the PTPA effort as co-presidents. Djokovic resigned as president of the ATP Player Council and Pospisil resigned as the ATP representative for players ranked 51-100....

Under U.N. supervision, 98.6 percent of the 450,000 eligible voters turned out to choose between independence and autonomy within Indonesia. The overwhelming majority–78.5 percent–chose independence. Long before the tally was complete, the militiamen began to make good on their threat to turn East Timor into a “sea of fire” if its people opted for freedom. The bloodshed was worst in the west, the militiamen’s stronghold, where at least four local U....

With a little luck, the magpies may chirp in peace again soon. Military analysts hope the fighting will end within the next couple of weeks. As of last weekend, the two countries had not yet managed to disentangle themselves from a thorny–and potentially catastrophic–confrontation in the bitterly disputed territory of Kashmir. Publicly, both governments are doing their best to appear calm and tough. Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, already losing favor at home for not reviving his country’s burnt-out economy, can hardly afford a humiliation in Kashmir....

“The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act,” D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine told Newsweek in a written statement. “We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors....

Just 10 days before Monday’s attack, during which the suspect used an AR-15 assault rifle, a judge struck down a 2018 measure invoked by municipal officials to ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. The ruling came under a Colorado law that bars local officials from making their own gun laws. The NRA backed the lawsuit and marked the court victory by tweeting that the judge “gave law-abiding gun owners something to celebrate....

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma “ignites”, the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating....

Boston hosts Denver Wednesday night as 8.5-point favorites, with the total set at 209. There has been a decent amount of movement on the lines, with the spread opening at 10 points and the total at 206.5. With Vegas setting the total starting at 210 and now sitting at 206.5, but AccuScore having it at 201, the UNDER here is also a nice wagering opportunity. The total combined score goes UNDER 206....