It’s official: The three Jewish coaches who entered the NCAA men’s basketball tournament as top seeds have all made the Final Four.
The fourth men’s team has a player who was once part of Israel’s national youth squad. And in the women’s tournament, Jewish coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s USC faces UConn Monday night, with the victor headed to the Final Four.
All three Jewish-coached men’s teams won their Elite Eight matchups over the weekend, sending them to the final stages of March Madness. On Saturday, Todd Golden’s Florida beat Texas Tech, and Jon Scheyer’s Duke beat Alabama.
Then, on Sunday, Bruce Pearl’s Auburn beat Michigan State. That win came two days after Auburn beat the University of Michigan and its star Jewish player, Danny Wolf, in a showdown on Shabbat.
The last Final Four team, Houston, also has a Jewish connection: guard Emanuel Sharp is the son of Derrick Sharp, who played for Maccabi Tel Aviv for more than a decade. The younger Sharp was born in Israel and was part of its under-16 national basketball team.
Remembering the hostages
Scheyer and Golden also played in Israel, and Pearl has taken his Auburn team on a trip there. Pearl also spoke about Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander in a postgame press conference earlier in the tournament.
Auburn plays Florida on Saturday, April 5, guaranteeing that at least one Jewish coach will get to the championship game. Duke and Houston play on the same day. The last Jewish coach to win the tournament was Larry Brown, who led Kansas to the title in 1988.