Answering your sports questions, plus goodbye to the Cinderellas

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Questions, Answered: Behold the first Pulse mailbag

What started as a simple ask — for you to send us your burning sports questions — turned into a full-fledged reporting fest on our end. Thank you for the participation. And if your question doesn’t appear below, we might answer it in a future edition.

Enough tarrying. Your questions, answered by our experts:

Are there any success stories from naming a “coach in waiting”? Utah and Kyle Whittingham feels like the latest in a long string of messy situations that result from naming a coach in waiting. — Chris J. from San Jose, Calif.

For this, I went to David Ubben:

💬 The coaches-in-waiting gone wrong (or coaches who … kept waiting) far outnumber the cases where it worked, but sometimes it does work out. At least on the field. Bobby Bowden’s forced resignation at Florida State left some hurt feelings and broken relationships, but Jimbo Fisher took over after two seasons as the coach-in-waiting in Tallahassee. The program had just one 10-winning season in Bowden’s final eight years and had gone 7-6 in three out of Bowden’s final four seasons.

Fisher won 10 games in Year 1, won 12 games and an Orange Bowl in Year 3 and peaked with a national title in Year 4. That’s how they drew it up, even if the transition was a little messy. Does that still count? I say college football is a game of results and the results say pushing Bowden out and moving up Fisher was a wise decision from the Seminoles brass.

It went so well I had forgotten Fisher was the coach-in-waiting at all. Thank you to David. Next question.

Is the automated ball-strike system (ABS) in MLB a precursor to an entirely automated balls and strikes system? — Tom S., from Mission Viejo, Calif.

A pressing question, especially as we’ve seen ABS in action in the first weekend of the season. I went to our in-house ABS expert Jayson Stark:

💬 Is it possible we’ll get there some day? Could be. But they tried experimenting with full-time ABS in Triple-A. And you might think people would love living in a world where they could get every pitch right. They hated it. They hated everything about that world. Fans, players, managers all preferred a challenge system. It retains a lot of the human element. Umps still control the pace. Catchers can still frame pitches. Basically, we found out that humans like other humans!

Heartwarming, to be honest. Last entry:

With youth soccer participation surging across the country since the 1990s and continuing to grow, it’s surprising that the U.S. men’s national team remains, at best, mid-tier. Do you think this is due to our top athletes choosing other sports, or is it more about gaps in elite coaching, training, facilities, and overall investment? — Michael D., from San Diego

This is top of mind with the World Cup rapidly approaching. I went to Henry Bushnell with this question and got a great answer on two levels. Let’s start with his direct response:

💬 The short answer is soccer culture. It’s one thing to participate in youth soccer. It’s another to obsess, to fall in love with the ball at 4 years old, to play daily in the street or park with similarly obsessed friends at age 7. That’s what countless kids in South America, Europe and Africa do. That’s what’s often missing here.

There are other reasons, too. The lack of qualified coaches at those younger ages. The messy youth soccer landscape. The cost of elite clubs.

“Everybody agrees that the system is broken,” U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker told me in a recent interview.

For the longer answer, you’ll have to wait for May or early June, when Henry publishes a feature on this very subject. Good eye, Mark D.

Thank you to everyone for writing in. We received hundreds of responses. Feel free to keep the questions coming.

News to Know

Arizona, Illinois go through

There’s some historical gravity working against Arizona — no team in the West has won a natty since the Wildcats did it in 1997. But as Purdue was unfortunate to discover, Arizona has the ability to just hit another gear, erasing a seven-point Boilermakers’ halftime lead in bathroom-break speed. It was champion-caliber stuff. The day’s other Elite Eight matchup saw Illinois aggressively dispatch No. 9 Iowa, the closest thing left to a Cinderella, behind a 40-12 advantage in the paint. For both victorious teams this is the first Final Four appearance in more than two decades (Arizona’s last one was 2001; Illinois’ 2005).

Also: Illinois-Iowa saw an 11-minute delay after the shot clock horn malfunctioned and proceeded to keep blaring even after it was unplugged. Are out-of-control horns becoming a thing?

Women’s Elite Eight is set

No. 10 Virginia held a one-point halftime lead but was ultimately overwhelmed by TCU guard Olivia Miles and forward Marta Suárez, who combined for 61 points. The Horned Frogs’ reward: a Monday night quarterfinal showdown against South Carolina, which was largely untroubled by Oklahoma. Texas (against Kentucky) and Michigan (against Louisville) also cruised on a day when drama was in short supply, save for a spicy morning news conference with UConn coach Geno Auriemma. Read Geno’s beefs here and the rest of our Sweet 16 takeaways here.

More news:

It was hard to tell the USMNT and Belgium apart in their World Cup tune-up thanks to their clashing jerseys, but after a competitive first half it became generally true that Belgium were the ones scoring goals. A lot to ponder for the Americans.
NWSL expansion side Denver Summit FC obliterated the league’s attendance record with 63,004 fans at Empower Field. More here.
A fan died after falling from Mexico City’s Estadio Banorte during a Mexico-Portugal friendly, in the first game since the stadium was reopened for its third World Cup. Full story here.
MLB umpire CB Bucknor had six pitch calls overturned by ABS yesterday, including two straight overturned punch-outs of Eugenio Suarez. Yikes. Listen to the crowd’s roar after Suarez wins the second one.
“Quad God” Ilia Malinin performed the same routine from his Olympics nightmare and this time hit enough jumps to comfortably win a third straight gold at figure skating worlds.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka bested hometown favorite Coco Gauff in the Miami Open final for the “Sunshine Double” — which men’s No. 2 Jannik Sinner can likewise achieve today.

📰 Find more news here 24/7.

Watch Guide

📺 NCAAW: Elite 81 p.m. and 3 p.m. ET on ABCThese will be fun if: Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo can deliver another all-time performance and Duke keeps sailing on the vibes from Ashlon Jackson’s rim-rolling buzzer-beater. UConn and UCLA both easily won the regular-season versions of these matchups and may be on a collision course for the title game.

📺 NCAAM: Elite 82:15 p.m. and 5:05 p.m. ET on CBSThe afternoon tilt pits Michigan’s giant frontcourt against one of the nation’s best rebounding teams in Tennessee, which has never been to a Final Four. Then there’s No. 1 overall Duke feeling oddly like the team with more to prove against UConn. Tough to call it.

📺 NBA: Knicks at Thunder7:30 p.m. on NBC/PeacockOK, this is a lot of basketball, but if so inclined you can finish your day watching a potential Finals matchup.

Get tickets to games like this here.

Pulse Picks

By Mike Neighbors’ own count, he made 418 mistakes in his first year as a college basketball head coach. Here are the biggest things he learned from them.

Why was Max Verstappen allowed to throw an F1 reporter out of a media session this week? Alex Kalinaukas explains the star’s latest controversy.

I have really been enjoying the new NBC comedy “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” a mockumentary about a fictional former Jets player who was banned for betting … on himself. (Comedy is best when it feels a little too close to reality!) It features a cast and crew sprinkled with “30 Rock” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” grads and has a similar screwball type of energy with a kind heart at its core. Daniel Radcliffe as the manic director might be at the peak of his powers here? — Hannah Vanbiber

Coco Gauff’s latest journey into improving her two most important shots has challenged her sense of her own tennis, as Matthew Futterman writes.

The lede in this Wired story on the increasing creep factor in Meta’s Ray-Bans is kinda scary. Well-timed story if you follow news about social media. — Chris Sprow

Olympic sprinter Noah Lyles sat down with Marcus Thompson to discuss his polarizing public persona and share his plan to elevate track and field to the same commercial heights as major American team sports on the latest episode of “The Athletic Show.” Stream it on Fire TV, The Athletic app or wherever you get your podcasts.

After accidentally buying way too many eggs, I’m once again thankful for this hard-boiling method that made peeling a dozen a soothing hobby rather than a wasteful chore. And relatedly, egg salad is an undervalued dish. — Torrey Hart

Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Aaron Judge winning an ABS challenge and then hitting a home run.

📫 That’s all for now! Say hello at thepulse@theathletic.com, and check out our other newsletters.