RALEIGH—As the large oak trees part and the Lenovo Center comes into view a short commute from North Carolina’s state capital, it doesn’t take long for the eyes to be drawn to the NCAA-themed graphics that drape the outside of the arena.
“Welcome to Raleigh” reads the most prominent one, flanked by the March Madness logo that is set to become ubiquitous for the next three weeks across the country.
Though the signage is mostly intended to be a message for those arriving for the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament taking place in the building, it could be taken quite literally with some subtle editing.
March Madness is, indeed, welcome—and not just limited to the confines of Raleigh either.
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The Triangle, in reference to the hoops-loving campuses of the North Carolina Tar Heels, Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina State Wolfpack that call the area home, has always been hoops mad to an almost unhealthy degree. It is the home to the sport’s most iconic rivalry along Tobacco Road, and one cannot go far without running into a famous gym to see a freshly hung Final Four banner.
But this season, in the only month that truly matters in the sport, things have been taken to an unprecedented level.
With all due respect to the lot of Hall of Fame coaches who have drawn attention to the smallest state in the union, or the slew of other sub-regional sites with interesting story lines that dot the country, this is the true epicenter of college basketball.
“My personal favorite time of the year, and it’s always a blessing to be a part of March Madness,” a smiling Baylor Bears men’s coach Scott Drew said. “I think all parents can relate to it. It’s kind of like kids opening up Christmas gifts, birthday gifts.”
Santa didn’t just come early in the Tar Heel State this week. He also came bearing bags full of gifts for those who enjoy a bit of roundball action.
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On the men’s side, the back-to-back national champion UConn Huskies will be looking to defend their titles and attempt to do something—go for a third—that hasn’t been done since John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins dynasty decades ago.
The presumptive No. 1 overall pick in the NBA this summer, Cooper Flagg, is also on hand and set to return to action after injuring his ankle. His Blue Devils, along with the fellow top-seeded Florida Gators, are two of the odds-on favorites to win this year’s tournament.
The Oklahoma Sooners and Mississippi State Bulldogs both survived a gauntlet in the SEC to get here with eyes on furthering the cause of the league’s historic season. The Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers already won a tournament game, while their fellow No. 16 seed, the Norfolk State Spartans, is dancing for the third time in five years. Given that UConn and Baylor are winners of three of the last four titles, loaded doesn’t even begin to describe the mood around town for hoops junkies ahead of tip-off this week.
“This tournament, there’s nothing like it. The thing you look forward to, you work all summer for, everything, is to be on this stage to where it’s win and advance. So what we’re looking forward to is to competing, to competing to get a win and one at a time,” Oklahoma men’s coach Porter Moser said. “For us to get in, and I think what’s been evident the last four days of practice, is they’re just not happy to just be here.”
That hunger is present right up the road, too, helping elevate an eye-opening weekend of hoops into a nirvana. All three ACC schools in the Triangle earned top seeds as part of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and will host multiple games in their home gyms.
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One set of first- and second-round games is fun enough, but this week there are four all within a half-hour drive of each other.
That included a First Four outing on Thursday night between the No. 11 seeds Washington Huskies and Columbia Lions at UNC’s famed Carmichael Arena, where Dean Smith helped make Carolina Blue instantly recognizable a few decades ago, to officially tip off five straight days of near nonstop games.
The Ivy League side fell behind double digits at halftime to its Big Ten opponent, but wound up going on a furious second-half run. The Lions hit six of their final eight shots from the field to prevail 63–60, sending coach Megan Griffith fist-pumping the assembled crowd with fury at the final buzzer after helping notch the program’s first NCAA tournament win.
“They heard what they needed to hear,” a jubilant Griffith joked of her speech to spark a 41–26 second-half run that doubled as a nice feather in the cap of an Ivy League that sent three teams dancing for the first time. “We came back out ready to attack.”
Columbia moves on to face the West Virginia Mountaineers on Saturday, part of a doubleheader in Chapel Hill that also matches up the ACC regular-season co-champions at home versus the WCC tournament winners in the Oregon State Beavers. Four more teams are set to play at the same time on campus at NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum, including a Wolfpack side aiming to begin a road to back-to-back Final Four appearances.
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Over at rival Duke, a confluence of factors will lead to an even more interesting Friday in the area.
The men’s team will tip off around lunchtime at Lenovo Center against Mount St. Mary’s, while historic Cameron Indoor Stadium will host a pair of women’s tournament games in the evening. Some enterprising Blue Devils fans, to say nothing of athletic director Nina King and several other administrators, will no doubt attempt to see both teams in action as part of a rare double-site, doubleheader.
“It’s just nice not to have to get on a plane, ride over here on a bus,” said Duke freshman forward Kon Knueppel of the easy commute. “Not too much travel, soreness, and stuff like that.”
“If you don’t come ready to play, you’ll lose,” women’s coach Kara Lawson said as a general caution against being too comfortable. “I think that’s what we all like about March, is that it’s unpredictable. You can’t put your finger on it. You have to play well to win. That’s how it should be.”
Unique circumstances or not, survive and advance cuts the same way for all 21 teams who have descended upon hotels up and down Interstate 40 that divides the sprawling region.
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“I think we are excited to be in the tournament. I feel like, in maybe a weird way, it’s a little pressure off of us going into the tournament. Like we could just go out and let them rip right now,” said UConn coach Dan Hurley, currently sporting a 12-game winning streak in the men’s tourney but coming off a disappointing regular season. “If we can find a way to advance, UConn becomes very dangerous when we find a way to get out of the first round.
“We could salvage the whole year. And we have the capability.”
While his own fan base might be slightly skeptical of that after seeing the Huskies falter from preseason top 10 to unranked and a No. 8 seed in the bracket, that’s the beauty of the dueling tournaments that are underway in the Triangle. Everyone enters with hope and 40 minutes separates a long flight home from playing again another day.
Perhaps that is why interest, even in one of the hotbeds of the sport, is so palpable everywhere you turn.
Outside Carmichael on Thursday, after a rainstorm swept through to give way to a beautiful spring equinox sunset, one group of fans mostly clad in UNC gear made a beeline for the ticket office a few minutes before Columbia and Washington tipped off. They wanted good seats in the lower sections, they said, and were happy to purchase them on the spot.
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While the natives from ACC territory could have been following along with the games underway elsewhere on the first day of the men’s tournament instead of attending a play-in game between women’s sides from opposite coasts, the interaction underscored just how special a week it is around the Triangle.
March Madness is not only here, it’s welcomed with open arms.
ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (AP) — She had worked 22 days straight in her job as a technician at an engine…
ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (AP) — She had worked 22 days straight in her job as a technician at an engine plant to save up, and now Daijah Bryant could finally do what she was putting off: Christmas shopping.
Bryant pushed her cart out of a Walmart in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and loaded her sedan’s backseat with bags of gifts. While they would soon bring joy to her friends and family, it was difficult for the 26-year-old to feel good about the purchases.
“Having to pay bills, if you happen to pay rent and try to do Christmas all at the same time, it is very, very hard,” she said with exasperation.
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Ahead of President Donald Trump’s Friday evening visit to Rocky Mount, some residents say they are feeling an economic squeeze that seems hard to escape. The uneasy feeling spans political affiliation in the town, which is split between two largely rural and somewhat impoverished counties, although some were more hopeful than others that there are signs of reprieve on the horizon.
This will be Trump’s second event this month aimed at championing his economic policies ahead of a consequential midterm election next year, both held in presidential battleground states. Similar to Trump’s earlier stop in Pennsylvania, Rocky Mount sits in a U.S. House district that has been historically competitive. But earlier this year, the Republican-controlled legislature redrew the boundaries for the eastern North Carolina district to favor their party as part of Trump’s push to have GOP-led states gerrymander their congressional districts to help his party retain its House majority for the last half of his term.
Rocky Mount may be in a politically advantageous location, but the hardships its residents report mirror the tightening financial strains many Americans say they are feeling, with high prices for groceries, housing and utilities among their top concerns. Polls show persistently high prices have put Americans in a grumpy mood about the state of the economy, which a large majority say is performing poorly.
Trump has insisted the economy is trending upward and the country will see some relief in the new year and beyond. In some cases, he has dismissed affordability concerns and encouraged Americans to decrease their consumption.
‘Without the businesses, it’s dead’
Crimson smokestacks tower over parts of downtown Rocky Mount, reminding the town’s roughly 54,000 residents of its roots as a once-booming tobacco market. Through the heart of downtown, graffiti-covered trains still lug along on the railroad tracks that made Rocky Mount a bustling locomotive hotspot in the last century.
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Those days seem long gone for some residents who have watched the town change over decades. Rocky Mount has adapted by tapping into other industries such as manufacturing and biopharmaceuticals, but it’s also had to endure its fair share of challenges. Most recently, financial troubles in the city’s government have meant higher utility prices for residents.
The city has been investing to try to revitalize its downtown, but progress has been slow. Long stretches of empty storefronts that once contained restaurants, furniture shops and drug stores line the streets. Most stores were closed Thursday morning, and not much foot traffic roamed the area.
That’s left Lucy Slep, who co-owns The Miner’s Emporium jewelry store with her husband, waiting for Trump’s promised “Golden Age of America.”
The jewelry store has been in downtown Rocky Mount for nearly four decades, just about as long as the 64-year-old said she has lived in the area. But the deterioration of downtown Rocky Mount has spanned at least a decade, and Slep said she’s still hoping it will come back to life.
“Every downtown in every little town is beautiful,” she said. “But without the businesses, it’s dead.”
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Slep’s store hasn’t escaped the challenges other Rocky Mount small businesses have endured. Instead of buying, more people have recently been selling their jewelry to the shop, Slep said.
Customers have been scarce. About a week out from Christmas, the store — with handmade molded walls and ceilings resembling cave walls — sat empty aside from the rows of glass cases containing jewelry. It’s been hard, Slep said, but she and her husband are trying to make it through.
“This year is just not a jewelry Christmas, for whatever reason,” she said.
Better times on the horizon — depending on whom you ask
Slep is already looking ahead to next year for better times. She is confident that Trump’s economic policies — including upcoming tax cuts — will make a marked difference in people’s cost of living. In her eyes, the financial strains people are feeling are residual effects from the Biden administration that eventually will fade.
Optimism about what’s to come under Trump’s economy might also depend on whether residents feel their economic conditions have changed drastically in the past year. Shiva Mrain, an engineer in Rocky Mount, said his family’s situation has not “become worse nor better.” He’s been encouraged by seeing lower gas prices.
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Bryant, the engine technician, feels a bit more disillusioned.
She didn’t vote in the last election because she didn’t think either party could enact changes that would improve her life. Nearly a year into the Trump administration, Bryant is still waiting to see whether the president will deliver.
“I can’t really say … that change is coming,” she said. “I don’t think anything is going to change.”
Several people are dead after a small private jet crashed shortly after takeoff in Statesville, North Carolina, according to a local sheriff’s office official.
The crash happened shortly after 10:15 a.m., Iredell County Chief Deputy Bill Hamby told CNN. The exact number of fatalities is not known at this point, he added.
“A Cessna C550 crashed while landing at Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina around 10:20 a.m. local time on Thursday, Dec. 18. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will lead the investigation and provide any updates,” the Federal Aviation Administration told CNN.
CNN has reached out to the National Transportation Safety Board.
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Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles north of Charlotte, is an uncontrolled airport with no control tower. Pilots are required to self-report their position on and near the airport using a common radio frequency.
Preliminary flight tracking data shows a Cessna Citation 550 left Statesville Regional Airport around 10 a.m. from runway 10, traveled about five miles, then made a near-immediate left turn back toward the airport. The plane did not climb higher than 2,000 feet, according to FlightAware.
Low clouds, light rain, and visibility of less than three miles were reported about 80 minutes after the crash, according to an automated weather station at the airport. It is not clear if these conditions were present when the plane crashed.
“The Statesville Regional Airport provides corporate aviation facilities for Fortune 500 companies and several NASCAR teams,” according to the city website
A 42-year-old North Carolina man on Tuesday was extradited to Pennsylvania after state police said he stole more than $100,000 from ATMs in Snyder and Union counties.
Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Antoni J. Garcia-Cordoba, of Raleigh, North Carolina, stole from four ATMs at Central Penn Bank and Trust locations, state police said.
In a five-hour span, Garcia-Cordoba took $43,000 from three separate ATMs in Snyder and Union counties, according to a police report. On Oct. 1, he stole an additional $58,000 from an ATM in Titusville, bringing the total amount stolen to $101,000.
Garcia-Cordoba is charged with two counts of corrupt organizations – employee, a first-degree felony, and two counts of theft by unlawful taking, a third-degree felony.
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After being in custody at a jail in Boone County, Missouri, Garcia-Cordoba was extradited to Union County on Tuesday.
He is being held in the Union County Prison after being unable to post $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 13, 2026.
