Good Morning! Here’s what happened in the world of sports on Tuesday, December 3rd.

THE NBA CUP

Remember the NBA Cup? This is year two of the in-season tournament, where players hoop on brightly-colored courts and compete for the chance to win $500,000. It’s actually a cool idea to bring some extra intensity to the early parts of the NBA season, a notoriously slow and less interesting part of the basketball calendar. In any case, the group stage ended last night. Here’s who advanced to the quarterfinals:

• The Milwaukee Bucks swept their group and will be the number one seed in the East. Milwaukee will host the wild card winners, the Orlando Magic– the 3-1 Magic advanced over Boston and Detroit due to a stronger point differential. In the other East semifinal, the New York Knicks will host the Atlanta Hawks.

• Out West, no team was able to go 4-0. However, the Oklahoma City Thunder claimed the top spot with the best point differential among 3-1 teams– OKC beat the Utah Jazz by 27 points last night, and they needed every last one of them. The Thunder will be visited by the Dallas Mavericks, who won the wild card over Phoenix. In the other West quarterfinal, the Golden State Warriors will travel to Houston to take on the Rockets.

• The West was pretty chaotic last night: Dallas hit three 3-pointers in the final two minutes to beat Memphis, the Suns lost Kevin Durant to an ankle injury, and the Rockets had their coach ejected and a player held back from running into the stands to confront a fan. Plus, Victor Webanyama did this:

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

The SEC-ACC challenge is supposed to highlight two of the premier conferences in college basketball, showcasing the best teams in the country. On night one of the event, the competition was pretty one-sided:

• The ACC lost nine games to the SEC by a combined 138 points! The ACC’s one win? Clemson upset (4) Kentucky 70-66. Still, that’s a 9-1 record and a +134 point differential. There’s a reason only three ACC teams are in the top 25, while the SEC has eight.

• Outside the carnage of that competition, we had two upsets of undefeated teams last night in college hoops: Villanova surprised (14) Cincinnati 68-60, handing the Bearcats their first loss of the season. And in Madison, Michigan squeaked by (11) Wisconsin in a thrilling 67-64 victory. Watch out this season for Wolverine big men Vlad Goldin and Danny Wolf– the two seven-footers dominated all aspects of this victory.

• Finally, you have to see this game-winner by the Iowa Hawkeyes. It’s a beauty:

NHL

Two stories last night from the ice…

Down 4-0 against the Buffalo Sabres after the first period, Colorado rallied for a a 5-4 comeback victory. Nathan MacKinnon tied the game in the third with his second goal of the night, before Artturi Lehkonen poked home the unlikely game-winner for the Avalanche.

Johnny Gaudreau began his NHL in Calgary with the Flames. Last night, the Flames honored Johnny, his brother Matthew, and the entire Gaudreau family before their game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, the other team that Gaudreau played for during his career. It was an emotional and touching tribute to a member of the hockey community who was lost far too soon.

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Well, the college football playoff committee has done it again. For the second year in a row, it seems they’ve put Alabama in a playoff spot ahead of a Florida team from the ACC with a better record. We’ll see how it all shakes out after the conference championships are played this weekend, but Miami is (rightfully) very upset– instead of the College Football Playoff, the Hurricanes are most likely headed to the Pop-Tarts Bowl. You can check out the full rankings and the current projected bracket here.

Boston has signed reliever Aroldis Chapman to a one-year, $10.75 million deal. The flame-throwing Chapman is no longer one of the the best closers in baseball, but he will improve the Red Sox bullpen.

According to reports from around Major League Baseball, the bidding for Juan Soto has reached the $600 million mark. Multiple teams are vying for the services of Soto, a 26-year old outfielder who has been compared to baseball luminaries like Ted Williams. The largest contract in baseball history belongs to Shohei Ohtani, who signed last winter with the Dodgers for $700 million. Could Soto get close to the record?

TODAY’S BIG GAMES (all times Eastern)

NBA: Hawks @ Bucks, 8 PM

NHL: Stars @ Kings, 10 PM on TNT

COLLEGE BASKETBALL: This feels more like the Sweet 16 during March Madness than a random Wednesday in December! Cancel your dinner plans, tonight is all about college hoops:

• WOMEN: (11) Oklahoma @ (22) Louisville, 5 PM on ESPN2

• (15) Baylor @ (25) UConn, 6:30 PM on FS1

• (10) Alabama @ (20) UNC, 7:15 PM on ESPN

• Virginia @ (13) Florida, 7:15 PM on ESPN2

• (5) Marquette @ (6) Iowa State, 8 PM

• (1) Kansas @ Creighton, 8:30 PM on FS1

• (2) Auburn @ (9) Duke, 9:15 PM on ESPN

• (12) Oregon @ USC, 10:30 PM on Big Ten Network

“As we look ahead to the final rankings, we hope the Committee will reconsider and put a deserving Miami in the field.” –ACC commissioner Jim Phillips