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Iowa's Alvaro Folgueiras, Florida's Alex Condon get in tussle in March Madness game
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- Iowa's Alvaro Folgueiras, Florida's Alex Condon get in tussle in March Madness game
In one of the final games of the first week of the 2026 NCAA Tournament , some sparks flew — and, by the looks of it, a balled-up fist.
With about nine minutes remaining in the first half of No. 9 seed Iowa's game against No. 1 seed and reigning national champion Florida , Hawkeyes forward Alvaro Folgueiras collected a rebound off an Alex Condon miss, but Condon reached in, leading to a tie-up.
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Shortly after a referee blew the whistle, signaling a held ball and the end of the play, Condon continued to pull at the ball and dragged Folgueiras to the court.
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After the play, Iowa and Florida players rushed to the scene, with the two sides eventually separated. A replay on the TBS broadcast showed Folgueiras balling up his fist and throwing it in Condon's direction, though it appeared that it was Folgueiras' forearm, not his fist, that made contact with Condon's chest, with the motion of his arm going in the direction of the tie ball.
The TBS announcers working the game initially speculated that Folgueiras, a Robert Morris transfer in his first season at Iowa, might receive a flagrant-2 foul and an automatic ejection, but upon video review, referees determined that it was a double technical foul.
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After the game, Gators coach Todd Golden said the officials told him that Folgueiras threw a punch, but since it didn't connect, the offense didn't rise to the level of forcing an ejection.
Golden was incensed at the call, arguing with the officials after it was made. Following the altercation between Folgueiras and Condon, Golden was also seen shouting in the direction of the Iowa bench and first-year Hawkeyes coach Ben McCollum.
"I don't know, they were just going for the ball, and then everybody got all sensitive," McCollum said to TBS in a sideline interview at the next timeout. "Their people got sensitive. It's like, you're trying to play ball. It's whatever. We'll compete. We'll fight. We'll see what happens."
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After the game, Folgueiras said the incident was "as simple as we were fighting for the ball."
"We both fall and we kept fighting for the ball, and people kind of overreacted," he said in a post-game news conference . "I didn't throw any punch. It was just a thing of the game. It's March Madness, everyone wants to win so bad. And they're a tough team. It's just something that sometimes happens in basketball. But I've got to make sure that my intentions are the right ones. I'm never going to try to make any pain on a player even less without playing basketball. That's not who I am, who we are, and that is just something of basketball. I don't give much importance to that."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Iowa's Alvaro Folgueiras, Florida's Alex Condon get in tussle in March Madness game
