FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, April 3, 2022 [1. NL Central Preview: Who Will Play Spoiler To The Brewers?]( [NL_CENTRAL-4×3]( In honor of the 2022 Major League Baseball season, which starts April 7 — and is actually a thing! — FiveThirtyEight will be focusing our attention on the most intriguing team (or in this case, teams) in each division. Today we take a look at the National League Central, a group of ballclubs that always seem to provide more mystery than their middling preseason forecasts would suggest. [Read more]( [2. What The MLB Lockout Can Tell Us About Political Fandom And Sports Partisanship]( [0401_POLLA-4×3]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [3. How Each Team In The Women’s Final Four Can Win It All]( [MM_2022_WOMENSFINALFOUR-4×3]( South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley believes her team’s offense has been unfairly maligned. [Read more]( [4. Politics Podcast: Why Politicians Love A Good Wedge Issue]( [ElectionsPodcast-4:3]( Over the past year, many Republicans have repeatedly claimed that education has run amok under Democratic control and that parents need more say in the classroom. There have been debates over school closures, masking, transgender students competing in school sports, and how teachers talk about race, gender and sexuality. [Read more]( [5. The Bulls Were Running The East — Then They Weren’t. How Can They Get Back?]( [SPORTS-BKN-WIZARDS-BULLS-2-TB]( For a long stretch of the season, the Chicago Bulls proved just about everybody wrong, in a whole lot of ways. The DeMar DeRozan sign-and-trade acquisition — panned by league insiders as one of the worst moves of the offseason — worked out splendidly, with DeRozan emerging as an early season MVP candidate. The team’s defense, expected to be among the worst in the NBA, instead ranked fifth in the league nearly a third of the way through the regular season.  [Read more]( [6. This Isn’t Classic Duke-North Carolina. It Could Still Be An Instant Classic.]( [MM_2022_DUKEUNC-4×3]( It may seem peculiar that Saturday’s Final Four matchup between Duke and North Carolina is the first-ever tilt between the archrivals in the men’s NCAA Tournament. After all, the rivalry is often billed as the greatest in college sports: The two programs, separated by less than 10 miles, have combined for 11 national championships, 38 Final Four appearances, 62 regular-season ACC titles and pints of blood on the hardwood. [Read more]( [7. The House Map’s Republican Bias Will Plummet In 2022 — Because Of Gerrymandering]( [REDISTRICTING-0331-4×3]( Congressional redistricting — the process of redrawing the nation’s 435 congressional districts to reflect the results of the 2020 census — is not quite finished, but it’s getting darn close. Only four states (Florida, Maryland, Missouri and New Hampshire) have yet to approve new maps (though the maps in several states are currently being challenged in court, so some states that have approved new maps could see those maps overturned — as happened in Maryland just last week). [Read more]( [8. Late Injuries Usually Doom Final Four Teams. Can Villanova Be The Exception?]( [MM_2022_NOVA-INJURY-4×3]( Just before Villanova sealed its third trip to the men’s Final Four in the last six NCAA Tournaments, an injury threw a wrench into its season. As the Wildcats worked to run out the clock on their Elite Eight win against Houston, they put the ball in the hands of their sophomore guard, Justin Moore, who had already played 37 minutes in the game. With less than a minute left and a 4-point lead, Moore cut toward the basket. His leg buckled under him and he fell to the floor. Villanova finished off the win, holding Houston scoreless the rest of the way. But Moore’s tournament is over — he has torn his Achilles tendon, the school announced Sunday. [Read more]( [9. The Celtics Changed The Way Robert Williams Was Defending. Now, They’ll Have To Defend Without Him.]( [Boston Celtics center Robert Williams III blocks Chicago Bulls Point Guard Mac McClung]( Before Monday night, no team in the NBA was hotter than the Boston Celtics. Boston had won six games in a row, as well as 11 of its previous 12 and 24 of its previous 28, outscoring opponents by 15.8 points per game along the way as it charged into a tie for first place in the Eastern Conference. [Read more]( [10. Congress Found An Easy Way To Fix Child Poverty. Then It Walked Away.]( [Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images]( Imagine the federal government could lift millions of American children out of poverty with a single program. That program would help parents put nutritious meals on the table, pay for school expenses and even save for kids’ college — all with no negative impact on the economy. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Should The Iowa Caucuses Go Away?]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.