A Final Four where only No. 1 seeds need to apply?
Nobody left by April Fool’s Day, but SEC teams?
An Elite Eight with five coaches of legal retirement age?
Houston facing what amounts to a road game?
John Calipari . . . Cinderella?
More dramatic endings finally, now that Maryland and Colorado State reminded everyone what this month lives for?
All storylines for the Sweet 16. Otherwise known as the SEC and nine other teams.
The top dogs marched on to another week.
Florida was assigned the arduous task of getting rid of the two-time defending champions. Connecticut did not go easily, but the Gators made the big plays at the end to escape 77-75. Florida, 18 years removed from back-to-back national championships, had not advanced to the second week since 2017. “The time was now for us to take that next step,” coach Todd Golden said. “Florida basketball is back where it belongs.”
Duke scored 93 and 89 points in its first two rounds and trailed for all of 101 seconds, the biggest deficit of two points. The Blue Devils had 39 assists and eight turnovers in the two games. Cooper Flagg had 32 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists in 51 yeah, his ankle is fine minutes. That makes 13 wins in a row and 29 in their last 30 games. Baylor committed only five turnovers Sunday and had an 18-3 gap in offensive rebounds. The Bears still lost by 23. “For us to win by this margin, I think, speaks to the level of killer instinct that our guys have, the competitiveness, and the connectivity,” said coach Jon Scheyer. Next for Duke is Arizona, who made it past Oregon with 29 points from Caleb Love. That name might ring a bell for the Blue Devils. Love scored 28 against them in the 2022 Final Four as a North Carolina Tar Heel.
Auburn knocked off Creighton with a lot of defense, apparently getting its second wind after losing three of the last four in the regular season and SEC tournament. “We played like the No. 1 team in the country, we acted like the No. 1 team in the country, we prepared like the No. 1 team in the country,” coach Bruce Pearl said.
Houston withstood a strong challenge from a Gonzaga team desperately trying to keep alive its streak of nine consecutive Sweet 16 trips. Too much L.J. Cryer (30 points) for that to happen. “I mean, who does that? Please don’t take them for granted,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said in tribute to the Zags. “This is No. 6 (in a row) for us, and I hope people don’t take this for granted either.”
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It does not take much imagination to envision a Final Four with all No. 1 seeds. That’s only happened once before, in 2008, but then this seems the year for it, with a chalky tournament short on dramatic turns. Until Maryland and Colorado State went at it Sunday evening. 15 lead changes, two in the final six seconds, and Derik Queen’s last-second shot saving the Terrapins 72-71, just in time for the audience. Until then, there had been only five lead changes in the final five minutes in the first 48 games of the tournament combined.
As it is, only 10 of the 52 games have been won by five or fewer points, but 29 by double digits, and 12 of the 16 top-four seeds in the regions are still around. Shocking upsets and thrilling finishes have been so sparse it is a valid question to wonder if the NIL/transfer portal world has room for the underdogs of March. Is the Madness itself in any danger?
Little seems to have gotten in the way of the favorites so far, not even stats. At halftime in Cleveland Sunday, Alabama had eight turnovers and Saint Mary’s none. Alabama led by 13. Michigan State’s Jase Richardson, its best perimeter shooter this season, started 0-for-9 and missed all five of his three-point attempts. The Spartans held off New Mexico anyway, making it a tough weekend for the Pitinos. Out went Rick Saturday, and Richard Sunday, with his father in attendance.
On paper, the biggest underdog story left would be Calipari and 10-seed Arkansas.
An SEC team, coached by a bigger-than-life personality with six Final Fours, the Cinderella story? Welcome to 2025. But the Razorbacks are certainly acting like upstarts, taking out Kansas and St. John’s within 48 hours and never trailing by more than four points. They have been especially hard on opposing All-Americans. Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson scored only 11 points, none in the second half. St. John’s RJ Luis Jr. shot 3-for-17.
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There are other intriguing Sweet 16 stories at work.
The SEC wave
The league started with 14 teams, and seven have gone off the path. Sounds like a lot, but that means there are seven teams left, or 43.75% of the remaining bracket. No conference has ever had so many. Ole Miss wrapped up the weekend with a big bow, running over 3-seed Iowa State by 13 points to advance to its first Sweet 16 in 24 years and second ever. The Rebels are thinking big dreams as much as any of their SEC cousins. “Ole Miss winning the tournament, probable? No. Possible? Absolutely,” coach Chris Beard said. “It’s not arrogance, it’s absolute belief. If I didn’t believe this team was capable of continuing to win games in this tournament, then I shouldn’t be the coach at Ole Miss.”
Could the Final Four really be one conference? Once unimaginable. Not, not impossible.
The long gray line on the bench
Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes are 70. Houston’s Kelvin Sampson is 69. John Calipari is 66. Bruce Pearl 65. You could sell a lot of AARP memberships in this Sweet 16. The new landscape has been hard on older coaches. But not this month.
The throne of college basketball is now open . . .
Connecticut’s three-peat bid is over, though the Huskies were a tough out. “If it’s going to come to an end for us, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be in a game where we lost to a lower seed,” UConn’s Dan Hurley said. “There’s some honor, I guess, in the way that this went down.”
Of the 16 teams still standing, eight have never won a championship and three of those have never been to a Final Four.
Purdue’s good fortune
The Boilermakers play Houston on Friday in Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis. To get geographical bearings, Purdue’s campus is 66 miles to the northwest from Lucas Oil, Matt Painter’s hometown is 64 miles to the northeast and Braden Smith’s high school is 25 miles to the north. In other words, it’ll be a Boilermaker crowd. It’s not every day the No. 4 seed in the region gets what amounts to a home game against the No. 1 seed.
Purdue won its first two tournament games by nearly identical scores, 75-63 and 76-62. It outrebounded its opponents 86-48 and outscored them from the free throw line 33-12. But none of that was against Houston. The Cougars are 32-4 and have won 28 of their past 29. They have lost just once since November. The loss was by only one point in overtime to Texas Tech. Houston is 10-0 in true road games. The Boilermakers will need more than location.
Texas Tech’s dual personality
So which Red Raiders will Arkansas see Thursday in San Francisco, the ones who fired away 46 times from behind the three-point line against UNC Wilmington in the first round or the ones who went inside to do the dirty work and beat Drake by outscoring the Bulldogs 50-20 in the paint? Whichever, Texas Tech was picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 this season, and Arkansas began 0-5 in the SEC. Now, one of the two will be a game from the Final Four.
Veterans’ Day in Newark
Two of the BYU guards are married. One, leading scorer Richie Saunders, is 23 years old, speaks four languages and is vice-president of a charity foundation. The other, third leading scorer Trevin Knell, is the oldest player in the tournament at 26. Between injury redshirts, the pandemic, and time away for a Mormon mission, he’s been around a while. Look at it this way: When Knell played his first college game for BYU in 2019, Cooper Flagg was a 12-year-old middle schooler. They have led BYU to its first Sweet 16 since 2011 and now face another team long on years. Alabama starts four grad students, and those vets have been held under 80 points only twice since mid-November.
Michigan’s rise from the ashes
Last season, 8-24. This season, the Sweet 16. The Wolverines have almost quietly become an annual force in March. This is their eighth advancement to the second week in the past 12 tournaments, and they’re 12-0 in their past six first and second rounds. “When you get here,” new coach Dusty May said, “this is what you do.”
Michigan is doing this by committee, plus a couple of seven-footers with 70 points off the bench in the first two rounds. May put together quite a surprise package at Florida Atlantic. Here’s another chance. The Wolverines play Auburn on Friday in Atlanta. That means the top-seeded team in the entire tournament is only 95 minutes from its campus.
Tennessee’s quest, and look who’s next to try to stop it
The Vols are still waiting to see a Final Four. Kentucky has been to 17 of them. Of their 241 series meetings, none have ever been in the NCAA tournament, but the 242nd will be Friday in Indianapolis. Since 2007, Tennessee has lost in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight seven times, and four were either by one or two points or in overtime. Transfer Chaz Lanier has gone from North Florida obscurity to scoring 29 and 20 in his first NCAA tournament games. Maybe it’s their turn.
As for Kentucky, good to be back, hey? The Wildcats, who didn’t return a point from last season, just won more games over one weekend with all the new faces than they had in the past four NCAA tournaments combined. “We got a lot of underdogs on this team,” Lamont Butler said. “People who have been doubted throughout our life. Growing up in basketball, not a lot of us were highly recruited and nothing like that. For us to be on this stage, we wanted to seize the opportunity.”
By the way, Tennessee has only seven defeats this season. Two of them were from Kentucky.
Maryland’s drama Queen
Had Jalen Lake’s three-pointer for Colorado State with six seconds left finished off the Terrapins Sunday, it would have made Maryland eligible for the Heartbreak Hall of Fame. The Terps have lost four games since mid-January, coming on shots with 17 seconds left, 7.8 seconds, halfcourt at the buzzer and 0.4 seconds in the Big Ten tournament. But Queen grabbed this game back with his fadeaway banker. Acting not particularly freshman-like, he had more or less demanded the ball in the timeout before the last play, as in I want the bleeping ball. “Once he said that, it was a pretty simple decision,” coach Kevin Willard said later. “I was a little bit nervous,” Queen said, “but I knew we were due for one.”
Is Maryland’s karma transformed? It needs to be, Florida is next.
Tom Izzo’s journey
He has been to eight Final Fours. Can he make it nine at the age of 70? If the Spartans can get past Ole Miss Friday they’ll be right where Izzo is most dangerous. He’s 8-2 in the Elite Eight. They had to rally from 10 down to beat New Mexico Sunday in a grinder. “I had three different players ask to come out of the game because they were tired,” Izzo said. “That for me was the greatest thing that happened because that means they’re spilling it, and that’s what I asked them to do, spill it.”
So things are picking up. Maybe it’ll really get crazy next weekend once the SEC teams have to start playing one another.
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