Arcidiacono, Ochefu and the rest of Villanova’s seniors made it to the tournament’s second weekend for the first time.
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And for the 16 teams remaining, that’s exactly what they’ve done – survive and advance to the second weekend. The teams meet Friday in a Midwest Region semifinal. Each has shown flashes of its capability, but neither has fully blossomed.
Texas A&M: The miracle entry in the Sweet 16 after stunning Northern Iowa. They play sound defense, they can shoot it and they aren’t overly reliant on one guy. Probably not.at least that’s the knee-jerk reaction. Duke has seven players, but they are a very good group of seven, led by Grayson Allen and Brandon Ingram. That won’t cut it against the Jayhawks. But the Ducks have played well, and Dana Altman is one of the better coaches in the country. To beat Kansas, the whole lineup needs to be firing on all cylinders. Five Thirty-Eight, a sports analytics website, called Michigan State’s loss the third most improbable upset in tournament history, giving them only a 5.5% chance of losing. The Cyclones’ underachievement is largely a product of the treacherous. With 13 games played and another six to be played in the Sweet Sixteen, the league would earn $30.3 million over the six years.
Michigan State and Xavier are gone, leaving Oklahoma and Villanova. This was widely viewed as the weakest of the four regions, and there’s no doubt the victor of the other game – Virginia-Iowa State – will have its hands full with whichever double-digit seed makes the Elite Eight. But they have left room for doubt.
Sabonis is able to use his size to not only dominate the glass, he averages 11.7 rebounds per game, but also convert high percentage shots from inside the arc, he averages 17.5 points per game while shooting above 60 percent from the field. Now, the Wildcats have to get past Miami in the opener of this week’s tournament. Wildcats coach Jay Wright tried to recruit Miami G Ja’Quan Newton, and Larranaga courted Villanova’s top two scorers, G Josh Hart and F Kris Jenkins.
Yes, Hield is the best player in the country and a must-see. But what if he’s not on his A-game? Just as many other teams before them, Middle Tennessee’s glory was short-lived, as they got thoroughly shredded in the Round of 32 by a mediocre Syracuse team, 75-50.
The Hawkeyes hardly looked like an NCAA Tournament team at first. It would be unexpected, and even now few people think this team is breaking through, but it’s got the offense to match any of the four teams. Middle Tennessee lost by 25 to Syracuse on Sunday. Jim Boeheim will need a similar spark to get to the Elite Eight.
Apparently, Cinderella is sitting this one out.
It’s hard to compare the 2016 ACC against the 1985 Big East because conferences had about half as many teams as they do nowadays. The No. 4 seed in the West, the Blue Devils are set at +1800 on the updated March Madness odds and are coming off early-tournament wins over UNC Wilmington and Yale. “That’s who we’ve been”.
The end result is a tantalizing Sweet 16 headlined by four of the grandest names in the game: North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and in, which have combined for 18 national titles.
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Brice Johnson, North Carolina. Where this game gets fun is when Notre Dame is on offense. OR has a tendency to wear opponents down under coach Dana Altman’s highly efficient system. The SEC was the last conference to pull off such a feat with Alabama winning the BCS national title in the 2012 season and Kentucky winning the men’s basketball tournament a few months later. The Hoosiers are playing with a grit typical of many darkhorse teams, and North Carolina has at times been complacent and lackadaisical this season. Next: vs. Notre Dame. The point guard duel between Bronson Koenig of the Badgers and the Demetrius Jackson of the Fighting Irish should be one of the best individual matchups of the tournament.
