The NCAA Men’s Tournament picked up its action after an underwhelming first two rounds last weekend, but there was no shortage of excitement in last nights four games. The lack of upsets in this years tournament has people moaning and groaning about a lack of “juice” that we see seemingly every year. People love upsets, underdog stories and a Cinderella story, it’s just our nature. But what gets a little lost in the shuffle is fewer upsets on the front-end means better matchups on the back-end, and last night was a prime example of that.
The emersion of NIL probably has a lot to do with the lack of upsets, it isn’t exactly the “level playing field” the tournament once was. Blue-blood programs have deeper pockets, and therefore can attract better players which correlates to those programs elevating to a higher level (quite literally with the size differences) than the smaller schools who made the 64-team tournament. It was inevitable, and yes, it takes away from those thrilling upsets we have been accustomed to over the years, but what it has given us is the matchups true net-heads have been dying to see. So, lets recap the action last night and look ahead at what is to come this evening.
Alabama- 113, BYU- 88
This game featured two teams with extremely similar styles of play. Both Alabama and BYU love to run the floor, get up shots quickly and love, love, love the three point shot. The NCAA Tournament has never seen a shooting performance like the one the Crimson Tide put on last night, literally. Alabama went basically 50% from three-point range making an unimaginable 25/51 from outside the arc. Let me say that again, Alabama shot 51 three pointers and made nearly half of them. And yes, I know that does not compute to 50%, but I am excluding the Grant Nelson full court heave at the end of the first half after he blocked a shot to cap off an incredible first 20 minutes of play. This three-point performance now sits atop the ranks all-time for 3-pt FG made in the NCAA Tournament, a record that had stood with Loyola Marymount (21) for 35 years. Mark Sears was unconscious, going 10/16 from 3-pt range, coming one short of tying Jeff Fryer (11) who played on the aforementioned Marymount squad in 1990. And Sears was pulled from the game with a decent chunk of time left. Alabama HC Nate Oats not wanting to rub salt in the Cougars wounds, sat his starting-five with a little over five minutes left to play. BYU HC Kevin Young was interviewed midway through the first half, and noted that Alabama was hitting a lot of shots but would inevitably cool down at some point. Technically, he is right, they will cool down at some point, but it just wouldn’t be Thursday night. I went to Alabama, so I am a little bit of a homer, but at least I admit that, right? I am still trying to process what happened last night. The fact that Alabama could have not made a single 2-pt FG and still won a Sweet 16 game is simply unfathomable. While I am basking in this video game-like performance by the Tide, they are going to need to basically do the same thing if they want to beat Duke. I’m not naive, Duke is built better for this tournament because they have all the factors, but I will get to them in a moment, back to the Tide. Now let me be fair to the non-Alabama folks, this type of gameplan is not sustainable for the Tide. Alabama cannot rely on breaking NCAA records from outside the arc in order to win a championship, so I will soak up this win over BYU up while I can.
Duke- 100, Arizona- 93
This was one of the more intriguing matchups of the evening simply because of storyline and metrics. What storyline you ask? Caleb Love. Love has had a knack in his career for single-handedly taking down the Blue Devils in his collegiate career. For those of you who don’t know, Caleb Love used to play a few miles from Duke with the North Carolina Tar Heels. In his time with North Carolina, he hit a memorable 3-pt dagger to beat Duke in the Final Four in 2022. Love transferred to Arizona in the midst of the NIL era, and helped his team defeat Duke 78-73 in the 2023-24 regular season. Love has had Dukes number everywhere he’s been. But this years Duke squad is simply just built different than arguably any NCAA team we’ve seen assembled.
Duke starting five
- Caleb Foster: 6’5″
- Kon Knueppel: 6’7″
- Sion James: 6’6″
- Cooper Flagg: 6’9″
- Khaman Maluach: 7’2″
Do you remember in Lord of the Rings when the trees in the forest came to life and started walking around? Well, it seems a few of those Ents found their way to Durham, North Carolina, and Jon Scheyer slapped a Duke uniform on them and has created, in my opinion, one of the most dominant teams in college basketball history. You have to give a ton of credit to Arizona for the way they fought, though. Duke was simply towering over them and dominating the glass, but Arizona was willing shots to go in and kept it close the whole game. It felt like the turning point of this game was when Cooper Flagg (the unanimous #1 overall pick in this years NBA Lottery) drove down the floor and hit a long three at the buzzer to end the first half. That shot only stretched out Duke’s lead to six, but the Blue Devils carried all the momentum into the locker room after that shot. Caleb Love finished with an impressive 33-points, but Duke was simply too good and too big for the Wildcats.
Texas Tech- 85, Arkansas- 83 (OT)
The final game of the evening ended up being the game of the tournament thus far. If you called it a night early, I don’t blame you. Arkansas had this thing tied up in a bow and was on their way to the Elite Eight as a 10-seed! At one point, the Razorbacks held a double-digit lead over the Red Raiders, and Cal had history to back him up and make everyone think this thing was over. The broadcast flashed a stat that has now become a meme, it was coach Cal’s record when leading by 6+ points at the half, 35-0. Now 35-1. The Red Raiders comeback makes it the second-biggest comeback in Sweet 16 history. Texas Tech hit a couple of late threes to chip away at the deficit before hitting the game-tying three to force OT. Back and forth they went until the final few seconds when Texas Tech’s Darrion Williams hit what would be the game-winning layup with 9 seconds left. Maybe the biggest stain on Calipari was the final possession in which he decided not to use his final timeout to draw up a play, but instead let D.J. Wagner take a heavily contested, low-percentage shot that would fall short and end the Razorbacks “Cinderella” run.
Florida- 87, Maryland-71
The quote that keeps popping into my head is Dennis Green of the Arizona Cardinals standing at the podium shouting, “They are who we thought they were!” Because Florida is exactly the tournament team everyone expected them to be after they ran roughshod through the SEC Tournament (college basketball’s toughest conference). Florida is fast, long, and lethal from all over the floor. They simply do it all. I think while many look at Duke as the best team in the country, Florida has a very legitimate argument for that title. Even without one of their best players in Alex Condon missing most of the action with a twisted ankle, Florida was still able to handle the Terps without too much trouble. Florida has an innate ability to just continue to dominate no matter what point of the game, an outstanding team on the boards, deep on the bench and extremely well-coached. They really have it all. Not to mention the social turmoil that has been bleeding into the Maryland program the last few days. If you haven’t been paying attention, Terps HC Kevin Willard has been rumored to be taking the HC opening at Villanova. The school has yet to name a new hire, which usually means they are waiting on one of the teams still left in the tournament to pick from. Happens often. There was also the comments made by Willard about the funding of the program by Maryland backers, or lack thereof, and the programs lack of willingness to give Willard “what he needed to make fundamental changes to the program”. Willard came out up in arms about Maryland’s refusal to fund things like the NIL fund or the program itself, using the example of wanting to stay an extra night in NYC with his team over Christmas, but being told it was “too expensive”. I know NYC costs an arm and a leg, especially around the holidays, but Maryland is a prominent brand in a huge conference, shouldn’t they be able to loosen the purse strings a little bit? Well, it turns out they did. Maryland actually agreed with Willard and committed to everything he asked for, check mate. I don’t think Willard saw that coming, because what seemed like a guy sticking up for his team at first, turned out to just be an excuse so he could run to the Villanova job. Willard hasn’t taken the role of Villanova HC, and who knows, maybe he is so adamant about being right, he will pull a George Costanza and stay in this relationship out of spite. I can’t say Maryland lost because of all of this, because Florida really is that good. However, in a game that was supposed to be a highlight in the programs history was covered with a dark cloud of off-the-court gossip.
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