With the first weekend of March Madness in the books, the Sweet 16 is now set. There was plenty of excitement through the first two rounds, including an NCAA tournament-record five games decided by a single point Thursday. The Chronicle recaps the action from the weekend, highlighting the biggest moments in each region:
South Region
Although the Blue Devils rolled to two easy victories against Robert Morris and San Diego State in the top half of the region, there were upsets aplenty in the bottom half. UCLA—despite receiving heavy criticism for the selection committee’s decision to include the Bruins in the tournament field—proved that it belonged in the frenzy of March Madness, becoming the only double-digit seed this year to make it past the Round of 32. UCLA squeaked by Larry Brown and sixth-seeded Southern Methodist 60-59 Thursday thanks to a bizarre goaltending call that gave Bruin guard Bryce Alford credit for a 3-pointer in the closing seconds, then knocked off UAB to make it to the Sweet 16.
Second-seeded Gonzaga and its high-octane offense had no trouble dispatching its first two opponents to reach the Sweet 16, averaging 86.5 points per game in victories against North Dakota State and Iowa. A hot shooting night for Delon Wright and fifth-seeded Utah carried the Utes past fourth-seeded Georgetown Saturday night. Utah shot better than 55 percent both from the field and beyond the arc, and will now face Duke Friday night in the regional semifinals.
Best Game: 14th seeded UAB knocks off third-seeded Iowa State 60-59 in the Round of 64
This was the classic bracket-busting-upset-nobody-saw-coming to open up this year’s tournament. Freshman William Lee scored 14 points, including four clutch ones when his Blazers needed them most—a jumper with 26 seconds left and two crucial free throws with 12 seconds remaining to ice the victory. Guard Robert Brown led UAB with 21 points, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with less than a minute remaining that gave the Blazers the lead for good. Unfortunately for UAB, the magic stopped there—the Blazers allowed 92 points in a Round of 32 loss to UCLA as their tournament glory proved to be short-lived.
Midwest Region
Better known as Kentucky’s region, the Midwest saw no major upsets in the Round of 64. The Wildcats continued their pursuit of perfection as they pulled away from Hampton and Cincinnati en route to a pair of double-digit wins that pushed their overall record to 36-0.
In a matchup of two Kansas squads, seventh-seeded Wichita State finally got the crack at second-seeded Kansas it has craved for years—and the Shockers made it count with a resounding 78-65 win. All five starters scored in double figures for Wichita State and a suffocating defense limited the Jayhawks to just 35 percent shooting from the field. The Shockers now move on to the Sweet 16 for the second time in three years and are set up to take on third-seeded Notre Dame—which defeated lower-seeds Butler and Northeastern by only a combined seven points.
Best game: Ninth-seeded Cincinnati outlasts eight-seeded Purdue 66-65 in overtime
Before falling to Kentucky, the Bearcats pulled off one of the most exciting wins of the tournament’s opening weekend. Down by seven with less than a minute to play in regulation, Cincinnati mounted a furious comeback to force overtime, punctuated by guard Troy Caupain’s running layup as time expired that rolled around the rim twice before finally dropping through the net. Caupain missed a free throw with the Bearcats up by 1 with five seconds left in the extra period, but Purdue’s Vince Edwards couldn’t get his last-ditch 3-point attempt to fall as the Bearcats walked away with a 1-point victory.
East Region
If you were looking for vintage March Madness upsets, then this was the region for you. The Round of 32 saw the exits of top-seeded Villanova and second-seeded Virginia, marking the first time in 11 seasons that any region will proceed to the Sweet 16 without either of its top two teams. Third-seeded Oklahoma is the highest seed remaining and managed to avoid the run of upsets with a close 72-66 win against 11th-seeded Dayton.
After edging LSU by one point in the Round of 64, eighth-seeded N.C. State held the lead for the entire second half against the Wildcats, overcoming Villanova’s late-game charge and 27 points from guard Darrun Hillard II to secure the first major upset of the tournament Saturday night. Tom Izzo and his seventh-seeded Spartans repeated last year’s Sweet 16 defeat of Tony Bennett’s Cavaliers, this time prevailing by a 60-54 margin. Michigan State received 38 points from the senior duo of Travis Trice and Branden Dawson and held star guard Justin Anderson to just eight points on 2-of-8 shooting as Izzo reached the tournament’s second weekend for the seventh time in eight years.
Best Game: N.C. State squeaks by LSU 66-65 on Anya’s buzzer beater
Last season, the Wolfpack put on a postseason clinic of how not to close out games, committing several inexplicable mistakes in crunch time as their season came to a close. This time, N.C. State was on the right end of a fundamentally poor ending. The Wolfpack trailed for nearly the entire second half—facing a deficit that ballooned to double digits—but aided by a weak showing from the charity stripe by the Tigers down the stretch—including an 0-of-4 performance from second-leading scorer Jordan Mickey in the final minute—N.C. State was able to stage a comeback.
The Wolfpack trailed the Tigers by one and had the ball for the final shot, but guard Trevor Lacey found no room to operate, leaving him to dump the ball off to BeeJay Anya near the free throw line with four seconds left on the clock. The 6-foot-9, 295-pound Anya took a dribble inside and then spun out, tossing up a left-handed baby hook that—after taking a fortuitous bounce on the rim—went in to give N.C. State the lead with 0.1 seconds remaining.
West Region
The West is home to one of the darlings of this year’s tournament—14th-seeded Georgia State. A dramatic 57-56 comeback win against third-seeded Baylor grabbed the headlines of Thursday’s opening action, and the background stories that surfaced after the win only cemented the Panthers’ status as the lovable underdogs. Elsewhere in the West, freshman D’Angelo Russell’s 28 points carried 10th-seeded Ohio State to a 75-72 Round of 64 victory against Shaka Smart and seventh-seeded Virginia Commonwealth. Ivy League champion and 13th-seeded Harvard nearly erased a double-digit second-half deficit versus the fourth-seeded Tar Heels, only to come up just short. Freshman Justin Jackson stepped up for North Carolina, scoring four points in the final minutes to put the Tar Heels back in front. After handling fifth-seeded Arkansas in the Round of 32, North Carolina is set for a Sweet 16 matchup with top-seeded Wisconsin and National Player of the Year frontrunner Frank Kaminsky.
Best Game: Georgia State hits 3-pointer with 2.7 seconds left to move past Baylor
The Panthers were already a significant storyline entering the tournament with former Louisville guard Kevin Ware in the starting lineup and a coach in Ron Hunter—who tore his Achilles celebrating the team’s victory in the Sun Belt championship—coaching from a rolling chair on the sideline. When junior R.J. Hunter—the son of Coach Hunter—drained a deep 3-pointer to cap a 12-point comeback in less than three minutes, the elder Hunter was so lost in the joy of the moment that he fell off his rolling chair and crawled around on the floor. Hunter’s genuine enthusiasm for his team’s victory—and subsequent features in which he called this “the best week of his life”—put a storybook ending to a phenomenal basketball game.
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