And Then There Were 16
So, now we are down to the “Sweet Sixteen.” Sixteen teams remain from the field that everyone was so excited to be in just five days ago. It’s really interesting to look at it another way. 68 teams started out, and 16 teams remain, meaning 52 teams have already lost their last game of the season and have seen their dreams shattered and their high hopes vanquished.
A lot of “experts” thought the East Region might be the weakest one this year, with Villanova seeded number one and Virginia as the number two. For once, the experts were right, as both teams lost to lower seeded teams and are out of the tournament. So much for THAT bracket.
Number two seeded Kansas of the Midwest Region was also bounced from the tournament by fellow Kansas college Wichita State. It is something I don’t get in the tournament’s seedings. Wichita State had a 28 – 4 record during the season, and because the NCAA Selection Committee has this thing that values some records higher than others, the team that is seeded second (Kansas with a 26 – 8 record) with an inferior record to the number seven seed gets throttled by the “lesser team.”
The 16 surviving teams are as follows:
Kentucky, Notre Dame, West Virginia and Wichita State in the Midwest Region.
Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Xavier in the West Region.
Duke, Gonzaga, Utah and UCLA in the South Region.
Oklahoma, Louisville, Michigan State and North Carolina State in the East Region.
If you’ll notice (from the earlier Sportsbytes.com article about the big time programs) the stellar programs of Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and Louisville have all survived the opening two games of the tournament and are indeed alive and well in the Sweet Sixteen. Other (next tier) great programs of Arizona, Michigan State and UCLA are also alive. Great programs have great coaches and that combination produces the types of teams that win these championships.
To be honest, at least half of the teams still alive in the Sweet Sixteen have practically zero chance of winning the championship and in fact have probably already considered that reaching this point has made this a successful season and that anything else would be gravy. THIS level of success is enough of a perk to make these teams feel like they have achieved about as much as they humanly could. Making the Sweet Sixteen has made this a successful season to MOST of the remaining teams.
Before this tournament started, this writer thought that Kentucky was the odds on favorite to win the tournament, and that only a slight handful of teams even had a chance of knocking them off. In other words, of 67 other teams, only Duke, Wisconsin and Arizona were probably “good enough” to beat a team that was unbeaten, mega talented, well coached and likely one of the best college teams of the last twenty years.
It still seems like that’s the case. Wisconsin and Arizona are in the same Western region and one will likely knock the other one off, and the remaining one COULD be good enough to MAYBE knock off Kentucky and/or win it all. And Duke has looked REALLY good, and has maybe even like a team that has the talent (they for sure have the coaching) to beat the overwhelming favorites from Kentucky. They actually have a “big man” in Jahlil Okafor that can go toe to toe against the huge front line of Kentucky.
And so they will play the games next week and weekend and twelve more games will eliminate twelve more teams and the tournament will be down to the famous “Final Four.”
And we will see if any more teams can pull off any more major upsets. And we will see WHO will win the games and move on to the path towards the championship.
On to the games of the Sweet Sixteen.
