The Round of 32 had a Vegas record happen.  For the first time in history, all 16 of the Vegas favorites won their game and advanced to the Sweet 16.

Normally, there is at least one upset somewhere.  Some Cinderella team like Loyola Chicago comes out and surprises a team.  Or you have a 4 vs 5 game that has a 2-3 point line that the underdog comes out on top.  Somewhere the upset happens.

But not this year.  Even in the game that #5 Auburn beat #4 Kansas, the Vegas line favored Auburn by 2 points.  So, this year, all 4 of the top 3 seeds in each region made it to the Sweet 16.  Let that sink in.  No 7 or 10 seed upsetting a 2 seed.  No 6 or 11 seed upsetting a 3 seed.  No 8 or 9 seed upsetting a 1 seed.  All 12 of the top seeded teams advanced.

The only teams that were not in the Selection Committee’s Top 16 were #5 Auburn and #12 Oregon.  And lets face it, you can’t call the SEC Conference Tournament Champion or the Pac 12 Conference Tournament Champion Cinderella.  It just doesn’t work that way.

But before you get sad that there is no Cinderella – think about the greatness of this Sweet 16.  Lets put in perspective who we have left.

• Both ACC regular season co-champions (VIrginia and UNC)
• The ACC conference tournament champion (Duke)
• The WCC conference regular season champion who is the only team to have beaten Duke while healthy and was #1 going into Champ Week (Gonzaga)
• The Big Ten conference tournament champion and regular season co-champion (Michigan State)
• The Big Ten regular-season co-champion (Purdue)
• The 3rd place team in the Big Ten that was 28-3 this season if you take away the games against Michigan State and ranked #2 in the country for 4 weeks (Michigan)
• The SEC regular season champion (LSU)
• The SEC conference tournament champion (Oregon)
• The two SEC teams that tied for 2nd in the regular season – one who was the #1 team in the country for 4 weeks (Tennessee) and the other who spent 5 weeks ranked in the top 5 (Kentucky)
• The Big 12 regular season co-champion (Texas Tech)
• The American regular season champion who went 31-3 (Houston)
• The Pac 12 Conference tournament champion (Oregon)
• The 4th and 5th Place teams from the ACC that beat either Virginia in the Conference Tournament (Florida State) or beat Duke during the regular season – admittedly without Zion Williamson, but they were missing their star guard Justin Robinson (Virginia Tech)

So, in summary, we basically have 11 teams that won either their regular season or conference tournament championship, 3 teams that missed their regular season championship by one game but were ranked in the top 5 of the country for multiple weeks of the season, and 2 ACC teams that went 22-3 (VT) and 24-3 (FSU) against teams who are not amongst the 14 teams left in the tournament (and also of course, have victories against teams in the remaining 14).

It is hard to argue that these are not the 16 best teams in college basketball.  And isn’t that what we should want to see – the best 16 teams playing each other for the National Championship.  We have an incredible two weeks of college basketball remaining – we couldn’t have asked for anything better.