I was thinking about the tournament as I try to do my annual post about how the selection committee did. And I was a little sad about the lack of Cinderella stories left (although while they are not a small school, I don’t know how anyone couldn’t get excited about the run NC State has made – 7 wins in 11 days knowing that losing any of those games ends their season – just an incredible magical run).
But the more I thought about it, I realized how incredibly lucky we are, and how great this Sweet 16 is – lets review this power-house list.
– Big East regular season and tournament champions Connecticut – the #1 team in the final polls
– Big 12 regular season champions Houston – the #2 team in the final polls
– Big 12 tournament champions Iowa State – the #4 team in the final polls
– Big 10 regular season champions Purdue – the #3 team in the final polls
– Big 10 tournament champions Illinois – the #10 team in the final polls
– ACC regular season champions North Carolina – the #5 team in the final polls
– ACC tournament champions NC State – who might be the most exciting story of the tournament so far
– SEC regular season champions Tennessee – the #6 team in the polls
– Pac 12 regular season champions Arizona – the #9 team in the polls
– #8 team in the polls Marquette – who finished tied for second in the Big East and has their star guard back from injuries earlier in the season
– #11 team in the polls Creighton – who finished tied for second in the Big East with Marquette
– #13 team in the polls Duke – who finished second in the ACC
– #18 team in the polls Gonzaga – who just made it to their 9th straight Sweet 16
– #19 team in the polls Alabama – who finished tied for 2nd in the ACC
– #24 team in the polls San Diego State – the Mountain West team who made it all the way to the championship game last season before losing to UConn
– Clemson – who managed to knock off #14 Baylor to make the ACC 8-1 in this tournament.
So, we have all 6 power conference regular season champions, 3 of the 5 power conference tournament champions (excluding UConn since they are in the first category), 2 of the most dominant mid-major teams in recent history. 14 of the 16 teams entered the tournament ranked (including 11 of the top 13 ranked teams). Outside of Clemson and San Diego State, any team that didn’t finish as a tournament or regular season champion finished no worse than tied for 2nd in the regular season.
If you sum it up, you basically have taken the top two teams from almost every power conference, and added the two most successful recent mid-major teams, and say fight it out for the national championship. Except instead of someone just picking those 16 teams, these teams after proving they were the best all through the regular season won 2 more games to earn their spots to play over the next 4 days.
We might be missing Cinderella – but in a way, this might be even better. It should be an amazing Sweet 16 and Elite 8 to watch the best teams in college basketball try to continue their journey to win a national championship.
What could be better than this – the fact that the women’s tournament will also be going on where 13 of the top 16 seeds also made it to the Sweet 16. So much amazing basketball will be going on – my only regret is that I can’t watch every game live since some of them will be played at the same time.
So excited for the games to begin!!! Enjoy what should be a fantastic weekend of college basketball!!!