NCAA Tournament: Reseeding the Sweet 16
The Three Seeds
12. Duke (previously seeded No. 4)
In their round of 64 win over UNC-Wilmington, the Blue Devils shot 43 free throws, and made 31 of them. There was over 50 fouls called in the entire game. This caused for a real snooze-fest to kick off the Big Dance on Thursday morning.
Nonetheless, Duke obviously won, because if they didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing about them in this piece. They went on to face Yale, and completely dominated the Bulldogs in the first half, being up by as many as 27, and leading 48-25 at the half. Yale managed to cut that lead all the way down to four, and really made Duke sweat for the entire back half of the game.
It was then that Duke’s true colors shined through. Their defense is really poor for stretches. Their adjusted defensive rating is the second worst among remaining teams behind Notre Dame, and if any one of Brandon Ingram, Grayson Allen, or Marshall Plumlee gets in foul trouble, they find themselves severely lacking.
11. Texas A&M (previously seeded No. 3)
After the Aggies looked great in the second half of their win over Green Bay on Friday, I felt good about my prediction that they would make it to the Final Four. Come Sunday night at about 9:30, I was 100 percent sure that prediction was done for. There’s no way for me to put into words what happened, so I’ll just leave this here:
I will say this about the Aggies: in winning Sunday over Northern Iowa, they won a game they had absolutely no business winning. They’re playing with house money at this point, and should feel no pressure for the remainder of this tournament, seeing that they basically lost already but still get to keep playing.
Maybe playing loose will help them. Also, they somehow managed to win a game in which Danuel House didn’t score until regulation was almost over. He and Jalen Jones, A&M’s two best players, combined to go 11-for-31. How on earth did they win that game, again?
10. Miami (previously seeded No. 3)
You can’t just completely ignore the fact that Miami blew a 27-6 lead in Saturday’s win over Wichita State, allowing the Shockers to come all the way back and take the lead at 43-42. At the same time, you can’t completely ignore just how dominant the ‘Canes looked for the first half of that game, and they counterpunched hard enough to still manage to win the game somewhat comfortably.
They’ll face Villanova in the Sweet 16, a team that can match every player that Miami brings out in the backcourt. I don’t want to say that Miami needs to rely on Angel Rodriguez to shoot 9-for-11 and score 28 points to move on in this tournament, but it sure feels like it.
The matchup with Villanova really should be a dandy. Anytime two of the best backcourts in the country face-off, you know it’s going to be fun to watch. Miami is going to need big games from both Rodriguez and Tonye Jekiri to upset Villanova.
Related Story: Villanova-Miami is a thriller in the making
9. Iowa State (previously seeded No. 4)
While it’s not really provable, Iowa State probably wouldn’t be in this Sweet 16 if it weren’t for Purdue’s epic collapse against Arkansas-Little Rock in the Round of 64. The frontcourt of Purdue would have been way too much for Iowa State, and it’d difficult to envision Georges Niang guarding Caleb Swanigan, Isaac Haas, or A.J. Hammons.
So after beating Iona, basically a less talented version of themselves, they got lucky and avoided the Boilermakers, then took out Arkansas-Little Rock in one of the more boring games of the tournament.
But really, you can only beat who you play, and the Cyclones did that twice, handily. Iona has a pretty darn good offense, but I thought the Cyclones did a pretty good job keeping them in check. Little Rock has a pretty darn good defense, and the Cyclones shot 56 percent against them.
Next: The two-seeds