March Madness: 5 best games from the 2018 NCAA Tournament

Houston vs. Michigan (Round of 32)

So much of March Madness is about buzzer beaters, and there weren’t a whole lot of these in this year’s tournament. This is exactly why the one significant one fans were treated to is worth noting.

Michigan and Houston met up in a second round matchup that quite a few experts had circled as a possible upset. As the game went into the second half and it really looked as if Michigan was struggling on the offensive end, it looked like the Cougars were going to pull it off. Rob Gray scored 23, leading Houston, and the Cougars were in control down the stretch.

In the final minute however, the game had tightened, as Michigan was within two. With a chance to put the game away at the free throw line with 4.2 seconds remaining, Devin Davis missed a pair of free throws, giving the Wolverines a chance to run a chaotic desperation play, needing at least a deuce to force overtime and needing to go the length of the floor with no timeouts.
In a heart stopping several seconds, the ball ended up in freshman Jordan Poole’s hands, who launched and sunk a deep three-point shot from the right side as the buzzer sounded.

This game was one of the most thrilling of the tournament because of the way it ended, but also because of how it changed the tournament. The Wolverines ended up advancing all the way to the national championship game, and with the two top seeds in the west region falling before the sweet sixteen round, a path for Houston to do the same may have been there. There is no way of telling, but we do know that Poole’s shot both changed the tournament dramatically and was thrilling to watch.