NCAA Basketball: Ranking the 2021 NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 teams
By Adam Childs
8. Oregon State Beavers
If you saw Oregon State making the tournament you are lying. If you then said you saw them making a run to the Sweet 16, you are delusional, but here they are anyway.
The Beavers are that team that gets red-hot at the right time and makes a run. They ran through what we thought was a bad PAC 12 (boy were we wrong) in the tournament and have continued that great play in the Big Dance.
What is more impressive is the way they have done it. They had basically no problem with Tennessee in the first round and then they took out trendy Final Four pick Oklahoma State and Cade Cunningham in the second round. Outside of the top teams, they have made things look as easy as anybody.
It won’t be easy in the next round as they take on Loyola, Chicago, but at this point would you doubt the Beavers?
7. Villanova Wildcats
Villanova was the “easy” team to pick against in the first round against Winthrop. The Eagles were playing well and the Wildcats were without their top two players. Instead, they proved us all wrong and took care of business in the first round and then put a stop to the Cinderella North Texas.
They have looked like the team we thought we were getting before multiple COVID pauses disrupted their season. Jay Wright has this team playing well, but they still haven’t played a great team yet. But either way, they took care of business and look good doing it.