NCAA Tournament 2022: 5 biggest storylines from 1st weekend games
By Bryan Mauro
ACC
How could a conference be a storyline? Well, when you think about it all year long, it was the ACC is down and the league isn’t any good. They would be lucky to get three teams in the tournament. What did happen is the conference received five bids into the NCAA tournament and has lost twice, has three teams in the Sweet 16, and all three have looked dominant getting there.
The league was not its usual self this year as Virginia and Florida State were down, but the teams that did make the tournament have all had an incredible showing. Duke is the number 2 seed in the west, and they beat Cal State Fullerton and Michigan State. The Blue Devils beat Michigan State despite the Spartans making double-digit threes and looked good doing so. Their front-court combination of Paolo Banchero and Mark Williams is hard to defend and is going to be a problem for everyone the rest of the way.
Miami has been the most impressive ACC team to date. Heading into the tournament the Hurricanes were having a terrible time on the defensive end and they also were not able to get out in transition which is what the Hurricanes love to do. However, in the tournament, the 5-out offense with one big man and four guards has given teams so many fits.
USC didn’t know who to guard and then Auburn was all kinds of confused on both ends of the floor as Miami destroyed Auburn by 18 in their second-round game. Heading into the tournament I thought if the Hurricanes put it all together, they could make a run but did not like the matchup against Auburn due to size and athleticism on the wings that I felt would test the Miami defense.
The exact opposite happened as Walker Kessler got in early foul trouble and Jabari Smith was a non-factor in the game. The Hurricanes stars shined bright in this game as well, Isaiah Wong was huge against Auburn and is going to be a factor going forward.
Notre Dame has played three of the best games in the tournament so far. They opened in the first four and played a double-overtime game with Rutgers, and the Irish scored their winning basket at 12:00 am on Saint Patrick’s Day. Then on the Friday session the Irish beat a good Alabama team which advanced them to a Texas Tech game.
Notre Dame didn’t match up well with Texas Tech on paper, especially inside but head coach Mike Brey drew up a defense to slow Texas Tech down and big man Paul Atkinson was a huge factor in every game. Notre Dame did end up losing to Texas Tech. North Carolina is the other team from the ACC that is advancing but there will be more to come on them, further in this article.