NCAA Tournament 2023: Ranking all 16 Second Round matchups

What the last two days have taught us is simple: no matter what we think, the NCAA Tournament always provides the unexpected and the unthinkable. All the perfect brackets in the world were already gone before the first round was even complete, due in part to some massive performances by the underdogs. This Tournament will be remembered for years to come because of 15-seed Princeton’s win against Arizona and 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson’s unbelievable victory against top-seed Purdue.

March Madness can be downright cruel, and you can bet that those programs, joined in misery by Virginia, Iowa State, and a few other schools, are stunned in disbelief that their seasons have come to an end in the blink of an eye. This is the nature of the NCAA Tournament, where one bad night can turn your dream into a nightmare, and these teams are figuring that out in the worst way possible.

We’ve focused enough on those teams that were upset because there are still 32 good basketball teams alive in the Big Dance and a lot of ball left to decide our national champion. Ahead, the Round of 32 will bring a similar level of excitement this weekend, though it’ll be hard to compare to those performances from the likes of Furman or those two Goliath slayers from New Jersey. Still, an exciting weekend of basketball is ahead and there’s a lot to think about.

We’ll be taking on the difficult task of ranking the sixteen games this weekend; the games that will determine the teams playing next week in the Sweet Sixteen. Obviously, nobody predicted we’d have this group of teams, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are some really intriguing matchups set for the weekend and we’ll be taking a closer look at all of them. Let’s get right into this, starting at the bottom and working towards the best games of the weekend.