Nearly everyone predicted a chalky NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, the top teams in the country were just too good all season to expect them to come up short in The Big Dance. However, it’s hard to imagine that anybody expected March Madness to be quite so top-heavy.
After a loaded Sweet 16 came to an end with a fantastic finish in the Midwest Regional Semifinal between No. 1 seed Houston and No. 4 seed Purdue, all four No. 1 seeds had claimed a spot in the Elite Eight along with three No. 2 seeds. The only exception to a Regional Final of complete chalk is No. 3 seed Texas Tech from the West Region which narrowly survived an overtime clash with Arkansas on Thursday night in San Francisco.
With all the best teams still in the field, nearly all of the best players took part in the Sweet 16, including all five First-Team All-Americans. Three of them cracked this list. The stars showed out in the Sweet 16 which made a tough competition for the Busting Brackets March Madness Sweet 16 All-Tournament Team.
After Alabama’s Final Four run last year, Mark Sears took a step back this regular season and appeared to be slumping at the worst possible time. The fifth-year senior guard shot just 33% from three this year and started the NCAA Tournament 1-9 from deep through the Crimson Tide’s first two games. Then, March Mark Sears made his triumphant return.
BYU decided to run with Nate Oats’s blistering pace and started the game going under screens, giving Sears space. The numbers this season may have justified that gameplan, but it’s still Mark Sears and the First-Team All-American made Kevin Young’s Cougars pay. Sears dropped 10 threes, the second-most in a single game in NCAA Tournament history, and became the first player to have eight threes and seven assists in a single game. He finished with 34 points on 10-16 from beyond the arc with eight assists, three rebounds, and three steals. The best performance of Sears’s storied career.
Caleb Love made his name in college basketball as the Duke killer. The former Tar Heel took down Duke in Coack K’s final home game with 22 points and five assists, then bounced the Blue Devils in the Final Four, ending Coach K’s career with 28 points. Now a fifth-year senior as a member of the Arizona Wildcats, Love lived up to his reputation against his longtime arch rivals, dropping season-high 35 points on 11-21 shooting.
Love simply wouldn’t let the Wildcats die against what looks at the moment to be an unbeaten Duke team. Eventually, freshman phenom Cooper Flagg won the duel, but Love went out on his sword with a remarkable display of shot-making on Thursday night.
Even before his game-winner on Kelvin Sampson’s brilliant last-second inbounds play in Houston’s 62-60 Sweet 16 win over Purdue, Milos Uzan had played a great game. Uzan knocked down a career-high six threes on just nine attempts for 22 points with six assists, and his near buzzer-beating layup was just the cherry on top.
NO WAY 🤯
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 29, 2025
HOUSTON TAKES THE LEAD IN THE FINAL SECOND 😱 #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/L2wCPQ34gD
Kelvin Sampson had a near impossible task last offseason searching for Jamal Shead’s replacement. Shead was Houston’s spiritual leader across his four-year career in Sampson’s program, and while that impact couldn’t be replicated, Sampson knew he needed another shooter to pair to LJ Cryer in his backcourt and he knew that he could build in the toughness along the way. Well, the Oklahoma transfer, the only transfer in Sampson’s rotation, led the team in three-point shooting at 43.7% and led the way on Friday night when Cryer went 2-13 from the field.
After leading 31-29 at halftime, Purdue made 11 field goals in the second half as Houston extended its lead to double-digits before hanging on for dear life in the final minutes. Every one of those 11 field goals were assists by First-Team All-American point guard Braden Smith. Despite scoring seven points, Smith was once again the most impactful player on the floor for the Boilermakers, playing all 120 minutes of the team’s NCAA Tournament run and joining Magic Johnson as the only players in college basketball history to record 12+ assists in back-to-back Sweet 16s.
Smith’s 15 assists were three short of Mark Wade’s NCAA Tournament record set in 1987 for UNLV. After struggling with turnovers across the first weekend of March Madness, Smith turned it over just three times against one of the best defensive teams in the country, and if it wasn’t for his passing, the Boilermakers would have had no shot of hanging around in the second half. No player in the country runs the pick-and-roll better and Smith was in full command in front of what sounded like a home crowd Indianapolis.
Cooper Flagg is having the greatest season of any freshman in college basketball history and is the likely National Player of the Year. He cemented the former on Thursday night in the East Regional Semifinal against Arizona, finishing with 30 points, seven assists, six rebounds, three blocks, and a steal.
At 6-foot-9 Flagg transformed into Duke’s point guard to help the Blue Devils handle Arizona’s second-half full-court pressure and was immediately one of the best distributors in the country. Flagg constantly got Duke into good looks and terrorized the rim in actions with 7-foot freshman Khaman Maluach, daring defenders to pick their poison and get punished either way. Flagg outdueled March Madness legend and known Duke nemesis, Caleb Love with his comprehensive performance. If the NBA needed another reason to believe that Flagg is the No. 1 pick and potentially a generation superstar, they got it in the 100-93 Sweet 16 win.