What to think now about this March? Just two days ago, the drama was laboring, lots of blowouts, mostly nothing-to-see-here finishes. And then someone turned up the juice on the NCAA tournament.
A St. John’s basket that electrified a program, from someone who for 39 minutes and 59 seconds had no points…a history-making, bracket-busting 3-pointer from an Iowa player, who wanted only then to run over and hug the mother that hadn’t seen him play a college game in years…a Vanderbilt half-court shot that looked so true, we might need Sir Isaac Newton himself to explain how it didn’t go in…hallowed names falling like bowling pins.
All this, as the 2026 madness-o-meter began to tick.
Consider the Sweet 16, who will be there, and who won’t. That can say a lot.
The season’s steamrollers will be there.
Duke…Arizona…Michigan…nothing has changed for them in a week. Three teams who have now won 101 games and lost seven. No cream needed to come to the top because it’s been there for months.
Here’s the Blue Devils holding TCU 20 points under its scoring average — the 34th time in 36 games the defense has not let an opponent’s offense reach its norm. With High Point falling, Duke now owns the nation’s longest winning streak at 13. Cameron Boozer had double-doubles in his first two tournament games, and no Blue Devil had done that since 1978.
Here’s Arizona brushing past LIU and Utah State without trailing a second, requiring only 13 makes from the 3-point line in two games to do the job. This while the Wildcats were pummeling their opponents 106-57 in rebounding and also putting up 72 free throws.
👉 Check out the 2026 March Madness NCAA tournament men’s bracket
Here’s Michigan shooting 61.2% for the weekend with seven different players scoring in double figures. The Wolverines have now mashed 10 of their 13 non-conference opponents by at least 20 points.
The Big Ten will be there this week, an unprecedented half-dozen strong.
The weekend tour de bracket included winning 12 consecutive NCAA Tournament games. Two of the three members who did lose — Ohio State and Wisconsin — went out by two and one points.
This is what it’s come to: Iowa had not been in the Sweet 16 this century and Nebraska never. They’ll be playing one another Thursday in Houston. The South region has three Big Ten teams, with Illinois also in town. Every region has at least one.
A pretty sure way for the conference to end its 25-year-national championship drought is to take every spot in the Final Four.
The geezers will be there for the Sweet 16.
Welcome to Medicare Madness. Rick Pitino will coach St. John’s this weekend at the age of 73, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes are 71, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson 70. Arkansas’ John Calipari is the kid of this group at 67.
Izzo may have spoken for them all when he said “right now, at least for another week, I’m still hanging in there, not going anywhere. Not going anywhere.”
With strange new forces blowing across the landscape of college sports, it would be ironic to have one of the old guard cutting down net at the end. Pitino and Calipari are two wins away from taking their fourth different school to the Final Four.
St. John’s will be there, partying like it’s 1999.
That’s the last time the Red Storm showed up in the Sweet 16, just like Iowa. Funny, both got through the door Sunday with shots in the final seconds.
‼️ Dylan Darling sends St. John’s to the Sweet 16 with buzzer-beater
Houston will be there.
Matter of fact, the Cougars will be playing a couple of miles from Sampson’s office desk.
Not that Houston wouldn’t be imposing anywhere with the defense in full fury. Its next opponent, Illinois, scored 105 points in its first round game, Houston has allowed 104 in two tournament games. The Cougars are the first team in 18 years to win their first two tournament games by 30 points.
Such a formula — unyielding defense, taking care of the basketball, giving no quarters — has led Houston to seven consecutive trips to the second week of the tournament. The next longest streak in the country is the four of Alabama and Tennessee. “Nothing changes with how we play,” Sampson said. “Just the team we’re playing against.”
The defending champion will not be there this weekend.
Florida was the first No. 1 seed in the tournament to go, bushwhacked by an Iowa team that had lost seven of 10 coming into the NCAA tournament. The Gators had been leading the nation with a massive 15.1 average rebound margin but were held to a 27-27 standoff by the Hawkeyes. “I’m going to remember this feeling (for) a while,” Alex Condon said.
Several other hallowed names won’t be there, either.
Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, UCLA. The last time none of those four were in the round of 16 was 1954.
Their demises were painful. UNC’s blown 19-point lead to VCU was the biggest ever in the first round. Kentucky’s 19-point pounding by Iowa State was its worst NCAA tournament drubbing since 1972. The Jayhawks have now gone four years with no Sweet 16, their longest dry spell in four decades.
The mid-majors won’t be there.
All vanished. Again. Where have you gone, Florida Atlantic and George Mason? Ah, but there was still charm to be found. Dylan Darling and Alvaro Folgueiras will be there at the Sweet 16.
Who? The tournament’s newest folk heroes.
Darling had not scored a point for St. John’s against Kansas, but then the left-hander made a right-handed layup to win the game. Until that moment, he was 7-for-36 shooting the past five games.
There’s more. Let Pitino explain.
“This is the amazing thing, and the funniest thing I’ve ever been involved with. We’re going to run a play, but they’ve got fouls to give. And Bells (Darling’s nickname) come up to me and says, run power, which is a high, back-screen pick-and-roll. So I walk away and I said, `wait a second, he hasn’t scored a bucket and he wants to run a play for himself.”
Amid the post-game attention, Darling declared, “I don’t think I should give myself too much credit. I did a whole lot of nothing tonight.”
Folgueiras buried a 3-pointer for Iowa to beat Florida, and later raced over to hug the mother from Spain who until this week had not seen him play college basketball in two years.
“She told me I love you 100 times. I said I love you 100 times back,” he said later. “It’s super special having my mom here. She’s everything for me. Where the world would be without the moms?”
🚨 Folgueiras, Iowa stun defending national champions No. 1 Florida
And where would March be without such stories? Or this one…
Nebraska will be there this weekend.
Pretty much the whole state, the way the Big Red masses travel. If Houston fans think they’ll have the South Regional stands to themselves, fair warning. The Cornhusker army poured down the highway six hours to Oklahoma City last weekend. It’ll just keep going on to Texas.
Theirs is a saga not to miss, at that. Nebraska basketball doing things it has never done, led by Fred Hoiberg, whose grandfather once coached the program. Now Hoiberg’s 6-foot son Sam gets the biggest offensive putback of the game against Vanderbilt, on his 23rd birthday.
How perfectly Marchian.
Tyler Tanner will not be there this week.
How did his halfcourt heave not go in against Nebraska? It hit every inch of rim.
😳 WATCH: Tyler Tanner’s potential buzzer-beater almost went in
A remarkable moment, and bloodcurdling to the Cornhuskers who barely survived it. Seldom do you hear such mass terror from the winners after a game.
Hoiberg: “It just took my breath away.”
Son Sam: “My heart sank.”
Braden Frager: “I just froze for two seconds. I thought it went in. I didn’t know how to react.”
Pryce Sandfort: “I just about died.”
Rienk Mast: “Just went completely blank.”
Until further notice, Tanner is the poster player for anguish in 2026.
Jeremy Fears Jr. will be there this weekend, distributing passes like Santa Claus hands out candy canes.
Michigan State nailed 59 field goals in the first two rounds, and 48 of them came with an assist, 27 of those by Fears. No Big Ten guard has had numbers like that in the first two rounds since — trumpets in East Lansing, please — Magic Johnson.
The underdog story will be there.
That’s Texas. Wait a second. Texas? That’d be a hard sale to any other school in the Lone Star State. And as coach Sean Miller noted, “I don’t think we ever really want to sign up to be the Cinderella story, because we are the University of Texas and we represent the SEC as well.”
Yeah, that’s a pretty brawny Cinderella. But still, the Longhorns are an 11-seed, which is the lowest left in the running. And they did have to make a quick reversal after losing five of six going into the tournament (Texas and Purdue, their next opponent, were a combined 4-8 their last 12 regular season games, a tribute to the value of a second wind). That led to a players-only meeting where, according to Dailyn Swain, “we just talked about that we just needed a chance.”
They are the only team in the bracket with three tournament wins, all of which went to the last minute. The most recent was over Gonzaga, a win sealed by the 3-pointer of Camden Heide who used to play for Purdue, but Thursday will play against the Boilermakers.
It has all made for a promising second week.
St. John’s has won 21 of 22 and will now throw that momentum at Duke to see if it sticks. Pitino vs. Duke. Time to put on the replays of Kentucky and Pitino losing the famous 1992 game to the Blue Devils on the turnaround jumper by You Know Who.
“I’m hoping we can get Duke at the buzzer next to make up for that Christian Laettner shot,” Pitino said.
Arizona will have to deal with The Darius Acuff Jr. Show , co-starring Meleek Thomas. The Arkansas freshman backcourt combined for an even 100 points last weekend.
Alabama is averaging more than 91 points a game and just blew away Texas Tech by 25, and that tonnage of offense must now be faced by Michigan.
They’ll all be there this week for a spiced up Sweet 16 where the central narrative remains the same. Can anyone stop a steamroller?
