The men's Sweet 16 will be held Saturday and Sunday, and our ranking of all 16 teams and picks to reach the Final Four and cut down the nets on April 5 are in. But while our staff is high on Gonzaga and Baylor, what if they don't meet on the tournament's final night in Indianapolis? A number of intriguing contenders are emerging, plus four double-digit seeds remain looking to spring more upsets. We asked six writers five key questions around the tournament that's been and where it's headed.
What was the biggest surprise of the opening four days to you?
Pat Forde: The annihilation of the Big Ten. I thought Michigan State would beat UCLA. I did not see the meltdowns from Ohio State and Purdue coming. And I had Illinois in the national title game, so that didn't quite go as planned. (Though I did say several times that the Illini had a very tough draw.) Michigan and Wisconsin have done better than I expected. Iowa, Rutgers and Maryland bowed out when I believed they would.
Jeremy Woo: There wasn't one upset that totally floored me, but the volume of high seeds that took early spills was both entertaining and unexpected. I saw Texas and Kansas coming, and Iowa was a little scary, but I thought Illinois, Ohio State and Oklahoma State would at least make the Sweet 16. This has been a nice reminder of why the tourney format is always so fascinating, and the way it can level the field and help hot teams pull off huge wins. I did not see Oral Roberts, Syracuse or Oregon State coming.
Jason Jordan: Easily the Big Ten’s choke job. All season long it’s been college basketball’s top league, it got rewarded with a conference-record nine teams in the tournament and it just totally tanked. I mean, really, Illinois? All due respect to Sister Jean, but the seeds looked reversed in that game from start to finish. Only Michigan remains, while the Pac-12 looks like the top dog with four. Gotta love March!
Kevin Sweeney: The Big Ten's struggles stunned me. Part of it was certainly matchups: Iowa drawing a dynamic Oregon offense, Illinois drawing underseeded Loyola Chicago, even Purdue having to deal with a North Texas defense optimized to slow down Trevion Williams and Zach Edey. Still, I expected all the conference battles this winter would have prepared the conference better for March than it did. At this point, there's probably a greater than 50-50 shot that no Big Ten team reaches the Final Four. And no matter how good the league was in the regular season, people will remember this brutal NCAA tournament.
Nick Selbe: As surprising as it is to look at the bracket now and see Oral Roberts among the last 16 teams left standing, watching Loyola Chicago manhandle Illinois was not something many could have seen coming. Even as the Big Ten crumbled during the first weekend, the Illini had the look of title contenders over the last month. Perhaps this shouldn't have been that surprising considering we've seen the Ramblers pull this off before. But Illinois felt every bit deserving of a No. 1 seed, and was promptly run off the floor.
Molly Geary: Have to go with Illinois losing (and not even in a close game!), and that’s absolutely no disrespect to Loyola Chicago. The Illini entered the Big Dance passing both the look test and the analytics test as a legitimate threat to Baylor and Gonzaga. They got a tough draw, but not making it out of the second round can’t be seen as anything but a colossal disappointment.