2nd round reshapes bracket
Villanova loss, ACC flameout give new look to tourney entering Sweet 16
GREENVILLE, S.C. — The Atlantic Coast Conference’s strong regular season only stood to set up a first-weekend flameout in the NCAA Tournament.
The league had a record nine bids, but North Carolina is the only one alive in the Sweet 16. And the South Region’s No. 1 seed was fortunate to survive a second-round game against Arkansas to get there.
Still, top seeds Gonzaga, Kansas and UNC headline a regional round featuring 12 of the top 16 seeds, two more than last season.
The rest of the top conferences fared much better than the ACC. The Pac-12 is 8-1 and the Southeastern Conference is 7-2 so far, joining the Big 12 (8-3) and Big Ten (8-4) with three Sweet 16 teams each.
Here’s a look at the updated Final Four paths for the top remaining teams in each region:
SOUTH
This is the only bracket with the top four seeds still alive, so the Tar Heels’ path looks the same as it did on Selection Sunday.
UNC (29-7) needed a game-closing 12-0 run to rally past the eighth-seeded Razorbacks. Now the Tar Heels meets fourthseeded Butler (25-8), which beat No. 1 seed Villanova twice this season.
That game is the undercard to Friday’s matchup of second-seeded Kentucky (31-5) and third-seeded UCLA (31-4) in Memphis, Tennessee. The Wildcats survived a tough fight with Wichita State, while the Bruins beat Cincinnati to set up a rematch of a December game won by the Bruins.
“I don’t know if all the other regions went chalk, but it’s 1, 2, 3, 4 in the South,” Bruins coach Steve Alford said. “So that South Region and bracket is going to be a lot of fun.”