It’s a strongly familiar Sweet 16
Maybe these Sweet 16 participants should enter the four arenas via red carpets rather than concrete hallways. It’s a starry matter even if the clothes remain uninteresting.
It has five teams from the obsessive basketball kingdoms of Kentucky ( two) and North Carolina ( three). It has six of the top nine programs in Final Four appearances ( North Carolina, UCLA, Kentucky, Duke, Louisville, Michigan State), and while only 14 schools have won multiple national titles, this Sweet 16 boasts seven of those ( the six above, plus North Carolina State).
It has the top four active coaches in NCAA tournament winning percentage ( Mike Krzyzewski, John Calipari, Rick Pitino, Roy Williams); it has the guy ranked No. 6 ( Tom Izzo); and it has 15 coaches with Sweet 16 experience.
Not quietly, this Sweet 16 in a freshman era has 14 of the 24 allAmericans from 2014.
It has its resident mastodon, Kentucky, trying to become the first unbeaten champion since Indiana in 1976, and it sustains the possibility of a final in Indianapolis on April 6 between Kentucky and Duke, a concept that could enthrall even the half- interested. It has even that fresh concept of the 2010s, Wichita chic, seeing as how the nouveau titan from the state of Kansas, Wichita State, just spent a telltale second half romping through its kid- brother program from somewhere cross- state.
“Your best is good enough,” the Great Plains basketball curator Gregg Marshall told his Shockers in the pre- Kansas locker- room, and actually, their near- best was, unsurprising given their 95- 14 three- year record and the way they alarmed the Louisvillians at the 2013 Final Four. The Shockers aren’t shockers even if senior Tekele Cotton did say of beating Kansas, “To me, I mean, I’m speechless.”
They’ll head off to Cleveland, which will lure the stars starting Thursday along with Los Angeles, Houston and Syracuse. There, Wichita State will find Notre Dame, a representative of the drought- familiar teams, a renowned March klutz that finds its first Sweet 16 in 12 years. Similarly, Gonzaga finds its first after five straight roundof- 32 stall- outs. Asked if he’d grown tired of hearing about that, coach Mark Few said, “Personally, yes.”
Coach Sean Miller of Arizona also knows the ticklish questions of late March, having defended on occasion his perfectly stellar record of three previous final- eight appearances against his thus- far record of zero Final Four appearances. “I feel good about us,” he said on the way to Los Angeles, just up the 5 freeway from Anaheim, where last year he came “within a bounce” ( his words) of the Final Four, losing in overtime to Wisconsin, which itself heads again for Los Angeles.
“Getting to the last 16 teams left in college basketball is obviously a good feeling,” Wisconsin’s giant star Frank Kaminsky said, “but we’re a 1 seed for a reason ... We’ve seen it before, we know what it takes, we know what we need to do, on and off the court.”