Reseeding the Sweet 16: March Madness power rankings of the teams left in NCAA Tournament

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Midnight has come early this year as all the carriages have turned back into pumpkins and the March Madness Cinderellas in the men’s NCAA Tournament have gone home.

Usually, there’s at least one men’s hoops team from a non-traditional league that reaches the second weekend. Not this time. With the exceptions of Sweet 16 fixture Gonzaga and San Diego State, which has also been down this road before, the rest of the remaining teams compete in the sport’s major conferences. Furthermore, all the top eight seeds and 14 of the top 20 are still alive.

But while we all love a good underdog story, the number of strong contenders left in the field could mean four very competitive regionals are on the horizon this coming weekend. At least, we as viewers can hope that will be the case.

To be clear, any of the 16 teams left standing are capable of winning on a given day. But a pecking order seems to be emerging, and it doesn’t necessarily follow the committee’s seed placements. So let’s reseed this group of teams as if the tournament was starting again this weekend.

No. 1 Connecticut

If we’re being honest, the defending champion Huskies have looked like the team to beat for some time. It can be done, but you have to shoot the lights out as Creighton did on Feb. 20, UConn’s lone loss since the calendar turned to 2024.

No. 2 Purdue

The Boilermakers’ quest to achieve what one might call the Virginia path to the championship is arguably off to an even better start than the Cavaliers’ early 2019 run. The competition only gets stronger, of course, and so far Purdue has avoided the turnover bug that has been its undoing in its rare losses over the past couple of seasons. And with Zach Edey and the guards making shots, the sky is the limit.

No. 3 North Carolina

For what it’s worth, these Tar Heels seem to have the architecture of some of the program’s past championship squads, with a dynamic lead guard in the person of RJ Davis and a strong frontcourt. The biggest question is…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/reseeding-sweet-16-march-madness-103443001.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2024-03-26 10:34:43

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