NCAA Tournament: Top seeds, Cinderellas in Sweet 16
Stanford's coach will be back on the sidelines. Duke will watch the rest of the tournament from the couch.
George Mason is gone, but three double-digit seeds with George Mason-like dreams remain.
After Sunday's games, there are only 16 teams remaining in the NCAA tournament, though many of the story lines that existed when the bracket came out are still alive and well.
The conversation starts with the No. 1 seeds.
UCLA, Kansas, Memphis and North Carolina all made it through. The Jayhawks and Tar Heels did it most impressively, winning their four games by an average of 28. Memphis and UCLA, meanwhile, looked vulnerable in their second-round victories.
The Bruins, in fact, lost two points on Sunday even though they didn't play. NCAA officials said the final score of their Saturday-night win over Texas A&M should be 51-49 instead of 53-49 because a meaningless, last-second dunk by Russell Westbrook didn't come before the buzzer.
"We've been getting everybody's best game," Bruins coach Ben Howland said after UCLA barely escaped. "That's why this is the greatest sporting event in all of American sports, because anybody can beat anybody."
The Wildcats were one of the final bubble teams to make the tournament, and wound up as one of the few pieces of good news for the Big East, which took eight teams into the first weekend — more than any conference — and left with only three.
Louisville rolled through its two games, including a 78-48 win over Oklahoma on Sunday, and West Virginia also advanced with an upset over second-seeded Duke.
The Mountaineers, who play Xavier next in the West, are coached by the combustible Bob Huggins, though Huggins was hardly the biggest newsmaker on the coaching front over the weekend.
Instead, that honor went to Trent Johnson of Stanford. Ejected in the first half against Marquette, Johnson watched from the locker room as his team won by one in overtime.
"The bottom line was, the responsibility was on me, and I was out of line," Johnson said. "Just leave it at that if you would, please."
Probably won't happen, coach.
Johnson's next game, should he choose to stick around for it, could be a good one, against Texas and Rick Barnes in the South Regional in Houston.
The other South game pits Memphis, a 77-74 winner over Mississippi State, against Michigan State. The Spartans, after being a popular pick to win the Big Ten, didn't live up to expectations and played much of the season under the radar.
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