The Winners and Losers of the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight
UConn looks ready to complete its title defense, Nate Oats has mastered simple math, the NCAA can’t measure a court, and the women’s tournament is only heating up from here
Who shined brightest in March Madness’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight? Who fell short? Let’s dive into a special edition of Winners and Losers.
Loser: Anyone Daring to Shoot Against Donovan Clingan
Maybe I’m burying the lede by starting with Clingan and not the 30-0 run Connecticut went on in its 77-52 win over Illinois, but that’s how dominant the Huskies big man was in the Elite Eight. Clingan finished the game with 22 points on 13 shots and didn’t commit a single turnover. In a game full of offensive stars who will go on to play in the NBA, the 7-foot-2 sophomore shined the brightest. But it was his effort on the defensive end that will go down in UConn basketball lore.
The numbers seem fake. Per ESPN, Illinois players went 0-for-19 on shots contested by Clingan. He blocked five shots, made three steals, and grabbed 10 rebounds while committing only one foul in 22 minutes. He had a block rate of over 20 percent, per CBB Analytics, meaning Clingan blocked one out of every five Illinois attempts while on the floor—and it probably felt like even more than that for Illinois star Terrence Shannon.
UConn outscored Illinois by 29 points in Clingan’s minutes. The Big Ten tournament champs averaged 0.44 points per possession while he was in the game. Pacific averaged 0.46 points per possession in its 77-28 loss to St. Mary’s, the worst offensive performance of the college basketball season. Illinois, which has one of the country’s best offenses, was worse than that when Clingan was out there.
You’d think Illinois coach Brad Underwood would have simply told his players to stop trying the 7-footer after the first few shots were rejected, but apparently, that was not the message his team received from the bench. “We’re going to keep going at him,” Underwood told CBS during an in-game interview after a small run cut UConn’s lead down to 28-23 late in the first half. “If he blocks a hundred, he blocks a hundred. We’re not backing down.”
Here’s a taste of what happened next:
Winner: Scoring 30 Points in a Row
Fun fact: Teams are undefeated in the NCAA tournament when they go on at least one 30-0 run. The numbers are overwhelmingly in favor of scoring 30 consecutive points, so you’d think teams would try to do it more often. Maybe they will after watching UConn’s historic effort against Illinois. If you have 153 seconds to spare, you can watch every point the Huskies scored on the run here:
I can’t find any official lists of the longest runs in college basketball history, but this has to be near the top. Duke ripped off a 30-0 run against Florida Gulf Coast in 2012. Southern University started a game 44-0 against Champion Baptist College, which is not a member of the NCAA, in 2013. Those were big mismatches during nonconference play, though. The closest we’ve come to something like this in the NCAA tournament, at least in modern history, was a 25-0 run by Villanova against Oklahoma in the 2016 Final Four.
Although a 30-0 run is shocking, it’s not surprising that this UConn team pulled it off. Dan Hurley is the top offensive mind in college basketball at the moment. His offense has layers, and he’s got a deep veteran squad with enough basketball IQ to run any play from his deep bag of tricks. The Huskies can play big or play small. They can slow the game to a grinding halt or run teams off the court. They can punish teams in the paint or torch them from outside. Hurley has his group run more modern concepts like five-out sets and spread pick-and-rolls, as well as more traditional college concepts with off-ball screens and cutting actions. His set pieces on inbound plays are also a pain in the ass to defend.
Switching is really the only viable option opponents have when defending UConn’s intricately choreographed offense. That was Kansas coach Bill Self’s opinion after a home win over Connecticut in December. “I don’t see how you guard them if you don’t switch,” Self said. “There’s so many handoffs, short passes, quick ball screens, quick fades. There’s so many things they do one through four [that make it] really hard to stay connected.”
Here’s a video breakdown from Jordan Sperber of Hoop Vision on how UConn instantly adjusted to that style of defense after losing to Self’s Jayhawks. That’s the problem with any defensive game plan against this team: Hurley will quickly adapt to attack an opponent’s tactics, and he has the personnel to make pretty much any adjustment. Lead guard Tristen Newton is a terrific isolation scorer who can take big men off the dribble and shoot over smaller point guards. Cam Spencer, who looks like he should be playing for Duke in the early 1990s, is one of the nation’s most efficient players thanks to his sharpshooting and crafty inside game. Freshman Stephon Castle has the build of an NBA wing and has enough of a post game to take smaller defenders down low for easy scores. He’s also a terror in the open court. Alex Karaban is a 6-foot-8 stretch forward who can shoot it from deep and attack an aggressive closeout. He can also score in the post. And there aren’t many college big men who can handle Clingan in the post.
It’s a shock that this team doesn’t go on more 30-0 runs.
We probably won’t see another performance like that out of Connecticut in this tournament, but it’s starting to feel like the Huskies’ second straight championship is inevitable. Illinois stood no chance, and as Hurley pointed out after the 25-point win, “We didn’t even shoot well.” Imagine how the game would have looked if UConn had shot better than 3-for-17 from deep.
Winners: Nate Oats and Simple Math
Three is greater than two.
That mathematical fact is what has powered Oats’s rapid ascent up the basketball coaching ladder as well as Alabama’s run to the men’s Final Four—its first Final Four appearance in program history. Bama is headed to Phoenix after toppling a talented North Carolina team in the Sweet 16 and outlasting a tough Clemson team in the Elite Eight. The Tide outscored the Tigers 48-24 from the 3-point line, and after the game, Oats explained that, on the defensive end, he was willing to give up higher-efficiency 2-pointers if it helped his team defend the 3-point line more effectively.
“They shot 18 non-rim 2s, and they made 9-of-18,” Oats said after his first Elite Eight win. “That’s pretty good, but we were 1.29 [points per possession] on offense, and we were 1.17 on D. Nine-of-18 is just a 1.0 [points per possession]. Even though it’s a good percentage on 2s, it’s enough for us to win.”
Clemson shot a better overall field goal percentage in the Tide’s 89-82 win, but Alabama shot it better (and more frequently) from deep, and that made the difference. It’s made the difference all March. More than 45 percent of Bama’s shots in the tournament have been 3-pointers—slightly lower than its season-long rate of 46.6 percent, which ranks 19th nationally, per KenPom. And Alabama has outscored its opponents by 12 points a game from the 3-point line.
When Oats’s players aren’t chucking it from deep, they’re usually attacking the rim. The former high school math teacher has unsurprisingly embraced the analytics movement in basketball, which leans away from the midrange game in favor of 3s and shots near the basket. This shot chart from the Clemson game would bring a tear to Daryl Morey’s eye.
Alabama runs its offense like an NBA team, typically deploying five players outside the 3-point arc and taking turns running spread pick-and-rolls. In Mark Sears (6-foot-1), Aaron Estrada (6-foot-3), Rylen Griffen (6-foot-6), and Grant Nelson (6-foot-11), Oats has four players, of various builds, who average more than 0.90 points per possession as pick-and-roll ball handlers—so he’s got plenty of options depending on the matchup.
The Tide ran 40 ball screens against North Carolina. For context, Penn State led the nation in the regular season with 35 ball screens a game, per Synergy. Alabama then ran 32 against Clemson. While those led to plenty of shots at the rim, Oats’s team was also looking for open 3-point attempts on those possessions. Against UNC, which drops center Armando Bacot deep to contain ball screens, those looks came on pick-and-pops. Nelson, whom Oats sometimes uses as a screener, hit a couple of those shots after struggling with them throughout the season.
Clemson switched up its ball screen coverages throughout the game, but after Sears caught fire from deep, it didn’t matter what the Tigers did.
Over the first four rounds of the tournament, Alabama’s 108 pick-and-roll plays have led to 42 shots from beyond the arc, and the team is shooting 52.4 percent on those attempts, according to Synergy. That’s 1.57 points per possession! An opponent would have to shoot 78.6 percent on 2-pointers to keep up with that pace. This basic arithmetic is why Oats’s teams play this way. Some may see it as soft. Charles Barkley even called Alabama “frail,” something that Oats called out after the Tide’s Sweet 16 win.
On Saturday night, the Tide beat a Clemson team that was built around hard-nosed defense and post-ups. In theory, both the Heels and Tigers should have bullied this “frail” Bama team. Even 12th-seeded Grand Canyon, another defensive juggernaut, was viewed as a poor matchup for them. But even with all that muscle, those teams couldn’t overcome Oats’s math.
Losers: The NCAA and Simple Measurements
I don’t want to give the NCAA too much credit for its increased investment in the women’s tournament over the past few years. After all, it wasn’t until players and coaches documented the inequality in the accommodations provided for the men’s and women’s tournaments that the sport’s governing body took action. The NCAA eventually commissioned what ended up being a 113-page report from a third-party company that revealed the extent of the undervaluing and underfunding of the women’s tournament. And as a result, it was finally forced to take action, hiring another third-party firm to come up with a plan to make things more equitable.
Progress has certainly been made in that realm. But this year’s tournament shows there’s still work to be done. For instance …
Right before NC State and Texas tipped off their Elite Eight game, a fan in attendance noticed a discrepancy between the floor’s 3-point lines, which is not hard to spot from this wide-angle shot. Rather than waiting around for the issue to be corrected, which would have delayed the game by an hour and cut into ABC’s broadcast, the two coaches decided to just play on. The teams switched sides every quarter, so neither would seemingly gain an advantage—unless the game had gone into overtime.
The vendor that produces the courts for the NCAA issued an apology for the mistake, but several games had already been played before corrections were made immediately following NC State’s win. Surprisingly, though, teams that were shooting on the end with the shorter 3-point line shot it worse from deep, according to the AP, going 23-of-89 (25.8 percent) vs. the teams at the correct end of the floor, who shot 29-of-87 (33.3 percent).
Still, it’s impossible to say how the botched court may have affected the results of those games. And it’s a bit sobering that, even after that 113-page report, years of improvements, and an explosion in popularity and viewership for the women’s side of March Madness, players and coaches are still putting up with shit like this.
“I hate to say this, but I have a lot of colleagues that would say, ‘Only in women’s basketball,’” said Texas coach Vic Schaefer after his team’s season-ending loss. “I mean, it’s a shame, really, that it even happened. But it is what it is.”
Winner: Your Monday Night
Fortunately, numerous logistical issues have not had an impact on the quality of hoops we’ve seen over the first two weeks of the women’s tournament. Things will ratchet up even more on Monday night with a doubleheader featuring JuJu Watkins’s USC Trojans taking on Paige Bueckers and UConn, and the main event: the rematch of last year’s national title game between Iowa and the defending champs, LSU. There are so many enthralling subplots in this one—including Kim Mulkey’s ongoing crusade against the media and the Caitlin Clark–Angel Reese rivalry that both players deny exists. But the basketball will be worth the watch on its own.
Clark has become the face of college basketball, and she’s obviously the most important player on the Hawkeyes, but the X factor could be sophomore forward Hannah Stuelke, who will be tasked with keeping Reese off the offensive glass. Iowa’s inability to do so in last year’s national title game was the biggest factor in the result. The LSU star grabbed six offensive rebounds, and the Tigers, as a team, grabbed 38 percent of their missed shots in the game against a Hawkeyes team that had been strong on the glass all season. Stuelke barely played in last year’s game and should offer more resistance against Reese after hitting double digits in the rebound column in each of Iowa’s last two wins.
Iowa’s 3-point defense will be the other key to this game. LSU shot 11-of-17 from deep in the title game, including five 3-point makes from reserve guard Jasmine Carson. The Hawkeyes need to dominate from beyond the arc if they’re going to advance to the Final Four. Clark, who’s averaging 29.3 points per game in the tournament, can help take care of that on the offensive end. But this will need to be a well-rounded effort. This year’s Iowa team is better than the one that lost 102-85 last April and should be able to cope with LSU’s physicality a bit better on Monday night. If it can’t, and Reese dominates that glass again, we could see a repeat of last year’s result.
Winner: Big Fellas
In the second-round edition of Winners and Losers, we covered the issues that arise when defenses send extra bodies at dominant big men like Zach Edey and DJ Burns. The attention Edey draws down low is probably the main reason Purdue is second in the nation in 3-point shooting this season. Meanwhile, Burns’s deft passing touch against aggressive defenses has helped fuel NC State’s miracle run to the Final Four.
Edey and Burns make it awfully difficult to send those double-teams, but their teams’ respective wins on Sunday—a 72-66 Purdue win over Tennessee and a 76-64 NC State win over Duke—showed why opponents are willing to concede open perimeter shots to throw more bodies their way. It wouldn’t have mattered what the Vols defense did against Edey. The 7-foot-4 senior played perhaps the best game of his decorated career, pouring in 40 points and snatching 16 rebounds. Edey’s signature left-shoulder hook shot was dropping with regularity, and he also exploited Vols defenders who overplayed that shot with powerful drop steps going toward his weak hand. Purdue made just three shots from beyond the arc after averaging nearly 10 makes per game over the first three rounds of the tournament, but Edey’s dominance was more than enough to carry the Boilermakers to their first Final Four appearance since 1980.
Then Edey helped cut down the nets without using a ladder, which might be an NCAA tournament first.
The Wolfpack, meanwhile, are headed back to the national semis for the first time since 1983, thanks in large part to Burns’s exceptional performance. He dropped 29 points on 13-of-19 shooting Sunday against NC State’s Tobacco Road rivals, a skillful performance that drew the attention of NBA MVP Nikola Jokic, who showed up late to a press conference because he was watching Burns cook the Blue Devils.
Burns is a big dude who has the footwork and passing vision of a guard. He can score over either shoulder and is even better when he faces up against defenders. Against Duke, he used every bit of his robust skill set. Second-year Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer elected to put his guys against Burns one-on-one down low, while his perimeter defenders stayed attached to shooters. The strategy worked for the game’s first 20 minutes, with State scoring just 21 points in the first half. But in the second half, they exploded for 55 points, and Burns shot 9-of-11.
Edey and Burns also showed off their shit-talking chops after their games. Burns didn’t even wait for the final whistle. He was doing it during free throws.
Edey name-dropped Tennessee’s Rick Barnes as one of the coaches who overlooked him during the recruiting process and even dropped an f-bomb during a postgame interview with CBS. When you’re that big and that dominant, you can do whatever you want on a basketball court, I guess. At least that’s how it felt watching Edey and Burns work on Sunday.
Loser: College Basketball and Satisfying Endings
I refuse to call Houston or Jamal Shead “losers” after Duke eliminated the top-seeded Cougars in the Sweet 16, so I’ll give the L to the basketball gods for depriving us of a potential tournament classic by ending Shead’s night (and possibly his college career) with an ankle injury. Shead made quite the impact in his little time on the court. His aggressive defense bothered Duke’s young backcourt, and the Blue Devils committed four turnovers before the first TV timeout. While Shead’s shot wasn’t falling—he finished 1-of-5 from the field—he made two steals and dished out three assists in 13 minutes of action. Instead of showing what he could do in the rest of the game, though, the Big 12 Player of the Year went down with a little over six minutes left in the first half and wouldn’t return to the action.
After the 54-51 loss, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said the game didn’t feel “like a fair fight” without Shead, and while that sounds like a salty comment from a losing coach, it’s hard to push back against the take. “You would have to take maybe two of theirs to equal one of Jamal,” Sampson said. “That’s how good he was. He’s a first-team All-American. You don’t have another one of those. You don’t have the best defensive player in the Big 12. You don’t have a guy that made all the big shots at the end.”
That’s not an exaggeration. Shead will go down as one of the best players in the decorated history of Houston basketball. He’s the type of player who typically dominates in March, and it’s probably not a stretch to say that the final score would have been different had Shead been out there with his teammates.
Unsurprisingly, Sampson’s team continued to fight after Shead’s injury. Guard L.J. Cryer kept the Cougars in the game with timely 3s, and veteran big man J’Wan Roberts kept Houston competitive down low. The nation’s best and most aggressive defense kept the pressure on the Blue Devils, forcing 14 turnovers and limiting Duke to just over 40 percent shooting from the field. It was the exact kind of game Sampson would have wanted to play against a high-scoring Duke team, but Houston’s valiant effort ultimately fell short after Emanuel Sharp’s potential game-tying shot clanked off the rim before time expired.
With Shead headed for a pro career, it feels like we’ve witnessed the end of an era in Houston basketball. Sampson is an elite coach and the Cougars are loaded with young talent, so they should bounce back from the loss rather quickly. But Shead had become the face of the program. Last year, the Cougars lost Marcus Sasser, another decorated guard who embodied the Houston way, to the NBA, and they’ll lose Roberts and Shead after this season. It doesn’t feel right that we never saw this core compete in the Final Four. I don’t blame Sampson, Shead, or any other Houston player for their failure to make the sport’s biggest stage. This one’s on the basketball gods.
