NCAA bracket 2017: Today’s scores, news, and highlights from March Madness

Before any of the March Madness games tipped off last week, I suggested that you should fill out your bracket based on which teams are the nerdiest. Duke would put up a good fight, I reasoned, but ultimately their soon-to-be bankers would be no match for the capital ‘J’ Journalists that Northwestern boasts, and the Wildcats would win it all.

NEWS FLASH: I was kidding. If you did adopt this strategy, your bracket is now buried six feet under a mountain of disappointment, wounded pride, and stupidity. I mean, your bracket is probably buried under all of that by now anyway, because that’s what happens during March Madness, but hopefully it’s not because you took my idiotic advice.

There’s a distinct rhythm to many near-upsets you see in the NCAA tournament. You saw it in UNC’s comeback against Arkansas and Oregon’s win over Rhode Island on Sunday.

The underdog hangs with the big boy and maybe opens up a nice lead that seems comfortable, but late in the game inexplicably stops putting the ball in the basket and lets the higher-seeded team back in the game. Rhode Island didn’t make a field goal in the final two minutes of their loss, and Arkansas didn’t score in the final 3:30.

South Carolina beat Duke Sunday night in what is, to date, the biggest basketball win in school history. This is a school that hadn’t won a tournament game since Richard Nixon was in office, and not only did they win two this weekend, but they beat Duke in the process.

With that in mind, there was a celebration was in order Sunday night. Students got after it with no regard for Monday classes because truly, who has time for something like that?

Everyone had the first two games of the day circled heading into Sunday, and neither one disappointed. Both Michigan-Louisville and Wichita State-Kentucky gave us two hours of excitement that lasted right until the final horn. Ultimately, one No. 2 seed from the Bluegrass State danced into the Sweet 16, while the other went home.

The real surprise was the drama that came later in the day. North Carolina being pushed to the brink, Oregon and Baylor winning thrillers, and then Duke getting stunned by South Carolina were the things that took Sunday from good to great.

There was no debate in the preseason as to who the No. 1 team in the country would be when the polls officially opened in November. There was Duke, and then there was everyone else.

Duke was the team that had the most impressive collection of returning players in college basketball, led by star shooting guard Grayson Allen and front court rock Amile Jefferson. Duke also had the top-ranked recruiting class in the country, the one with five-star recruits like Jayson Tatum, Harry Giles, Frank Jackson, and Marques Bolden.

The Oregon Ducks are going to the Sweet 16 in the 2017 NCAA tournament. The third-seeded Ducks outlasted No. 11 Rhode Island 75-72 on Sunday night in Sacramento. It took a furious second half rally for the Ducks to steal the victory.

Tyler Dorsey was the star of the show for Oregon. The sophomore guard hit the go-ahead three on the Ducks’ final possession to finish with 27 points on the night. Rhode Island had one final chance, but its three-point attempt was an airball.

North Carolina is still in the NCAA tournament, but just barely. The Tar Heels almost fell to Arkansas in a second-round shocker on Sunday evening, but they recovered and got some breaks down the stretch to win, 72-65. The game was far closer than that.

It would’ve been a stunning upset. No. 8 Wisconsin’s win against top overall seed Villanova on Saturday was a pretty big one, but this would’ve been bigger.

No. 8 Arkansas made famous the 40 minutes of hell style of fast paced basketball in the 1990s, and now the Hogs will have an offseason of hell thinking about what could have been.

The Razorbacks almost upset the south’s top-seed, UNC, instead falling, 72-65, and the team that was the consensus most talented squad in the dance will stick around for another weekend. It would have been the first time the Heels had lost to a team seeded No. 8 or higher in over 20 years.

The Michigan Wolverines punched their ticket to the Sweet 16 after defeating the Louisville Cardinals, 73-69. Afterwards, when the team settled into the locker room, coach John Beilein did a John Wick, behind-the-cover move and brought a water gun to soak everyone with. You can’t get mad at them for celebrating like this — they’ve beaten everything in March, including a plane accident before the Big Ten tournament.

The Michigan men’s basketball team has had a whale of a two weeks, and these hectic times aren’t over just yet. The Wolverines beat Oklahoma State in an offense-packed thriller in the NCAA tournament’s first round on Friday, and they followed it up by beating No. 2 Louisville to punch a Sweet 16 ticket.

Since March 5, the Wolverines are on a six-game winning streak — their last regular season game, four in the Big Ten tournament, and now this one. They have the look of March Madness’ hottest team. But how they’ve gotten here is just as interesting as their record itself, so let’s go through a timeline of UM’s last 10 days.

The Michigan Wolverines are going to the Sweet 16. The No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament’s Midwest region beat the No. 2 Louisville Cardinals in the round of 32 on Sunday, 73-69, in Indianapolis. The Wolverines will play Oregon or Rhode Island next weekend in Kansas City. A live, updating tournament bracket is right here.

Michigan entered as the tournament’s hottest team. The Wolverines won six in a row, including a four-game jaunt through the Big Ten tournament and a first-round win against Oklahoma State. Louisville had just beaten No. 15 Jacksonville State, and the Cardinals posed the biggest threat yet to Michigan’s run.

Knotted in a close game with Michigan for the right to play Purdue in the Sweet Sixteen, Louisville’s Anas Mahmoud missed a blatantly open dunk late in the second half.

His coach, Rick Pitino, was not happy.

The first half of Sunday’s Michigan-Louisville game was a barn burner. Louisville’s Deng Adel had a couple highlights, including when he annihilated a basketball with a thunder dunk. Near the end of the first half, Adel made back-to-back threes to extend Louisville’s lead, and it was so exciting, Ryan McMahon fell out of his seat and a coach angrily ran up to yank him off the ground.

The Louisville Cardinals have some athletes on their team. Here’s one of the best, forward Deng Adel, picking up some speed in transition and then annihilating a basketball, a rim, and some of his opponents’ souls, all at once:

This is a cool highlight, obviously, but it’s also terrific basketball.

The NCAA women’s tournament carries on Sunday as two No. 1 seeds will be in action and looking to advance. Notre Dame and South Carolina both tip off in the second round against beatable opponents, and neither has been pushed too hard in the early going.

South Carolina, for its part, has dumped 90 points on UNC Asheville and Kentucky in the last month and last lost at Missouri on Feb. 19. Outside Mizzou, the Gamecocks have only lost to Duke, UConn, and Tennessee, and they have little to fear going into their Sunday matchup against Arizona State.

Florida put a destruction on Virginia on Saturday in the second round of the NCAA tournament. The Gators’ 65-39 win was one of the most dominant showings of March so far, and, on Virginia’s part, the tournament’s biggest embarrassment yet.

The loss continued a trend of strong Virginia teams losing either too early or really ugly in March Madness. This one can certainly be filed under “ugly”; whether it’s “early” depends on your view of this Hoos team. But at any rate, UVA took a terrible loss, and it’s the fourth year in a row that the program has exited March in agony.

The 2013 NCAA tournament was terrific. It featured a No. 9 seed, Wichita State, mounting a Cinderella run to the Final Four, and a bunch of earlier-round upsets that made the first few days of the tournament a blast. (Remember Harvard over New Mexico, La Salle over Kansas State, and Florida Gulf Coast in the Sweet 16?)

But the tournament’s most compelling teams, to me, were the ones that played in the national title game. That’s the one where a Russ Smith and Peyton Siva-led Louisville beat a Trey Burke-led Michigan, 82-76, for the right to cut down some nets.

Common ground doesn’t come easy in college basketball, especially not in this month. This is the sport that somehow doubles as both the most egalitarian and the most unfair: All 351 teams get a shot at the national title at the end of the season by playing until they lose. Yet, the setup is so subjective that it can’t help but leave almost every party unsatisfied.

That’s part of the reason Sunday’s second-round NCAA tournament matchup between the Kentucky Wildcats and the Wichita State Shockers feels so rare: There’s a consensus here, and it’s that this game should not be happening. Not yet, at least. Both of these teams are way too good to be playing each other on the first weekend.

Rhode Island basketball’s “upset” win over the Creighton Bluejays in the opening round of the NCAA tournament was anything but.

The Rams are red-hot, winning nine straight games since Feb. 18, including six by double digits. They were a popular bracket pick, catching a slight break against a Creighton team without its best player, Maurice Watson, who tore his ACL in January. But they not only beat the Bluejays, they won handily by 12, and somehow they’re suddenly recognized as a dangerous team after an ice-cold 10-6 start to the season.