NCAA Tournament 2017: The best and worst of everything from Sweet 16 Thursday

The first week of the NCAA tournament is sort of like being held captive in the best prison in the world. For four straight days, you have little contact with the outside world, you forget that grass is green and the sky is blue. But you know how many points that little kid from Mount St. Mary’s put on Villanova.

Then, suddenly, it’s gone. For truly institutionalized hoops junkies, getting re-acclimated with “the real world” goes about as well as it did for Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption. A little better, but not much.

Finally, Thursday returns and so does our reservation at the March Madness prison. The stay is never as long or as involved as it was the week before, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less pleasurable.

Here are all the best and worst things that the return of the NCAA tournament gave us on Thursday.

(11) Xavier 73, (2) Arizona 71 (West)

This was supposed to be the biggest mismatch of not just Thursday, but of the entire Sweet 16. Xavier was a team that had lost its best player to injury and then lost six straight games before beating DePaul both in its regular season finale and in the first game of the Big East tournament.

If the Musketeers lose either of those games, they probably aren’t even in the field of 68. Arizona, meanwhile, rolled to the Pac-12 tournament title and had been the American public’s runaway favorite to make it out of the West Region since the moment the brackets were unveiled.

None of that mattered on Thursday, as Trevon Bluiett dropped a game-high 25 points to lead Xavier to a stunning 73-71 win in which the Musketeers scored the game’s final nine points. With his team owning possession and just 50 seconds to play, Chris Mack correctly went 2-for-1 and got a Sean O’Mara bucket off a great feed from Bluiett. After a Kadeem Allen miss on the other end and an O’Mara miss on the front end of a 1-and-1, Arizona had one final shot to tie or take the lead. Allonzo Trier’s potential game-winner went in and out.

The remarkable thing about the Musketeers’ run isn’t just that they’re doing it as an 11 seed, it’s that they’re doing it in a season where Myles Davis left the team and star Edmond Sumner was lost for the season with an ACL tear. No team is supposed to be able to stand up after a pair of body blows like that, and yet here Xavier is.

The flip side of this is that Sean Miller now retains his title of college basketball’s best coach to never make a Final Four. It’ll happen, but so will an increase in restlessness among his fan base until it does.

Kansas

Just when you think the Jayhawks’ train of destruction in this tournament is about to screech to slow down, it picks up even more momentum. At the 16 minute mark of the second half, Purdue had the ball and trailed Kansas by just two points. The Jayhawks outscored the Boilermakers 45-15 from that point on.

Frank Mason may have locked up national Player of the Year honors on Thursday by dropping 26 points, seven assists, and seven rebounds on a Purdue team that features fellow candidate Caleb Swanigan. While Mason was tremendous, it continues to be the increasingly stellar play of do-it-all freshman Josh Jackson that has made KU so terrifying for the last two weeks. Jackson scored 15 points, grabbed 12 rebounds, and made four steals on Thursday night.

There’s no guarantee that Kansas is 10 days away from winning a national title, but there’s no doubt that through two and-a-half rounds of play, the Jayhawks have been the most impressive team in this tournament.

Arizona

Purdue lost by 32, yes, but Arizona was the biggest favorite of any team in this round, and one of the biggest favorites overall to cut down the nets in Phoenix. For Arizona not to take advantage of what had already become the weaker side of the bracket only makes its upset loss that much more difficult to swallow for ‘Zona fans.

It doesn’t matter how good or bad Xavier has been in recent weeks or what its seed was, Arizona was up seven in this game with a minute to play. Regardless of the opponent, the Wildcats have to seal the deal in that situation. Instead, they didn’t score another point and their Final Four drought will last into at least 2018.

Frank Mason, Kansas

The national POY frontrunner proved why on Thursday, leading Kansas’ blowout of Purdue by scoring 26 points to go with seven rebounds and seven assists.

Trevon Bluiett, Xavier

Bluiett is quietly on the type of March tear that could wind up making him an NCAA tournament legend when all’s said and done. He scored a game-high 25 points in Xavier’s upset of Arizona.

Derrick Walton Jr., Michigan

The above statement could have also been true for Walton had his final attempt Thursday night gone about three inches farther. He still finished his final game of the season with 20 points and eight assists.

Tyler Dorsey, Oregon

Dorsey has now scored 20 or points in each of Oregon’s last six games. The points that got him to the mark on Thursday were also the two that won the game for the Ducks.

Allonzo Trier, Arizona

Like Walton, Trier’s final shot not finding the bottom of the net ruined what had been an otherwise stellar performance. He finished with 19 points and nine rebounds and scored 15 straight for the Wildcats at one point during the second half.

1. A guaranteed surprise finalist

After Thursday’s action, one of these six teams is guaranteed to play in the national championship game a week from Monday:

Gonzaga
Xavier
Baylor
South Carolina
Florida
Wisconsin

It’s a list of names that features a healthy combination of good teams representing programs that people typically view as less than Final Four caliber and respected programs that fielded teams that weren’t supposed to be able to do this in this particular season.

No Duke, no Villanova, no Arizona, and I’m good with it. We’re now virtually guaranteed to have an “everybody doubted us” story in some form heading into the title game, which is cool.

We also get a regional final featuring two teams looking to go to their first Final Four (Gonzaga and Xavier) for the first time since 1999. Ironically enough, that game was Gonzaga vs. Florida and was the first of the Bulldogs’ now 19 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances.

2. Chris Webber’s clapping and berating of officials

Look, Chris Webber flubbed a decent amount of word and calls during the broadcast of Gonzaga/West Virginia Thursday night. I heard them. It’s cool.

Why is it cool? Because Webber also spent seven straight minutes ripping officials who inexplicably took that long to review an obvious call, and then did the same to an official’s face when he came over to try and explain the situation. All of this happened on live TV, mind you. Also happening on live TV was Webber openly clapping after a crazy sequence which ended in Gonzaga’s Jordan Matthews burying the biggest shot of the game.

Keep doing you, C-Webb.

3. A double-digit seed still dancing

Xavier’s not your typical 11 seed, but it’s always nice to have a double-digit seed still dancing on one of the final two days of regional play. The Musketeers are now the seventh 11 seed to advance to the Elite Eight, and there’s a little bit of positive history on their side.

The previous six 11 seeds to make a regional final have all squared off against No. 1 seeds, and three of them have won those games and advanced to the Final Four. You’ll take that stat if you’re a Xavier fan gearing up to see your team take on top-seeded Gonzaga on Saturday.

1. West Virginia’s final possession

I just ... I ... why didn’t they ....... what is this?

You need to see the whole thing, and you need to see it sped up and set to Yakety Sax.

It was a fitting ending to what was a competitive Sweet 16 game, but one which had an unhealthy ratio of whistles to exciting moments.

2. The end of the Michigan storyline

People will be talking about Michigan’s memorable March for years to come, but the story will always end in the Sweet 16. It didn’t look like that was going to be the case for a healthy chunk of the night on Thursday, but Oregon made all the plays the Wolverines couldn’t in the game’s final minutes to ensure that it would be.

3. The missed dunk trend rolls into week two

The three-day break didn’t change anything.

Add Jordan Bell to the list.

Kansas’ Lagerald Vick threw down a dang 360 in the middle of a Sweet 16 game.

The agony and the ecstasy.

“First of all, I don’t know that I have a monkey on my back. I don’t wake up with one or walk around with one. I don’t think these guys think I have one, I don’t think my wife thinks I have one, or anybody in my family. Close friends. Fishing buddies never talk about it. So those are the only people that really matter to me. It would be phenomenal to get these guys, this team that I love deeply, the experience to go to a Final Four. It would be phenomenal to give that satisfaction to all the players I’ve been lucky enough to coach, and to give it to a university that has treated me so incredibly well. And to Spokane, which has been such an unbelievable community for us to have our program. But it’s not about me and my monkeys and my dogs and my cats. It’s about them.”

—Gonzaga coach Mark Few when asked about ‘getting the monkey off his back’ and potentially making a Final Four.

Meet back here in a few hours. Bring snacks. Good ones. No combos.

No. 1 North Carolina vs. No. 4 Butler, 7:09 p.m.

South region | FedEx Forum, Memphis, Tenn.

TV: CBS | Announcers: Jim Nantz, Grant Hill, Bill Raftery, Tracy Wolfson

No. 3 Baylor vs. No. 7 South Carolina, 7:29 p.m.

East region | Madison Square Garden, New York, N.Y..

TV: TBS | Announcers: Verne Lundquist, Jim Spanarkel, Allie LaForce

No. 2 Kentucky vs. No. 3 UCLA, 9:39 p.m.*

South region | FedEx Forum, Memphis, Tenn.

TV: CBS | Announcers: Jim Nantz, Grant Hill, Bill Raftery, Tracy Wolfson

No. 4 Florida vs. No. 8 Wisconsin, 9:59 p.m.*

East region | Madison Square Garden, New York, N.Y.

TV: TBS | Announcers: Verne Lundquist, Jim Spanarkel, Allie LaForce

*game time is approximate