March Madness 2025: The Best and Worst From Day 4

That’s more like it. Let’s get into it.

We finally got an absolute banger.

Trailing by one point with 3.6 seconds to go, Maryland star Derik Queen made the decision easy for his head coach.

“I want the fucking ball,” Queen told Kevin Willard.

Willard obliged.

The freshman sensation backed up his confidence, taking the inbounds pass and driving to his left before kissing a bank shot high off the glass and sending the Terrapins to their second Sweet 16 in 22 years and their first since 2016.

There were more than a few follow-up thoughts on the number of steps Queen took before hitting the tournament’s first buzzer-beater, but we’ll get there.

“When Coach drew up the play, he trusted me and my teammates trusted me,” Queen said. “I was a little bit nervous, but I was due for one, and I had to, had to make this.”

Queen’s heroics came just moments after Colorado State’s Jalen Lake had hit a shot that seemed destined to be remembered as arguably the biggest of the tournament’s opening weekend.

Instead, a Maryland team that was beaten at the horn approximately 56 times this season finally got some relief from the basketball gods.

The dramatic final sequence guaranteed that this would be the first tournament since 2007 without an 11-seed or lower in the second weekend, and that Willard would head to the Sweet 16 for the first time in his head coaching career.

The battle of the last two programs in the sport to win back-to-back national championships did not disappoint.

For 30 minutes, it seemed like UConn might suddenly position itself as a realistic threat to become college basketball’s first three-peat champion since the UCLA dynasty of the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Then, Walter Clayton Jr. went to work.

The Florida All-American scored 13 of his game-high 23 points in the game’s final two segments, and then saved the Gators’ national title hopes with a pair of clutch three-pointers in the closing moments.

UConn fought until the end to stay within striking distance, but Thomas Haugh’s pair of free-throws with 5.9 seconds left pushed Florida’s lead to five and all but sealed the deal.

Florida is now headed to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2017 and the first time under head coach Todd Golden. The future is less certain for UConn, which will likely need to bring in a handful of top-tier talent from the transfer portal if it wants to return to fielding a championship caliber team.

The opening weekend finally gave us a last game worthy of staying up for.

Sure, it was marred by monitor reviews and a million free-throws in the final moments of regulation, but what game isn’t these days?

Arizona trailed 19-4 just five minutes into this game, but maintained its composure and battled back to take a 4-point lead into the locker room at halftime. The Wildcats led by as many as 11 in the second half before an Oregon rally got them to within a single point with 10 seconds to play.

Flawless free-throw shooting down the stretch by Anthony Dell’Orso and Tommy Lloyd implementing an effective “foul up 3” strategy kept the Ducks from ever having a shot to win the game or send it to overtime. That might have been different had Oregon not been an ugly 12-for-22 at the free-throw line.

Pac-12 forever.

It wasn’t smooth sailing for three of the No. 1 seeds in round two.

Auburn trailed Creighton at halftime. Houston needed a last second stop to get past Gonzaga. Florida needed Walter Clayton Jr. to go full March hero in the closing minutes to come back and beat UConn.

And then there was Duke.

How impressive was the Blue Devils’ 89-66 throttling of Baylor? It was only the best offensive effort by any team in an NCAA Tournament game in almost a decade.

Cooper Flagg’s injury during the ACC Tournament put at least some doubt into the notion that the Blue Devils should be the betting favorite heading into the Big Dance.

There isn’t any doubt now as to which No. 1 seed is heading into week two with the most juice.

The sixth-seeded Rebels certainly looked they should have been the higher-seeded team as they rolled over 3-seed Iowa State, 91-78. Ole Miss led by as many as 26 points before taking their foot off the proverbial gas pedal in the game’s final five minutes.

The Rebels shot 58.2 percent from the floor and 11-of-19 from three to secure just the second Sweet 16 appearance in school history. A win over second-seeded Michigan State would send Ole Miss to a regional final for the first time ever.

Chris Beard has now produced the second NCAA Tournament victory at Little Rock, the first Elite Eight appearance at Texas Tech, the first Final Four appearance at Texas Tech, and the second Sweet 16 appearance at Ole Miss. There are plenty of other things to say about him, but he can certainly coach.

Despite being three seed lines higher than Illinois, Kentucky entered Sunday night’s game against the Fighting Illini as a 1.5-point favorite.

If they took that personally, it showed.

The Wildcats were in control from virtually start to finish in this one, taking advantage of seven early turnovers from Illinois to build a first half advantage. UK then hit 13 of its first 17 second half shots to essentially put the game away before crunch time.

“That game was decided at the start of the game and the start of the second half,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said afterward.

After a few first weekend heartbreaks that spelled the end of the John Calipari era in Lexington, the Wildcats are back in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2019.

Injuries played a part, but this Iowa State team that had seemed to be a top-tier national title contender for the first two and-a-half months of the season looked like a shell of its former self down the stretch.

The Cyclones gave the ball away 15 times on Sunday night and had bad body language throughout an embarrassingly lopsided loss to Ole Miss.

After starting the season 17-2, Iowa State went just 8-8 in its final 16 games.

Look, you can’t be a 6-seed favored to beat 3, have a decided crowd advantage, and then go out and get your ass kicked from basically the opening tip to the final whistle. I mean, you can, you’re just going to find yourself on a list like this after it happens.

I watched the game. Duke looked amazing. I’m not bashing Baylor ... but they had the largest margin of defeat for the day at 23 points. On a chalky Sunday, that’s going to land you on this list.

More than a few people took note of the SEC’s early “struggles” in this tournament, as the teams from the league that were supposed to lost their first round games by and large lost their first round games. Apparently that’s struggling.

There’s no debate about how the league is performing now, as the SEC has seven of the 16 teams still standing. That’s a new record for the most teams from one conference in a Sweet 16.

The tournament has the final say when it comes to college basketball narratives, and so far, the 2024-25 SEC has backed up that claim of being one of the best conferences in the sport’s history.

Every year it seems like people watch a bunch of buzzer-beater montages before the first round tips off on Thursday afternoon, and then are stunned when like 75 percent of the games in the tournament aren’t won at the horn.

In reality, if you get one or two really memorable last-second buckets in a single tournament, that’s pretty good. We got a good one on Sunday night.

Speaking of, Maryland freshman sensation Derik Queen rose to the occasion at the end of his team’s game on Sunday. And then may have become an even bigger star after the game was over.

A Maryland kid staying home and then sending the Terps to their first Sweet 16 in nearly a decade is pretty cool.

Glad they paid him that money.

Since the tournament expanded in 1975, the ACC is the only conference that has had at least one team in the Sweet 16 every single season.

Duke, the only team from the league to advance to the second round this season, single-handedly kept that streak alive with its demolition of Baylor on Sunday.

For the first time ever, 25 percent of the teams in the Sweet 16 will be teams with head coaches in their first season at the school.

John Calipari (Arkansas)
Dusty May (Michigan)
Mark Pope (Kentucky)
Kevin Young (BYU)

There was a whole lot of bickering back-and-forth during the regular season about who got the best deal out of the Kentucky-Arkansas-BYU head coach shuffle (ok, it was mostly just between Wildcat and Razorback fans), and now here all three are still standing.

This is going to be the biggest storyline surrounding the tournament until the games start back up again on Thursday night.

Not only is this the first tournament without an 11-seed or lower since 2007, but all 16 teams remaining are from power conferences, and the only double-digit seed still standing is a squad loaded with five-star recruits and coached by John Calipari.

This is the first Sweet 16 where fewer than seven conferences have been represented ... and there are four.

Did NIL and the transfer portal kill Cinderella?

Do “the haves” now have too much for March to remain mad?

Is this the first year of a looming new era for the tournament?

Did a bunch of really good mid-major teams just miss a bunch of shots?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but more than a few folks are going to be debating them incessantly for the next four days.

All I know is I miss the little guy.

It sucks that the best moment of the tournament so far has been at least somewhat marred by a heated debate over whether or not Derik Queen walked before his game-winning shot at the buzzer.

Gene Steratore says no. Other officials said yes. Many other folks say “probably, but you can’t call that.”

As for Colorado State head coach Niko Medved, his take on the entire situation? It doesn’t matter.

Hell of a coach handling something like that perfectly.

I was tempted to put this in the “cheers” section because I think Hurley, love him or hate him, is terrific for the sport, but we were short on jeers so here we are.

First, we saw Hurley looking extremely emotional and human, tearfully saying “there’s an honor in the way we went out” during his postgame interview with Tracy Wolfson.

Then, we were presented with video of Hurley walking off the floor and telling Baylor players and coaches “I hope they don’t fuck you like they fucked us.”

So, yeah, little bit of a code switch there.

Hurley was unsurprisingly roasted for this across the internet, but look, the new era of college basketball needs major coaching stars, even if they’re controversial. Hurley is both of those things, and the sport is in a better place with him than it would be without him.

This feels like an error in judgment.

You can’t tell for 100 percent certain if head-to-head contact is made there, but if there was, Golden might not be at full strength for Thursday night’s game against Maryland.

This feels awfully unfair for a No. 1 seed two wins away from a Final Four trip.

It doesn’t help that those are three of the more passionate and well-traveling fan bases in the sport.

Not a fair situation for a team that earned the right to be the favorite among this quartet.

Bad beat of the tournament?

You can’t do this to a No. 1 NBA Draft pick who plays for your former team and then lose by 23, man.

Tyrese Proctor, Duke

There might not be a hotter player in America right now than Proctor, which bodes awfully well for Duke’s national title hopes. Proctor drilled 7-of-8 from beyond the arc on his way to a 25-point performance Sunday afternoon. He’s a scorching 13-of-16 from three in the tournament, and 19-of-30 from three over the Blue Devils’ last three games.

Sean Pedulla, Ole Miss

Pedulla continued his sensational play down the stretch of this season, scoring 20 points, dishing out eight assists and recording four steals in the Rebels’ throttling of Iowa State.

Caleb Love, Arizona

March Caleb Love is back, as the vacillating Wildcat guard dropped 29 points and nine rebounds against Arizona’s former Pac-12 rival Oregon.

Derik Queen, Maryland

The freshman had 17 points, six rebounds, two blocks and one immortal shot at the buzzer.

Jackson Shelstad, Oregon

The sophomore guard almost single-handedly kept the Ducks in the game for stretches, finishing with 25 points on 9-of-14 shooting from the field.

1. Clifford Omoruyi, Alabama

2. Alijah Martin, Florida

3. Nique Clifford, Colorado State

1. The agony, the ecstasy

2. The turtle ecstasy

3. A classic Big 12/Big Ten showdown

1. “First, he did pay us the money.” —Maryland freshman Derik Queen when asked what head coach Kevin Willard means to his players

2. “This is a great win for our program. The time was now for us to take that next step. Again, Florida basketball, back where it belongs. Being in the Sweet 16 is a great step in the right direction. ... We made winning play after winning play down the stretch in the last six minutes.” —Florida head coach Todd Golden

3. “I feel like we’ve been slept on. There’s a lot of people saying things about us like we’re about to lose this game. So we knew we had to come out and bring energy. I feel like the starting group kind of got us going, and then everyone came in and did their job.” —Alabama forward Grant Nelson

4. “It’s really disappointing because we feel like we can beat them because we were beating them in the first half. We know we can beat them. We know we are better than them so it’s really disappointing to lose to a team we are way better than.” —New Mexico forward Nelly Junior Joseph

5. “You look at the analytics, and they don’t have any weaknesses.” —Baylor head coach Scott Drew on Duke

Everyone take a deep breath, get a few nights of solid sleep, and we’ll meet back here on Thursday.