The Winners and Losers of the NCAA Tournament’s Second Round
Round 2 of March Madness featured power conference domination, a stunning Kim Mulkey press conference, and a pity party for non-Duke fans. Here are the winners and losers from the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Who shined brightest in the second round of March Madness? Who fell short? Let’s dive into a special edition of Winners and Losers.
Winner: Power Conferences
Congratulations, cowards. This is your year in the office bracket pool. Every March, you play it safe. You might pick a 3-seed to make the Final Four just to spice things up, but for the most part, your bracket is chalk. As the rest of the world roots for drama, chaos, to feel something, you clamor for order. Well, this year, you got it.
There will be no Cinderellas crashing this year’s Sweet 16. No. 11 seed NC State and its athletic department, which brings in more than $100 million in revenue annually, are the closest you’ll get in 2024. San Diego State and Gonzaga are the only two remaining non–power conference teams, and both are nationally recognized brands and have played for a national title in the past few seasons. The men’s tournament has been dominated by the teams we expected to dominate it.
Three of the top four seeds have advanced to the Sweet 16 in each region. San Diego State (fifth in the East), NC State (11th in the South), Clemson (sixth in the West), and Gonzaga (fifth in the Midwest) are the outliers this year. In last year’s men’s tournament, seven teams had outplayed their seeding by this point; that included four double-digit seeds who made it to the second weekend. If we add up the seeds of the last 16 men’s teams left standing, it becomes abundantly clear just how chalky this year’s dance has been.
But before you go blaming the transfer portal or NIL for the fall of March Madness—the tournament has gone woke, dammit—I’ll ask you to think back to the 2019 edition. Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams hadn’t retired, the Pac-12 was still a thing, and the men’s tournament was even more chalky than it’s been this year. Only two teams outside the top 16 made it to the second weekend: 12th-seeded Oregon and fifth-seeded Auburn. And outside of Gonzaga, a 1-seed that year, every Sweet 16 participant belonged to a power conference. It was the kind of tournament SEC commissioner Greg Sankey dreams of at night, but it was hardly a sign of things to come, as we saw over the next few years.
This March hasn’t been particularly mad, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Sankeys of the world will make even more money with bigger fan bases driving up ticket sales and television ratings. But neutral fans also win: Instead of watching North Carolina and Purdue beat up on colleges you can’t locate on a map in late rounds, we’ll see them struggle against programs with comparable resources and talent. The predictability of this year’s men’s tournament may have produced a relatively tame opening weekend, but it could make the next two rounds a lot more entertaining.
Loser: Last March’s Demons
Purdue and Arizona are certainly enjoying how chill this year’s men’s tournament has been after they suffered the two most embarrassing losses of last year’s opening round. In 2023, Purdue became just the second 1-seed to lose its first-round game after Fairleigh Dickinson—which got into the dance on a technicality and had to win a play-in game just to make the round of 64—bottled up Zach Edey and took down the Boilermakers 63-58. Arizona, meanwhile, made history of its own when it became just the 11th 2-seed to ever lose to a 15-seed. The Wildcats faded against Princeton down the stretch, showing a lack of toughness and the very large absence of a go-to scorer. Those losses were brutal at the time—but they led to an offseason of soul-searching that brought wholesale changes to both teams in the 2023-24 season.
Now, Purdue and Arizona have filled in the gaps that led to their early dismissals last year. Let’s start with Purdue, which brought back most of last year’s team. Edey is still the star of the show and is the heavy favorite to become the first two-time College Player of the Year since Ralph Sampson in the early 1980s, but he has a lot more support now. Sophomores Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer were the top options behind Edey last season, but both have raised their games this year. Smith, who’s developed into an all-conference performer, is more sound on the ball and has become a more reliable scorer. The same goes for Loyer, whose shooting touch has also been more consistent this season. Edey has improved, too. He’s been more ruthless when teams defend him one-on-one and more decisive with kick-out passes when opponents send a double-team. The Boilermakers are getting better shots, and they’re making those shots more consistently.
Purdue now leads the nation in 3-point shooting percentage after finishing 276th in 2023. That’s made a massive difference, but it hasn’t changed how opponents set up to try to stop them. Edey is still the top priority, so he continues to receive plenty of defensive attention whenever he touches the ball on the block. And when he does get a shot up from the post, he’s scoring at about the same clip as he did a season ago. The big difference between this year and last is what happens when Edey passes out of the post, whether it’s to a spot-up shooter or a cutter.
Purdue’s Points per Possession on Edey Post-Ups (Synergy)
These Boilermakers, who head to the Sweet 16 after beating Grambling State and Utah State by an average of 33.5 points, are capable of punishing teams that sell out to stop Edey in ways that the 2023 Boilermakers just weren’t. FDU used that inability to its advantage in last year’s upset. Per Synergy, Purdue made just one spot-up jumper off an Edey post-up pass in the 2023 loss. They’ve already made four of those shots through two games this year, and Edey’s post-ups (including passes) are averaging a ridiculous 1.38 points per possession after two rounds. Opponents are running out of viable options for dealing with the 7-foot-4 center.
Arizona didn’t have such a clear path forward after its loss to an undersized Princeton team. Tommy Lloyd’s group was set up for success in that game. In Azuolas Tubelis and Oumar Ballo, Lloyd had two dominant bigs who should have had their way with the Ivy League competition. That didn’t happen. The Tigers punched Lloyd’s team in the mouth and took a late lead, and Arizona wilted. Tubelis and Ballo played solid games, combining for 35 points on 30 shots, but neither dominated as they should have. The backcourt contributed little, and the team made just three shots from deep. Arizona lacked toughness in the frontcourt and playmaking in the backcourt. There was a lot of work to be done in the offseason.
Lloyd made his moves in the transfer portal. He added Keldon Johnson (from San Diego State) for toughness and brought in Jaden Bradley (Alabama) for shooting and perimeter defense. His biggest addition was Caleb Love (North Carolina), who won Pac-12 Player of the Year this season. Love is an irrationally confident guard who takes (and makes) a lot of shots. He is what’s called a “volume shooter,” which is really just another name for a ball hog. That’s typically seen as a negative, but Love’s brand of chucking it is exactly what this Arizona team lacked a year ago. The Wildcats needed more dog in them, and Love has brought it in spades.
Love scored 18.5 points a game on 37.5 percent shooting over the first two rounds. He made six shots from beyond the arc but needed 20 attempts to get there. Ordinarily, it’s difficult to win when your best player is shooting like that, but Arizona had no issues getting through the first weekend. Long Beach State stuck around for the first half of their first-round game but ultimately couldn’t keep pace with the Pac-12 regular-season champs. Then Arizona nearly ran Dayton off the court before a late rally by the Flyers, but the game was never in doubt. The Wildcats won their two games by an average of 15 points—and while they haven’t relied on the toughness or shotmaking they added in the offseason to pull them through these March games yet, that time will come soon.
Winner: Passing Bigs
While modern basketball, at all levels, has been centered on the 3-point shot, the value of a post player who can score on the block remains as high as ever. Not only are those players a reliable source of easy buckets down low, but a truly dominant big man who can also throw a pass will create more 3-point opportunities for their team just based on the attention they command. We’ve already covered how that setup has worked for Purdue this season, but that’s not the only team that’s riding a dominant big into the men’s Sweet 16.
The most notable example is NC State, led by DJ Burns Jr. It had to win seven games in a row to get to the NCAA tournament’s second weekend; that included a miraculous five-game run through the ACC tournament to earn the conference’s automatic bid. Burns is a wide-bodied center who has quick feet around the paint, a soft touch near the rim, and a good eye for finding his teammates. In wins over Oakland and Texas Tech, he averaged 20 points per game on 69.6 percent shooting. He’s also leading the tournament in good vibes, but that’s an unofficial stat.
Against Oakland, Burns did it all. He scored 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, but it was the four assists he tallied that may have made the difference for the Wolfpack. Three of those assists led directly to 3-pointers. The other led to a dunk. And all four plays had to be discouraging for the undersized Oakland team, which had no defender capable of taking Burns on their own. The Golden Grizzlies tried to play zone, doubling Burns whenever he got a post touch.
But when those tactics led to high-efficiency attempts for other NC State players, it became obvious that Oakland’s best chance was just to let Burns cook on his own. The strategy ultimately got them to overtime, but Burns ended the game with 24 points on only three missed shots, and the Wolfpack marched on.
North Carolina’s offense doesn’t revolve around its big man quite like NC State’s does, but center Armando Bacot is the star of the show despite the accolades teammate RJ Davis has (deservingly) received this season, including Player of the Year in the ACC. In the Tar Heels’ second-round game against Michigan State, Tom Izzo sent extra defenders Bacot’s way—usually using whoever was guarding Elliot Cadeau, who’s made only one 3 since Valentine’s Day—to double the big man. With two Spartans defenders on one guy, the other three had to rotate to fill in the gaps. A lot of college centers have a difficult time reading the defense and finding open shooters, but Bacot picked apart the scrambling Spartans and often found Cormac Ryan and Harrison Ingram, who went a combined 7-of-12 from deep, for open shots on the perimeter.
With more teams deploying five players around the perimeter, college bigs have had to evolve over the past few years. But teams like Purdue, North Carolina, and NC State are showing that a big man who can make plays from around the rim is still as valuable as ever.
Loser: Kim Mulkey
Leave it to Kim Mulkey to find a way to end up in the losers section even though her LSU Tigers continued their title defense with a 27-point win over Middle Tennessee State in the second round of the women’s tournament. What the Tigers did on the court over the weekend has been overshadowed by Mulkey’s unhinged Saturday press conference, in which she threatened to sue The Washington Post for a yet-to-be-published “hit piece” that will apparently center on the national championship–winning coach.
“I’ve hired the best defamation law firm in the country, and I will sue The Washington Post if they publish a false story about me,” Mulkey said. “Not many people are in a position to hold these kinds of journalists accountable, but I am, and I’ll do it.”
Mulkey said she’s taken issue with how the story has been reported. And she claimed the reporter sent her dozens of questions just two days before the women’s tournament tipped off Friday, but then she said: “I told this reporter two years ago that I didn’t appreciate the hit job he wrote on [former LSU football coach] Brian Kelly, and that’s why I wasn’t going to do an interview with him.” So Mulkey blew off this reporter two years ago, or the reporter waited until the eleventh hour to get their questions over to Mulkey, or Mulkey’s been avoiding the piece for two years and finally got hit with a deadline to comment. It’s difficult to say which portrayal is most accurate. We’re dealing with a classic she said, she also said situation here.
Who knows what the Post has uncovered about Mulkey and the program she’s running at LSU, but it’s not like we need new reporting to know that the title-winning coach has a questionable history. That had been established during her time at Baylor, when she reportedly told players to hide their sexual orientation to protect the reputation of the school. She also publicly defended Baylor in the wake of the football program’s sexual assault scandal by saying that anyone who didn’t want to send their daughter to the school as a result should be hit in the face. She openly questioned the need to test for COVID-19 during a worldwide pandemic. And she refused to comment on Brittney Griner’s situation when she was being held in Russia as a prisoner. The evidence against Mulkey is overwhelming, and no wins—or new stories—over the next month are likely to change that.
Winner: Down Years
Gonzaga hasn’t missed a men’s tournament in 25 years. Many of us have never experienced March Madness without the Bulldogs, but it was something we nearly had to experience this year. OK, so “nearly” is a bit of an overstatement, but there was a time in January when a bracket without Mark Few’s team looked like a real possibility. The Zags dropped out of the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2016. Their NET ranking plummeted to 50. Seemingly every Gonzaga broadcast featured a graphic showing the longest active streaks of tournament appearances, implying that its run could end.
Well, that’s obviously not how things played out. Not only did Gonzaga make the tournament—it won the WCC’s automatic bid but would have made it in as an at-large team—but in this “down year” for Few’s program, the Bulldogs are back in the Sweet 16 after dominant wins over McNeese State and Kansas. If we’re just looking at performances over the opening weekend, the Zags look like one of the best teams left in the field, and a Final Four run is hardly out of the question.
So how did they turn things around? Sometimes, the best explanation is the simplest: Gonzaga started making shots. Throughout the season, the offense mostly centered on post play and leading scorer Graham Ike. According to Synergy, Gonzaga has averaged 14.4 points per game on post-ups, which ranks second nationally behind Purdue; 58.5 percent of their points have come on shots from inside the arc, 11th most; and only 24.9 percent of their points have come from 3-pointers, which ranks 314th. That lopsided distribution happened out of necessity. This team just wasn’t very good at shooting, so it pounded the ball inside as much as possible. But things changed about 40 days ago. In mid-February, the Zags ranked 184th in 3-point shooting, at 33.5 percent. Since then, they’ve ranked second in the nation, and no team has shot the ball better from deep since the start of March.
Gonzaga’s shooting has been even better in the tournament. They’re making 66.7 percent of their spot-up 3s through two rounds, which leads all remaining teams. Few is getting contributions from all over the roster. Nolan Hickman, Ben Gregg, and Dusty Stromer have hit spot-up 3s in each of the games. Lead guard Ryan Nembhard hit a couple of shots from beyond the arc against McNeese State in the first round. Anton Watson has made only one deep ball in the tournament but has shot it well all season (40.4 percent), so the Zags could have even more room to grow in this department.
This Gonzaga team looks nothing like the one that was in danger of missing the tournament just a few months ago. It’s too late to adjust your brackets—I had McNeese State pulling off the upset because of Gonzaga’s apparent shooting issues—but we can still adjust our expectations of what this team can do. The program’s first national title is not out of the question if it can get by Purdue on Friday. Not bad for a down year.
Loser: Non-Duke Fans
It was supposed to end with Coach K, dammit. Duke had valiantly served as college basketball’s villain for the better part of four decades, but when Mike Krzyzewski headed off into retirement in 2022, that was almost sure to come to an end. The Blue Devils picked Jon Scheyer, who had little coaching experience, to replace Coach K, and it seemed like only a matter of time before the small private school in Durham, North Carolina, would fade into the background and become just another team. God, it all sounded so good.
Of course, that is not what happened. Not only does Scheyer have the Blue Devils back in the Sweet 16 in his second season in charge, but this Duke team is kind of likable, y’all. At the very least, it’s fun to watch. Freshman guard Jared McCain leads the fun. He also leads the team in tournament scoring after exploding for 30 points in the 93-55 win over James Madison in the second round. McCain hit eight 3-pointers in the game and pretty much destroyed whichever defender JMU put in front of him.
McCain paints his nails and has more than 2 million followers on TikTok. He’s the straw man that old folks who hate the transfer portal and NIL blame for the current state of college athletics. He’s the reason Nick Saban retired. And all of that makes it easier to cheer for him in spite of his insistence on being a sharpshooter who plays for Duke. Remember how easy it was to hate those guys? I can’t do it with McCain.
If you do need a Duke player to hate on as they continue this run, look no further than big man Kyle Filipowski, who would have fit right in with those despisable teams of the past. First of all, he looks like a Duke player. He plays like one, too. Filipowski can shoot and pass well for his size, so he plays on the perimeter and seems to be deathly afraid of contact around the basket. Every time he hits a deep shot or blows by a slow-footed defender for a driving dunk, it’s easy to reminisce about how much you hated Christian Laettner or Kyle Singler. And in the regular-season finale against Carolina, he even pulled a Grayson Allen and appeared to trip Harrison Ingram to slow down a fast break.
He was the best player on last year’s team, which got bullied out of the tournament by Tennessee, creating what looked like the end of an era in Durham. But Scheyer quickly reloaded, and Duke is back to playing on the second weekend. He’s already signed the country’s best recruiting class, including projected 2025 first pick Cooper Flagg, who is straight out of central casting for the Duke villain role; the Blue Devils should be the consensus no. 1 team in the country next season as a result. So try to enjoy this run while you still can. Next year, they’ll be back to being college basketball’s most hateable team.
