2024 NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen Predictions!
Only a day away!
The Sweet Sixteen starts up tomorrow and that means it’s time to make ride or die predictions. So no parachute - let’s go!
Thursday opens with Clemson vs. Arizona. A couple of things to keep mind here: 1) Clemson knows Caleb Love very, very well. 2) Clemson rarely plays well a long way from home.
However, this team has some heart and we think highly of Brad Brownell’s coaching ability. It’ll be tough but we think they can get to the Elite Eight for only the second time in Tiger history.
San Diego State has all the motivation in the world to get UConn after losing to them in the championship game - unfortunately, they’ll have to shoot lights out to do it and they had their hot shooting game against Yale. Could they go off? Sure. But UConn is pretty savage defensively. So we’ll take the Huskies here.
Alabama vs. UNC is really intriguing. A lot of people are taking the Crimson Tide as an upset pick. This could be the most competitive game of the evening. Nate Oats says his team “won’t be intimidated” but who would bring that up unless it’s a concern? We’ll take UNC here.
Turns out that the Illinois vs. Iowa State game features possibly the #1 defense vs. the #1 offense. In that world, we instinctively favor defense, which means Iowa State. Keep an eye on turnovers: if the Cyclones force a bunch Illinois is in major trouble.
On Friday, NC State vs. Marquette is an interesting matchup between two teams that played for the national title in 1974 after State’s epic upset of UCLA and Bill Walton in the semifinals. The key here, we think, is controlling Tyler Kolek and Casey Morsell is playing great defense. Not good defense. Great defense. So we’ll go with the Pack here in an upset as the 1983 parallel continues.
Duke vs. Houston is a really interesting matchup. As we often say, we don’t bet against Duke, but that’s because we’re partisans and also we’ve seen Duke pull off some amazing wins over the years.
That said, Houston is no easy out. The Cougars play brilliant defense. But dreadful misfortune has seen several players out for the rest of the year with injuries, one playing with an injury currently and another who just returned from his own. Houston is on borrowed time. If it manages to win the national championship, it’d be one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of the tournament.
They’re going to focus on Jared McCain pretty heavily so look for someone else to step up and help Duke to the win.
Tennessee is not one of our favorite teams. We’ve never cared for Rick Barnes’s approach to the game. It’s basketball version of architecture’s brutalism. It’s raw and it’s ugly.
It also tends to stop working at a certain level.
We’re not convinced that Creighton has the bodies to stand up to it, but Ryan Kalkenbrenner is 270, Frederick King is 250 and Jason Green is 230. So maybe they do.
Relying on that would mean they got sucked into Tennessee’s game and that is not a path to winning. If Creighton sticks with their own game and can get the Vols out of their comfort zone, which we think they can, Barnes goes home with nothing - again.
And as for Purdue and Gonzaga, that’s a really interesting game. Purdue is playing really well and Zach Edey is a real problem. Did you catch Matt Painter ridiculing people who say Edey is only good because he’s big?
He has a point obviously: Edey has become a very good basketball player. However, he is still ponderous, as little Farleigh Dickinson proved last year and Gonzaga is always a nimble team.
These two played in November and it was reasonably close. Edey had 25 points and 14 rebounds.
Playing them twice could be a real advantage for Gonzaga.
Gonzaga’s plan, apparently, is to attack everyone else. Bill Russell would have told them to run and make Edey run as much as possible. He’s 7-4 and weighs 300, so the more you can force him to move, the less effective he’s likely to be. And in a running game, the Zags have a real advantage because Edey can’t get to his spots as well.
We like the Zags here in a major upset.