NCAA Tournament Schedule - March 2018

ilan

ilan

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#1
First round: Friday, March 16 (Eastern Times)

12:15 p.m. -- No. 7 Texas A&M vs. No. 10 Providence (CBS)
12:40 p.m. -- No. 2 Purdue vs. No. 15 Cal St. Fullerton (truTV)
1:30 p.m. -- No. 4 Wichita St. vs. no. 13 Marshall (TNT)
2 p.m. -- No. 2 Cincinnati vs. No. 15 Georgia St. (TBS)
After Texas A&M/Providence -- No. 2 North Carolina vs. No. 15 Lipscomb (CBS)
After Purdue/CSF -- No. 7 Arkansas vs. No. 10 Butler (truTV)
After Wich St./Marshall -- No. 5 West Virginia vs. No. 12 Murray St. (TNT)
After Cincinnati/Georgia St. -- No. 7 Nevada vs. No. 10 Texas (TBS)
6:50 p.m. -- No. 8 Creighton vs. No. 9 Kansas St. (TNT)
7:10 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan St. vs. No. 14 Bucknell (CBS)
7:20 p.m. -- No. 1 Xavier vs. No. 16 Texas Southern (TBS)
7:27 p.m. -- No. 4 Auburn vs. No. 13 Charleston (truTV)
After Creighton/Kansas St. -- No. 1 Virginia vs. no. 16 UMBC (TNT)
After Mich. St./Bucknell -- No. 6 TCU vs. No. 11 Syracuse (CBS)
After Xavier/NC Central/Tex. So. -- No. 8 Missouri vs. No. 9 Florida St. (TBS)
After Auburn/Charleston -- No. 5 Clemson vs. No. 12 New Mexico St. (truTV)

Second round: Saturday, March 17 (Eastern Times)

12:10 p.m. -- No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 9 Alabama (CBS)
Approx. 2:40 p.m. -- No. 2 Duke vs. No. 7 Rhode Island (CBS)
5:15 p.m. -- No. 5 Kentucky vs. No. 13 Buffalo (CBS)
6:10 p.m. -- No. 3 Tennessee vs. No. 11 Loyola-Chicago (TNT)
7:10 p.m. -- No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 8 Seton Hall (TBS)
Approx. 7:45 p.m. -- No. 4 Gonzaga vs. No. 5 Ohio St. (CBS)
Approx. 8:40 p.m. -- No. 3 Texas Tech vs. No. 6 Florida (TNT)
Approx. 9:40 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan vs. No. 6 Houston (TBS)

Second round: Sunday, March 18 (Eastern Times)

12:10 p.m. -- No. 2 Purdue vs. No. 10 Butler (CBS)
Approx. 2:40 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan St. vs. No. 11 Syracuse (CBS)
5:15 p.m. -- No. 2 North Carolina vs. No. 7 Rhode Island (CBS)
6:10 p.m. -- No. 2 Cincinnati vs. No. 7 Nevada (TNT)
7:10 p.m. -- No. 4 Auburn vs. No. 5 Clemson (TBS)
Approx. 7:45 p.m. -- No. 9 Kansas St. vs. No. 16 UMBC (truTV)
Approx. 8:40 p.m. -- No. 1 Xavier vs. No. 9 Florida St. (TNT)
Approx. 9:40 p.m. -- No. 5 West Virginia vs. No. 13 Marshall (TBS)

Sweet 16: Thursday, March 22 (Eastern Times)

7:07 p.m. -- No. 7 Nevada vs. No. 11 Loyola-Chicago (CBS)
7:37 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan vs. No. 7 Texas A&M (TBS)
Approx. 9:37 p.m. -- No. 5 Kentucky vs. No. 9 Kansas State (CBS)
Approx. 10:07 p.m. -- No. 4 Gonzaga vs. No. 9 Florida State (TBS)

Sweet 16: Friday, March 23 (Eastern Times)

7:07 p.m. -- No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 5 Clemson (CBS)
7:27 p.m. -- No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 5 West Virginia (TBS)
Approx. 9:37 p.m. -- No. 2 Duke vs. No. 11 Syracuse (CBS)
Approx. 9:57 p.m. -- No. 2 Purdue vs. No. 3 Texas Tech (TBS)

Elite Eight: Saturday, March 24 (Eastern Times)

6:09 p.m. -- No. 9 Kansas State vs. No. 11 Loyola-Chicago (TBS)
8:49 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan vs. No. 9 Florida State (TBS)

Elite Eight: Sunday, March 25 (Eastern Times)

2:20 p.m. -- No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 3 Texas Tech (CBS)
5:05 p.m. -- No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 2 Duke (CBS)

Final Four: Saturday, March 31 (Eastern Times)

6:09 p.m. -- No. 3 Michigan vs. No. 11 Loyola-Chicago (TBS)
8:49 p.m. -- No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 1 Kansas (TBS)

National Championship: Monday, April 2 (Eastern Time)

9:20 p.m. -- No. 1 Villanova vs. No. 3 Michigan (TBS)

Villanova emerges as the National Champion, defeating Michigan 79-62.
 
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#5
It was decades before a #16 beat a #1 seed, and probably decades before the next one...probably harder now as coaches will remind teams to not underestimate any team making the tournament. Kind of lame that UMBC will be on truTV... during a NASCAR race.
 
#6
It will be interesting to see how they fare against Kansas tomorrow. As far as today, it will be interesting to see what kind of a game Buffalo can muster against Kentucky after pulling off the Arizona upset.
 
#7
ilan said:
It will be interesting to see how they fare against Kansas tomorrow. As far as today, it will be interesting to see what kind of a game Buffalo can muster against Kentucky after pulling off the Arizona upset.
Click to expand...

K-State, decent program but not fabled as is Kansas. Double digit seeds rarely get into the Sweet Sixteen, but any hot team at this point could win the tourney. Kentucky and Arizona are similar in that they rely on one-and-done kids, but this season, Kentucky apparently didn't click until late, while AZ's coach was swept up in that agent loan scandal.
 
#9
But look out for #11 Loyola-Chicago. #11 seeds seem to be the most likely to go forward for some reason.

edit... and they do... fell behind for the first time at 20 sec, then made a jumper at 3.6 sec.
 
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#14
The two low seeds, Loyola-Chicago (11) and Syracuse (11), will try to keep their runs alive this Thursday and Friday. From my perspective, LC will have an easier task with Nevada (7) than Syracuse will with Duke (2). We shall see...

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First page of this thread has the tournament schedule.
 
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#16
16 fascinating facts about the Sweet 16
Chris Chase - For The Win - Tuesday, March 20, 2018​

The 2018 NCAA tournament started with a wide-open 68-team bracket from which any of a dozen potential winners could emerge. Now, after 52 games, the tournament has shifted to a far different 16-team bracket … from which any of a dozen potential winners could emerge. FTW looks back at the first weekend of the NCAA tournament with 16 fascinating facts about the Sweet 16.

1. The South region is the first in NCAA tournament history to send none of its top-four seeds to the Sweet 16.

Virginia, Tennessee and Arizona all lost in the first round while Cincinnati fell in the second round after blowing the biggest lead in the history of the 64-team bracket. (Nevada's 22-point comeback tied Duke's rally against Maryland in the 2001 Final Four.) But the average seed of the four teams remaining in the region (8, Nos. 5, 7, 9 and 11) isn't even the highest this decade.

2. North Carolina's loss continues a woeful 11 years for reigning NCAA tournament champions.

Since Florida won its second-straight title in 2007, seven of 11 defending champs have been out of the tournament on the first weekend. (Four of those seven missed the event completely.)

Of the four that played in the Sweet 16, each lost.

2008: Florida - MISSED
2009: Kansas - Sweet 16
2010: North Carolina - MISSED
2011: Duke - Sweet 16
2012: Connecticut: - first round
2013: Kentucky - MISSED
2014: Louisville - Sweet 16
2015: Connecticut - MISSED
2016: Duke - Sweet 16
2017: Villanova - second round
2018: North Carolina - second round

3. Virginia, Arizona, Michigan State and North Carolina combined to shoot 20-of-108 (18.5%) on 3-pointers in their upset losses.

4. When Duke faces Syracuse this week, the teams will have the two winningest coaches in college basketball history on the sideline, with Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim combining for 2,026 victories between them.

The total counts Boeheim's vacated wins. If you want to be all NCAA about it, the count is 1,925. The Nevada-Loyola game will have coaches - Eric Musselman and Porter Moser - with a combined 305 wins.

5. The NCAA tournament legend of Tom Izzo has taken a hit over the last three years.

Michigan State has failed to make it past the first weekend in every tournament since 2016 and has losses to No. 11 and No. 15 in two of those years. The Spartans had made such an early exit just once in the previous eight years.

(What do the struggles mean for Izzo? The same thing they meant for Mike Krzyzewski when he recently lost two first-round games in three seasons. The same thing they meant for Bill Self when Kansas lost two early games at the start of his career. The same thing it means for Tony Bennett after UVA's loss to UMBC. Nothing. Coaching reputations aren't made over a single season, or even three. It's all about the long game.)

6. Entering Thursday, there had only been two games in NCAA tournament history in which a top-two seed lost a first-weekend game by 20 points or more. Those games were in 1990 and 2003.

Over the 48 hours from Friday night to Sunday night, it happened twice on the same court: first with Virginia's 20-point loss to No. 16 UMBC and then with North Carolina's 21-point second-round loss to Texas A&M.

7. For all the craziness of the first two rounds of the tournament, there's only one true Cinderella left in the field: No. 11 Loyola.

It's the first time since 2014 that a true mid-major (aka not Gonzaga) with a double-digit seed has gone to the Sweet 16, a surprising drought given that at least one such school advanced to the second week of the tournament every year from 2010-2014 (with two schools doing it in 2010, 2011 and 2013).

8. Kentucky is setting up to have the easiest Final Four road in history - it'll make Sesame Street seem like Fury Road.

If the Wildcats continue to win (far from a sure thing given the historic craziness of the South), they would have faced the Nos. 12, 13 and 9 seeds en route to an Elite Eight game versus the No. 7 or No. 11 team in their bracket. The team's first-round opponent (Davidson) will have been its toughest competition. How common is that?

If the Wildcats make it to San Antonio, they'll be the first team since Kansas in 2008 not to face a top-six seed en route to the Final Four. (The Jayhawks faced the Nos. 12 and 10 seeds in the regional that year.) In the past 25 years, only Michigan State (2001) and Duke (1999) have had such luck. The difference is that each of those three teams were No. 1 seeds - their good bracket fortunes were at least partially earned. Kentucky is a No. 5. The team has fallen backwards into a fortuitous fluke of scheduling.

Only one other team that wasn't a top seed has ever had an easier road to the Final Four than Kentucky's potential path. That came in 1990 when Arkansas defeated the Nos. 13, 12, 8 and 10 seeds en route to the Final Four in Denver - and even then Arkansas still had to play Dean Smith's North Carolina team (the No. 8 seed) along the way. If Kentucky were to play Loyola in the regional final, they'd be attempting to become the first non-No.1 seed in history to ever make the Final Four while not facing any team seeded in the top half of its bracket.

And to think, John Calipari spent Selection Sunday whining about Kentucky's draw.

9. Even if Kentucky doesn't make the Final Four, the South is guaranteed to send a No. 5 or higher into the Final Four, something that's not nearly as rare as you'd think.

At least one Final Four team has been seeded fifth or higher in eight of the last nine NCAA tournaments (2012 was the exception). Before 2010, a No. 5 seed or higher had made eight of the previous 23 Final Fours. Cinderellas might be on life support, but the mediocre are thriving just fine.

10. Little-used Marshall senior Ot Elmore was put on the floor late in the Thundering Herd's 23-point loss to West Virginia and made the most of it.

In a span of 58 seconds, Elmore, the older brother to Marshall star Jon Elmore, hit a 3-pointer and picked up four fouls (including a technical), inspiring the kind of Twitter love usually reserved for sassy tweets from UMBC and Jennifer Garner memes.

11. Prior to 2013, a No. 7 seed had never made the Final Four in the history of the 64-team bracket.

But after appearances by Connecticut (2014), Michigan State (2015) and South Carolina (2017), Nevada will try and become the fourth No. 7 seed in the past five years to win its region.

12. According to Elias, Texas A&M is the first team ever to make the Sweet 16 after starting 0-5 in conference play.

13. Even with its historic upset win over Virginia, UMBC finished the season ranked No. 166 on KenPom, worse than all but three teams in the tournament's main draw.

14. Duke is now favored to win the tournament (+325), with Villanova (+450), Kentucky (+700), Gonzaga (+700) and Michigan (+850) rounding out the top-five.

Kansas is getting +850 despite being one of two No. 1 seeds remaining. Meanwhile, Loyola is 50/1 to win it all (only Syracuse is a longer shot) but is a reasonable 5/1 underdog to make it to the Final Four.

15. Nine of the 16 coaches remaining have been to the Final Four and five have won it all (John Calipari, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Bill Self and Jay Wright).

16. Other than a No.1 seed losing a first-round game (something we all knew was coming one day but were totally unprepared for when it did) and some other upsets in the South, this tournament has been just as crazy as many Marches before it.

The first round didn't have an inordinate amount of Cinderellas, two No. 1 seeds have fallen on the first weekend before, the amount of double-digit seeds through to the Sweet 16 is about normal and while the South's bracket is historic in one way (no top-four seeds left) it's not in another (other regions have had higher combined seeds make it to the regionals). The lesson: March is always mad.
 
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#17
National Title Odds from Vegas Insider

Villanova: 4/1
Duke: 6/1
Michigan: 8/1
Kentucky: 8/1
Kansas: 10/1
Gonzaga: 12/1
Purdue: 15/1
West Virginia: 22/1
Texas Tech: 25/1
Nevada: 100/1
Texas A&M: 100/1
Loyola Chicago: 100/1
Clemson: 125/1
Kansas State: 125/1
Syracuse: 125/1
Florida State: 150/1

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See first post for tournament schedule
 
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