After a very hectic first weekend of games, we came out with a very common-looking sweet sixteen. This is only one of five times ever where all 1 and 2 seeds are in the Sweet Sixteen. But along the way we did lose a couple of very good teams in shocking fashion.

First Round Shockers:

The biggest shocker of the weekend was 14-seed Oakland taking down three-seed Kentucky by a score of 80-76. What helped propel Oakland to their historic March Madness victory was led by Jack Gohlke who had 10 three-pointers. A lot of people had Kentucky going far and reaching the final four and some even had them winning it all after some dominance late in the season. But March can come at you fast and it did for Kentucky as they did not play up too far and got stunned early.

Another shocker was 11-seed Duquesne over 6-seed BYU, this was their first tournament appearance for Duquense since 1977 and they were heavy underdogs. Especially against a BYU team that plays in a very tough Big 12 conference and has been around tough competition all year. And they even rallied from being down big but Duqense was too much to handle and hung onto the win and shocked the world with their first win in decades.

Another big upset was four-seed Auburn the SEC champes falling to 13-seed Yale. Often times you don’t see a Power Five conference champ who is coming off of a hot winning streak lose in the first. But once again it’s March Madness and Auburn was not up for the task. Yale played a very solid game and was able to go bucket for bucket which is the reason they kept it close because they were able to frustrate Auburn. Also, Auburn starter Chad Baker-Mazara was ejected four minutes into the game after a flagrant foul which also shifted the tide of the game in favor of Yale.

Best Looking Teams

In my opinion, there are the two teams looked absolutely dominant. The first one is Purdue. After an embarrassing first-round exit last year losing to a sixteen seed as a one seed, this year they are completely flipping the script and have had two extremely dominating performances this tournament so far. First, they rolled 16-seed Grambling State by 28 which again was a big game cause they got knocked out last year in this round. Then in the round of 32, they absolutely killed 8-seed Utah State 106-67 with a commanding performance and sent a message that this is not the same Purdue team. They are one of the best teams in the tournament that’s still alive no doubt right now.

In my opinion, the best-looking team so far is Uconn not just because they are the number one seed overall but because they have been lethal and have been shooting the lights out from anywhere. Their first game was a 91- 62 win over 16 seed Stetson, once again expected, but they still didn’t disappoint at all during that game. The round of 32 games was even more dominant after beating 9 seed Northwestern 75-58 after Northwestern just beat a very talented and experienced FAU team. However, Uconn absolutely smothered them, and if you watched the game you know what I mean they could not miss whatsoever.

Sweet Sixteen Picks

Arizona > Clemson 

Uconn> San Diego State 

North Carolina > Alabama 

Illinois > Iowa State 

Marquette > NC State 

Purdue > Gonzaga 

Duke> Houston

Creighton> Tennesse 

These are my picks for the Sweet Sixteen that could shape up to be a very top-heavy elite eight as the top teams have proven to shine so far.