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With Carolina's loss, and the agonizing review which preceded the end of the game, the ACC is down to just one team alive in the Sweet Sixteen: Virginia.
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Virginia was hardly Cavalier with Memphis, blowing the Tigers out by 28.
Virginia will get Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen. The Spartans have some time to get ready of course, but Delaware and Harvard provided stiffer than expected competition. We're sure Virginia's kids think they could do as well if not better.
The Sweet Sixteen is set, and could be interesting: Florida will take on UCLA, while giant killers Dayton and Stanford meet in the East's undercard.
The winner of Virginia and Michigan State will take on the winner of Iowa State and UConn. The Cavs and the Cyclones could be fun as a regional final.
Arizona and San Diego will reprise an earlier meeting which Arizona won.
Baylor and Wisconsin will play for the right to meet Arizona in the West finals. That's a really interesting matchup. Wisconsin, to our taste, is an immensely boring team. Yet the Badgers do badger opponents pretty intensely and Bo Ryan's teams are usually reasonably smart, if ponderous. Baylor's widely ridiculed for stupid play, and the team often lives down to that standard. But there is talent.
In the bottom of the Midwest looms the best matchup of the tournament so far: Kentucky and Louisville. After Kentucky's hugely impressive win over Wichita State, this game should be tremendous.
In fact it might be so tremendous that after Michigan beats Texas, the winner of the Commonwealth matchup might be physically and emotionally exhausted.
For Duke fans, the best news is the advance of Johnny Dawkin's Stanford team.
Dawkins was widely seen as being on the bubble, but knocking off Kansas to get to the Sweet Sixteen ends that.
Stanford just shut Andrew Wiggins down and as USAToday's Steven Ruiz points out, put together a brilliant defensive plan in just a day.
Ruiz also suggests that after this, and possibly a couple of more wins, that Dawkins is going to be a very hot coaching commodity.
Kansas coach Bill Self had very kind things to say about Dawkins. Speaking to KUSports. com, Self said that "I think he is one of the classiest people that we have in our profession, whether it be head coach, assistant coach, athletic director, trainer, academic person. You know, he epitomizes class. He conducts himself that way, and he always has."
When you look back at the the 1986 team, it's pretty striking to see where some of those guys are. Dawkins and Harvard's Tommy Amaker are two of the hotter coaches at the moment. Jay Bilas is perhaps the most respected basketball broadcaster in the country, Danny Ferry is running the Hawks and Billy King is running the Nets. It was, and remains, an impressive group.