The NCAA males’s match continued on Friday with the conclusion of the primary spherical, and it was a day dominated by chalk. Many of the favorites and better seeds did what was anticipated, however there have been nonetheless some nice finishes, massive moments and massive storylines.
Let’s check out among the greatest winners and losers from the day.
Winner: No. 9 seeds
If you find yourself filling out your bracket, the No. 8 vs. 9 matchups are in all probability the hardest ones to decide on, which is smart. They’re, in principle, essentially the most evenly matched groups and the video games that must be the closest. Generally they are often coin-flip video games.
On this yr’s males’s match, the No. 9 seed received every of the 4 conferences, with Saint Louis, TCU, Utah State and Iowa all advancing to the spherical of 32.
Essentially the most polarizing crew within the match had an opportunity to ship a giant assertion on Friday and present that it was not solely worthy of being included within the discipline, however that it additionally ought to have acquired a better seed than a No. 11 that needed to get by means of a play-in recreation simply to achieve the sector of 64. It didn’t ship that assertion.
The RedHawks misplaced by 22 factors to No. 6 Tennessee in a recreation that was never really competitive. Maybe Miami (Ohio) was nonetheless disrespected with its placement, however this was not a superb displaying in a giant second and is a disappointing finish to an in any other case nice season.
On a day that largely adopted the chalk, and with a whole lot of blowouts, the Kentucky-Santa Clara recreation gave us a style of what followers love about March Insanity.
Not solely did Kentucky survive the upset bid with an 89-84 win, however the finish to regulation was completely sensational with two last-second three-pointers, together with a game-tying, season-saving bank-shot from Kentucky’s Otega Oweh to send the game to overtime.
