Men's NCAA Tournament 2024: Friday's Sweet 16 Winners and Losers
Four teams punched their ticket to the Elite Eight on Thursday night, and the rest of the field is now officially set following another exciting night of basketball on Friday.
The big story out of the early games was No. 11 seed NC State continuing its unlikely run through the NCAA tournament field with a 67-58 victory over No. 2 seed Marquette, while No. 1 Purdue used big games from Zach Edey and Braden Smith to cruise to an 80-68 win against No. 5 Gonzaga.
In the late games, No. 1 Houston lost star point guard Jamal Shead and No. 4 Duke escaped with a 54-51 victory to set up a clash with ACC rival NC State, while No. 2 Tennessee used a big second-half run to come away with an 82-75 win over No. 3 Creighton.
While it's certainly true that the winners are the winners and the losers are the losers, let's take a deeper dive into some of the notable storylines from Friday's action to highlight our biggest winners and losers of the day.
Winner: The Closest We Have to Cinderella Keeps Dancing
1 of 6
It's tough to look at a team from a major conference through the "Cinderella" lens during March Madness, but in a tournament that has seen plenty of chalk across the board, NC State is the closest we have to a team wearing the glass slipper this year.
The No. 11 seed Wolfpack were only in the NCAA tournament field because they won five games in five days during the ACC tournament, upending Duke and North Carolina en route to claiming the automatic bid.
Prior to that unexpected hot streak, they had lost four straight to slip to 17-14 overall and seemed destined for a trip to the NIT.
Now they're headed to the Elite Eight for the first time since 1986.
DJ Horne (19 points) and Casey Morsell (15 points) led the way offensively, while Mohamed Diarra (11 points, 15 rebounds) continued his late-season surge to help the Wolfpack win the battle of the boards.
It wasn't the cleanest game, with 14 turnovers and a 6-of-12 showing from the free-throw line, but NC State once again found a way to win to advance to the Elite Eight.
Loser: A Season-Ending 3PT Performance for Marquette
2 of 6
The three-point shot has been a weapon for the Marquette Golden Eagles all season, as they entered the Sweet 16 averaging 9.0 made threes per game (38th in NCAA) and shooting 36.0 percent (73rd in NCAA).
Kameron Jones (92 threes, 41.4%), David Joplin (72 threes, 36.7%) and Tyler Kolek (46 threes, 39.7%) all shoot it well from distance, but the entire Golden Eagles roster struggled to find the bottom of the net on Friday.
They finished a miserable 4-of-31 from beyond the arc, and that effectively sunk their chances of advancing against an upstart NC State team that did a nice job forcing tough shots and controlling the boards to limit second chances after those missed threes.
Jones finished with a team-high 20 points and Kolek had a double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds, but a high-powered Marquette offense that came in averaging 78.6 points per game was held to just 58 points on 33.3 percent shooting.
It was the seventh time this season the Golden Eagles failed to score 70 points, and they lost all seven of those games.
Winner: Purdue 2, Gonzaga 0
3 of 6
The Purdue Boilermakers won the Maui Invitational back in November, and the first team they beat en route to the title was the Gonzaga Bulldogs.
All-American center Zach Edey had 25 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks for the Boilermakers in that game, leading Purdue to a 73-63 victory, and they went on to beat Tennessee and Marquette in the next two days to hoist the trophy.
Four months later, it was more of the same.
The Bulldogs managed to hold Edey without a point for a stretch of nearly 10 minutes in the first half, but the Boilermakers still had a 40-36 lead at the break, and when the dust settled Edey still managed to rack up 27 points and 14 rebounds on the night.
The Boilermakers finished with 24 assists on 32 made baskets, shooting 57.1 percent from the floor, and Braden Smith carved up the Bulldogs defense with 15 assists by himself while playing all 40 minutes.
Tip of the cap to Mark Few for getting what was far from his most talented Gonzaga team to the Sweet 16, making it nine years in a row the Bulldogs have advanced that far in March Madness.
.png?w=256 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
Loser: An Unceremonious End to a Brilliant Season for Jamal Shead
4 of 6
It's become something of a cliche to say that a player is indispensable to his team's success.
In the case of Jamal Shead and the Houston Cougars, it's the truth.
The senior point guard entered Friday's game averaging 13.2 points, 6.4 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 2.2 steals, but his importance as the offensive catalyst and general of the Cougars smothering defense stretched far beyond what showed up in the box score.
He won Big 12 Player of the Year and Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors, and he played 45 minutes in Houston's overtime victory against Texas A&M, tallying 21 points, 10 assists and five rebounds before fouling out.
And with one rolled ankle, his brilliant season came to an end.
With 6:38 remaining in the first half, Shead was taken to the locker room after driving the lane and rolling his right ankle, and while X-rays came back negative, he was unable to return to the game.
College basketball fans missed out on getting to see one of the nation's elite players grind it out on the biggest stage with a trip to the Elite Eight on the line, and regardless of who you were rooting for in the game, it was a loss for the sport in general when Shead went down.
Winner: The ACC
5 of 6
By all accounts it was a down year for the ACC during the regular season.
North Carolina, Duke and Clemson were the only locks for the NCAA tournament heading into the conference tournament, and an upstart NC State team unexpectedly joined that group by securing the automatic bid.
Virginia also managed to sneak into the field but turned in a cringe-worthy performance in its First Four game, setting the stage for what many expected to be a series of early exits for the conference during March Madness.
Fast forward to the Elite Eight and the ACC leads all conference with three teams still standing in the field.
That alone is a shock, but the fact that No. 1 seed North Carolina is not one of the teams makes it all the more shocking.
The Duke Blue Devils punched their ticket with a 54-51 victory over No. 1 seed Houston on Friday night, setting up an all-ACC South Region final against the same NC State squad that sent them packing in the ACC tournament.
Consider the ACC doubters officially silenced.
Loser: The Ugliest Six Minutes of Creighton's Season
6 of 6
From a one-point halftime lead to a 16-point deficit in the blink of an eye.
Alright, technically it took six minutes for the Tennessee Volunteers to rip off a 21-4 run coming out of halftime, which turned a 35-34 Creighton lead into a 55-39 deficit when Josiah-Jordan James buried a three with exactly 14:00 left on the game clock.
It's a different game if Creighton doesn't dig that early second-half hole.
Behind strong games from Baylor Scheierman (25 points, 4-of-9 3PT) and Ryan Kalkbrenner (14 points, 7 rebounds, 2 blocks), the Bluejays went on to outscore the Volunteers by a 36-27 margin over the final 14 minutes of the second half.
It proved to be too little, too late to climb all the way back into the game.
The Bluejays clawed back to within four points when a Steven Ashworth layup made it 68-64 with 4:17 remaining, but that was as close as things would get as the Volunteers held them scoreless for the next three minutes and made their free throws down the stretch to seal the victory.
After losing by one point to San Diego State in the Elite Eight a year ago and then returning Kalkbrenner, Scheierman and Trey Alexander from that team, this looked like a Creighton team with legitimate national title potential, but the season once again ends in disappointment.
.png?w=480 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
