Sweet 16 Bracket: Expect Kansas and Kentucky to Cruise Into Elite 8

The Kansas Jayhawks are going to enjoy the biggest blowout of the first round.

They survived a sluggish performance against the No. 10 Purdue Boilermakers and now have happy-to-be here No.11 NC State in the Sweet 16.

Not to take away from the impressive NC State run, but aren’t they here mostly because of what No. 3 Georgetown didn’t do? The Wolfpack have the 142^nd ranked defense in the country, and will be playing the most efficient offense they’ve seen aside from North Carolina.

They are susceptible to turning the ball over (12.7 per game) and are only scoring 20.2 percent of their points from the foul line, which ranks 172^nd in the country. With the lack of talent surrounding C.J. Leslie this is a big problem.

With the outstanding inside-outside combo of senior Tyshawn Taylor (17.1 PPG, 4.7 APG) and junior Thomas Robinson (17.9, 11.8 RPG), Kansas has been close to unstoppable as of late.

Johnson is on a tear and his draft stock continues to rise by the day while Taylor has provided the senior leadership to keep his team calm, even when facing a big deficit to Purdue.

With only one loss since the beginning of February, the Jayhawks are going to use their efficient offense to strike the first punch, and use their experience to ensure they duck any sort of retaliation.

Remember, the Wolfpack were 18-11 and squarely on the bubble only three weeks ago.

Prediction: Kansas 77 NC State 60

But that’s not going to be the only blowout. The other involves a rematch of a December game that the No. 1 seeded Kentucky Wildcats have not forgotten.

Their only regular season loss of the season came against No. 4 Indiana and they aren’t going to watch a three-pointer at the buzzer sink them yet again for the following reasons:

1. No More Home Court For Hoosiers

IU went an impressive 19-1 at home this season thanks in large part to the raucous crowd. I’d argue the fans for that Dec. 10 game were one of the best crowd performances of the entire college basketball season.

This time they play in Atlanta, where the crowd is going to be draped with a lot more blue than red.

2. Terrence Jones is Back to Normal

Jones was sick as a dog last time they played, scoring only four points and grabbing one rebound while committing six turnovers.

Now he’s healthy and fresh off shutting down the criminally underrated Royce White—there shouldn’t be a problem handling the much less physical Cody Zeller.

3. Indiana Isn’t Going 9-of-15 From Downtown Again

There was a point in their first match up where IU drilled seven-straight threes. No way that happens again.

Part of the problem in December was that defensive extraordinaire Anthony Davis only played 24 minutes due to foul trouble—the other was the illness of Jones.

Since then, three-point field goal defense has been stressed, and the team played seven games against three-point heavy teams (Florida, Vanderbilt, Iowa State), and held them to 31 percent.

With everything that went wrong, they still were in a prime position to win. The team has brought up the painful feeling of the loss multiple times since then. Nobody on the roster has forgotten what happened.

Expect a complete effort led by Davis and Jones that will result in a beat down of Zeller and Co.

Prediction: Kentucky 81, Indiana 62

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