Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Tonight’s Lede. Introducing The Second Weekend. The biggest story of the first weekend turned a nation of disenchanted hoops viewers into an almost undivided Florida Gulf Coast cheering section. The dunks, the dance moves, the head coach’s fairy tale wife, and everything else that endeared the country to FGCU was the perfect March story. It was a lot of fun, and it may not yet be over. It also obscured one surprising fact: aside from the wacky West region, the first three rounds played out pretty much according to plan. Wichita State and La Salle were shots out of the dark, but the rest of the field – even Oregon, seed optics aside, by all accounts looks like a top-four or five seed – was qualifiably chalky. Thursday night’s games gave us a little bit of everything: That wholly unpredictable 13-9 matchup out of the West, Indiana tried to crack open the tried-and-true Orange 2-3 zone, Marquette attempted (and succeeded) to win a game without throwing every Golden Eagles fan into cardiac arrest in the closing minutes and Ohio State looked out onto a region of utmost opportunity, with only two putatively favorable games standing in the way of a trip to Atlanta. After a week to collect your first weekend thoughts, we begin anew with more games to breakdown, slice up and analyze with objective eyes.

Your Watercooler Moment. Bye-Bye Hoosiers. 

The Orange zone flummoxed IU all game long (Getty Images).

Setting aside the hegemonically dominant title teams for which matchups – stylistic and individual – don’t negate talent and athleticism advantages, most National Title hopefuls need favorable team-on-team scenarios to keep the dream alive. They need their spread motion offense to churn at high speeds, to swing the ball around at a rapid pace and to not get bogged down into the most unfailingly meddlesome zone defense of all time. Indiana needed all of those things to fall just right in order to get by Syracuse Thursday night, but none of them did. The matchup nightmare that is Boeheim’s zone detonated Indiana’s uptempo offensive attack, and the Hoosiers – as has often been the case against stylistically discordant opposition this season – couldn’t make the right adjustments at the right times. Syracuse dominated from the jump by invading passing lanes and running shooters off the three-point line and never allowing the Hoosiers to dictate the terms of engagement. This was Syracuse’s game, to be played by Syracuse’s grinding half-court style, to the extreme detriment of an IU team many projected to not only advance out of a manageable East region, but also challenge Louisville in the national title game. One part of that equation is off the table, and the Orange – a team that caught lightning in a bottle at the end of the regular season and (save the second half of the Big East tournament championship game) has played well above its four-seed designation ever since – deserve all the credit. Indiana is going home earlier than it (and most fans) ever expected to, and frankly, there isn’t much the Hoosiers could have done to prevent that dour conclusion. Syracuse played like the one-seed it purported to be for large chunks of the season, and Indiana just didn’t hold up its end of the bargain.

Tonight’s Quick Hits…

• When Season-Long Doubters Are Put To Rest. If Ohio State doesn’t make the Final Four, it will be a disappointment. The favorable draw it was dealt with so much high-seed carnage in the first three rounds laid a golden two-game path to the Georgia Dome, a path that began Thursday with No. 6 Arizona. The Buckeyes are better than Sean Miller’s team, but if OSU was going to fall in Los Angeles, it was going to be because DeShaun Thomas was burdened with too much of the scoring load. This problem isn’t specific to Ohio State’s NCAA Tournament prognosis; the Buckeyes have dealt with this issue all season. And on Thursday, they dealt with it by unleashing LaQuinton Ross for 17 points, 14 of those coming in the second half, and a game-winning three with two seconds remaining that had the same basic set-up as Aaron Craft’s dagger to fell Iowa State in the third round. The only difference? Craft passed it up and Ross stroked it to push the Buckeyes into the Elite Eight.

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Andrew Murawa (@amurawa) is reporting from the West Region semifinals in Los Angeles, California, this weekend.

Three Key Takeaways.

1. No Shock. While Wichita State came into its first two games as underdogs, the Shockers were the favorite on Thursday night. And they played like it. Against a La Salle team featuring a variety of options around the perimeter, the Shockers displayed not only the athleticism and quickness to stick with all of those smaller offensive options, but guys like Carl Hall and Cleanthony Early – both bigger than all but one player in the La Salle rotation – operated with impunity in the middle. Wichita dominated on the glass, grabbing 45.9% of their own misses and 77.9% of La Salle’s, while outscoring the Explorers in the paint 40-26 (a number that was 24-10 at half). The Shockers never trailed and spent the final 36 minutes of the game leading by at least eight points.
2. But Can They Play With The Buckeyes? The Shockers have time and again shown an ability to play with their opponents in this NCAA Tournament regardless of the style of play they face. Against the rugged Pitt Panthers, the Shockers fought them tooth and nail on the glass and dominated them despite shooting just 2-of-20 from deep. Against the high-scoring Gonzaga Bulldogs, Wichita got it done with improbably hot shooting, knocking down 14 threes. And against La Salle they locked up perimeter scorers on the defensive end and pounded it inside on offense. Ohio State is certainly a different animal all together, but this Shockers team has the athleticism at all areas of the floor to compete with the big favorite.
3. Ron Baker, Late Season Addition. The Shockers missed their redshirt freshman guard for 21 games this season due to injury, but he is back with a vengeance. He scored 16 efficient points against Gonzaga and did a ton of other work, racking up a +19 plus/minus number in that game. Tonight he was his same versatile self, knocking down a couple more threes on the way to 13 points for the night and a +22 plus/minus (second on his team only to Hall’s +24), supplying heady passing, timely shooting and some great defensive effort

Star of the Game.  Carl Hall, Wichita State. The newly shorn Shocker big fella controlled the paint tonight, knocking down seven of eight first half shots and grabbing six boards in helping his team build up an insurmountable 16-point halftime lead. While he wasn’t nearly as effective in the second half as the game turned into a guard-dominated affair (he wound up with 16 points, eight boards and three blocks), the damage had been done.

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RTC is reporting from the East Region semifinals in Washington, DC, this weekend.

Syracuse Got to the Rim Repeatedly Tonight in DC

1. The Syracuse Zone Just Shut Down the Nation’s Best Offense. According to KenPom, Indiana came into today with a 122.8 offensive rating, the best in the country. IU also averaged 78.6 points per game this year, a statistic that put the Hoosiers among the top handful of teams in college basketball. This evening? At the 10:00-minute mark in the second half, the Hoosiers had a total of 37 points, marking the third straight game that the Orange had held an NCAA Tournament team (Montana and Cal) in the 30s or below. The fact of the matter is that no team, not even one the quality of Indiana, can adequately prepare for the albatross-long arms of the Syracuse zone and the athleticism of their interior people. Every shot within the arc was contested — the Orange ended up with 11 blocks — and the great equalizer of the three-point shot was cut off as well — IU shot 3-of-15, including an oh-fer from Jordan Hulls.
2. Cody Zeller Was Exposed. We noticed this during last weekend’s Temple game as well, but Zeller has trouble finishing plays inside against long and athletic forwards. This shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone, as it’s as elementary a concept as there is in college basketball — it’s difficult to score over long athletes. But Zeller has a tendency to make himself smaller by contorting his body so that it’s parallel with the ground, and even when he goes straight up to the rim, it hasn’t been with authority. Syracuse blocked or got a piece of six of Zeller’s misses tonight, and you had better believe that NBA scouts will be reviewing the tape of his last two games in particular to get a better sense of whether Zeller has the toughness and the explosiveness to finish at the rim in a league where everyone is a long athlete.
3. Bad Syracuse Only Made a Brief Appearance. If Syracuse is to win three more games to give Jim Boeheim his second national title, they’ll obviously have to keep playing exceptional defense in the same way that they did tonight. The recurring issue with this team has been what might endearingly be called “losing their minds” for large stretches of games. We saw it in the final three minutes of the California game last weekend, where the Orange blew a comfortable late lead to give the Bears a chance. We’ve seen it multiple other times this season as well. Except for a very brief stretch in the early part of the second half tonight, though, the Orange avoided that particular calamity here — MCW only had a single turnover, and while Brandon Triche (six) and CJ Fair (four) had way too many of the team total of 15, there weren’t enough of them in a row to give Indiana the lift it needed to make a substantial run. The closest the game ever got in the second half was a six-point margin at 38-32, but a layup on the other end allowed the Orange to race right back out to a quick double-figure lead. Bad Syracuse probably only appeared for a couple minutes tonight, and the team will need to keep it under wraps in order to push to the Final Four and beyond.

Star of the Game. Michael Carter-Williams, Syracuse. Given that his family has been dealing with a tragic fire at their home in the Boston area this week, it was a reasonable question to ask whether MCW would be fully focused on the game tonight. Needless to say, he seemed more locked in than he has for most of the season, scoring 24 points, grabbing six rebounds and four steals, but most importantly, only committing a single turnover. When MCW is on his game, Syracuse is very tough to beat.

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Andrew Murawa (@amurawa) is reporting from the West Region semifinals in Los Angeles, California, this weekend.

Three Key Takeaways.

It Was a Sea of Red in LA Tonight

1. Madness. After 39 minutes, 40 seconds and change, these two teams were dead even subsequent to a wild exchange of runs. One team killed it for the first 15 minutes, the other controlled the next 20-plus. And then down the stretch it was two prizefighters standing in the middlle of the ring throwing haymakers. Arizona’s seniors Solomon Hill and Mark Lyons threw together a barrage of scoring. Ohio State responded with play-making from Aaron Craft and shotmaking from LaQuinton Ross. And both teams went at it defensively. There was a crazy late run for Arizona to tie things up, but for the second straight game with the clock running down in regulation, the Buckeyes got a huge three-point bucket, this one from the newly confident Ross in the waning seconds, to provide the difference.
2. The Buckeyes Have Found Their Additional Scorers. Much of the year the talk was about “who can Ohio State find to be its second scorer?” DeShaun Thomas has regularly been the leading man for the Bucks, pacing the team in scoring all year long and again tonight. But down the stretch tonight, it was Ross who made play after play after play for them, and in a variety of ways. He scored 14 of the Buckeyes last 17 points and he did it both with the drive, the ability to get to the line and, shown most spectacularly on the final bucket, with deep three-point range. Once a highly regarded recruit, it has taken awhile, but Ross has blossomed in a hurry in March. Meanwhile, Thomas was largely silent late after scoring 20 points in the games’ first 31 minutes.
3. Tale of Two Arizonas. For the first 15 minutes or so, the Wildcats looked like the best team on the court, with Lyons getting to the hole regularly and drawing a couple of fouls on Craft. The freshman bigs were contributing, Nick Johnson looked like the best player on the floor and the Arizona fans in attendance were confident. Then, over about an 11-minute stretch spanning the half, the Ohio State defense turned on the juice, the Cats got frustrated and they gave up a 22-6 run over an 11:24 period. To knock off a team as solid and experienced as the Buckeyes, you’ve really got to play well for all 40 minutes.

Star of the Game.  LaQuinton Ross, Ohio State. For the second straight game, Ross came up large for the Buckeyes, scoring 17 for the game. Fourteen of those came after the break and all of those came in the last eight minutes. As recently as March 10 against Illinois, he was earning just single-digit minutes, but as the Buckeyes forge ahead into the Elite Eight, Ross has become a major factor, a 6’8” match-up nightmare who can shoot over smaller, quicker defenders or blow by bigger defenders.

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RTC is reporting from the East Region semifinals in Washington, DC, this weekend.

Marquette Fans and Their Interesting Wardrobes Move On…

1. Marquette Played Like It Has Been Here Before. This is Buzz Williams’ third straight Sweet Sixteen with the Golden Eagles and it showed. Two years ago, Marquette got creamed by North Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen; last year his team competed better against Florida before the Gators pulled away and won by 10 points. This time around, it was Williams’ group that came into the regional as the experienced squad — key players such as Vander Blue, Jamil Wilson, Davante Gardner and Chris Otule had already been to the Sweet Sixteen twice before, while not a single player on the Miami roster had such great experience. Preparation, of course, is key, but the mental game can almost be as important as the physical one. Marquette played with a poise and focus that belied its status as the underdog here tonight.
2. These Golden Eagles Are One Resilient Group. Marquette made it a point to punch the Hurricanes right in the mouth from the opening tip and it worked. Their game plan was quite clearly to out-tough Miami to the ball and to find the big men inside off dribble penetration and ball reversals. The Golden Eagles only took a total of six three-point attempts all evening (making three), bolstering the point that they thought the weakness in the Miami defense was on the interior. Keeping in mind that the Golden Eagles lost two second round draft picks in Darius Johnson-Odom and Jae Crowder last season, the ability for Marquette players to get better year-over-year and keep the program not only relevant but improving is phenomenal. Most people who know the sport of college basketball recognize that Williams is one of the best coaches in the business, but with a run like this (again), it’s time for the rest of America to start to notice.
3. You Gotta Make Shots. It’s a simple-sounding proposition, but Miami started cold, played cold, and finished cold tonight. A 20.7% first half was followed by a better 47.1% second half, but many of those makes came after the game was out of reach. The Hurricanes ended with a 34.9% shooting night, with the backcourt of Shane Larkin (4-of-8), Durand Scott (3-of-13), Trey McKinney-Jones (3-of-10) and Rion Brown (2-of-12) really finding a miserable existence throughout the game. Jim Larranaga said afterward that his team was out of sync all night and that his team didn’t “look like [them]selves” due to a number of external factors.

Star of the Game. The Marquette Big Men. Maybe Miami’s Reggie Johnson was missed after all. The trio of Chris Otule, Davante Gardner and Jamil Wilson consistently found themselves in good position to receive passes near the basket and convert them. They combined to score 41 points on 15-of-25 shooting from the field, grabbed 15 rebounds and only committed three fouls. None of the three were dominant, but Miami had no answer for pushing them away from the basket and keeping them quiet, either.

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Tonight we tip off the Sweet Sixteen with games from the East Region in Washington, DC, and the West Region in Los Angeles, CA. Here are the breakdowns for tonight’s games.

#2 Miami vs. #3 Marquette — East Regional Semifinal (at Washington, D.C.) — 7:15 PM ET on CBS.

Let’s Hope Buzz Keeps This in the Closet If He Makes the Elite Eight

Two coaches and teams that have significantly overachieved this season collide in tonight’s first regional semifinal game in our nation’s capital. Marquette has been the quintessential “survive and advance” team through its two games of this NCAA Tournament having gotten by Davidson and Butler in thrilling fashion. In this match-up, the Golden Eagles will have to overcome some notable disadvantages coming in to it. Even though Reggie Johnson will not play for Miami, he hasn’t been playing all that well of late so his loss isn’t a huge hit for the Hurricanes. Marquette is a team that thrives off of dribble penetration and offensive rebounding so Jim Larranaga’s game plan will no doubt focus on that. Buzz Williams doesn’t have the three point shooters needed to open up his offense, one that is highly dependent on Vander Blue and others creating and getting into the paint. If Miami defends the paint well, can keep Marquette off the free throw line for the most part and win the turnover battle (Marquette averages 14 per game and Miami is #18 in offensive turnover percentage) it should win the game. However, it’s not always so simple. In addition to the dynamic Blue, Jamil Wilson could be a very difficult match-up for Miami. Wilson is a bouncy 6’7 player who can create off the bounce and isn’t afraid of contact around the rim. He could be Marquette’s most important player in deciding the outcome of this one. The intangibles in this game strongly favor the Golden Eagles. It hasn’t just been in this tournament but Marquette has a ton of experience playing in and winning close games over the last few seasons. This team knows how to win and make plays in big moments down the stretch and that becomes such a valuable asset in the NCAA Tournament. We think Miami’s game against Illinois, where the Hurricanes were pushed a bit, was a good thing but it could be only a matter of time as the Hurricanes lack of tournament experience catches up to them. This may be the game as the pressure and scrutiny ramps up, especially against a team with so much experience in one or two possession games. Although this appears to be a good match-up for Miami on paper, there’s a reason why they play the games. The Golden Eagles may come away with another squeaker of a win.

The RTC Certified Pick: Marquette.

#2 Ohio State vs. #6 Arizona – West Regional Semifinal (at Los Angeles, CA) – 7:47 PM ET on TBS

The Thad Matta/Sean Miller backstory gives this matchup plenty of pizzazz, but even without that part of the story, this is quite a battle. You can just run down this game matchup by matchup and find plenty of compelling storylines. At point guard, the Mark Lyons vs. Aaron Craft face-off alone makes this a must-watch game, with Craft one of the nation’s most disruptive perimeter defenders and Lyons one of the most dangerous offensive players off the bounce. While Lyons has the reputation of a guy who is a killer in the clutch, he’ll need to play within himself against Craft and make sure not to force too much against his pressure. Meanwhile, on the other side of the court, Lyons is no slouch on defense himself and Craft an improving, but still somewhat limited scorer. You could do worse that spending the entire 40 minutes of action just watching those two go at it. Elsewhere, the next biggest potential matchup is DeShaun Thomas and Solomon Hill. Thomas is the Buckeyes lone pure scoring threat and Hill will certainly be guarding him for much of the game. Thomas has got a pretty complete offensive game, with range from three, a solid pull-up game off the bounce, some post-up ability and the ability to get on the offensive glass. But, luckily for Arizona, Hill’s defensive versatility can match Thomas’ game, as he’s as comfortable guarding in the post as he is away from the hoop. On the other end of the court, Thomas’ defensive game has improved, but he’s still a long ways from a defensive stopper, although depending on the matchups on the court, he might not be the guy tasked with checking Hill. Arizona doesn’t necessarily need Hill to outscore Thomas in this matchup, but if he can take him out of his comfort zone, OSU will have to count on other less polished scorers to have big games. And there are other great matchups all across the court. Nick Johnson is Arizona’s best perimeter defender and he could take a crack at anyone from Craft to Lenzelle Smith to Shannon Scott, even to Thomas for a stretch if needed. In the paint, Arizona’s three freshman bigs have been playing well of late, but they’ve got big physical veteran Bucks ready to bang with them all day long. And then there are X-factors like Kevin Parrom and LaQuinton Ross. Parrom, a senior, has turned into an excellent third-scorer for the Wildcats, while Ross is starting to live up to the high expectations he earned back in high school. All over the rosters there are strength-on-strength battles, leading me to believe that when we come out of the final media timeout, we’ll be in a dead heat. In that situation, give me the team most capable of putting the ball in the net in a variety of ways. And in this case, that is the Wildcats, with Lyons, Hill, Parrom and even Johnson and Grant Jerrett all capable of filling it up.

The RTC Certified Pick: Arizona

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1. If you are a Minnesota or UCLA fan dreaming about having Shaka Smart coach your team you can wake up now because that is nothing more than a fantasy as Smart announced that he will be staying at VCU with a new extension. When comparing the two potential destinations UCLA would have been a much more desirable destination than Minnesota except that the current athletic director at Minnesota was the person who hired Smart at VCU when he was a relative unknown. Although VCU fans have to be thrilled with keeping Smart he also makes out quite well thanks to the threat of his departure as his annual salary is expected to go up from $1.2 million to $1.5 million per year with the extension running through 2023.
   
2. He is not nearly the hot commodity that Shaka is, but Josh Pastner has also announced that he will be staying at Memphis. We are not quite sure why he felt the need to make this announcement because we are not sure which better position (USC? #DausterForUSC) there is out there that would want Pastner as he has not exactly overwhelmed us with his success. Honestly if the Tigers had not won a game in the NCAA Tournament this season we would have questioned whether the administration there should look at moving in a different direction. Instead, he wins one NCAA Tournament game and gets an extension, which is still be worked out. It will be several weeks before details of the extension are worked out, but it might say something about the financial state of college athletics that a guy coaching at one of the best programs in the country can get an extension off of a two-point win over a WCC bubble team.
3. One (former assistant) coach who is on the move is Chris Collins. As we mentioned yesterday morning the Duke assistant was the frontrunner for the Northwestern opening and last night the school made it official. Collins will stay with the Blue Devils until the end of their NCAA Tournament run with Nate James being promoted to assistant coach at Duke to fill the void left by Collins. As we said yesterday Collins has the pedigree (not only from the Krzyzewski tree, but also from his father Doug), but as Jeff Eisenberg points out many of Krzyzewski’s disciples have been unsuccessful when they are not by his side.
4. If you thought the NCAA’s mess handling the Miami case was going to stop being ugly, you would be wrong as the school is now accusing the NCAA of having another investigator work with Nevin Shapiro’s attorney. They also accuse the NCAA of other “unethical” behavior including use false statements to convince other witnesses to confess to offenses that they otherwise would not admit to. At this point the case has gotten so messy and damaging to the reputation of the NCAA that if we were the NCAA we would seriously consider dropping it because any punishment handed down would likely be laughed at by the public and member institutions given how sloppily the case has been handled thus far.
5. The Marshall Henderson story has been rehashed by nearly every media outlet in the country by now, but the thing that gets left out of most stories is the question of why we as college basketball fans are willing to put up with Henderson’s antics and background when the public shuns African-American players with similar problems. The article focuses on how Tyrann Mathieu was treated by the media and his program for offenses that if you compare them to what Henderson has been convicted of seem fairly tame in comparison. A few people will see this article as an attempt at trolling, but to us it seems like a question worth discussing as it pertains not just to sports, but society in general.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Two rounds of NCAA Tournament play have come and gone. Favorites have flopped, upsets have left bracket-wielding fans frustrated everywhere and Florida Gulf Coast is in the Sweet Sixteen. That last one still doesn’t register; how does a team that gained full Division I postseason eligibility just this season, with an entrepreneurial and supermodel-boasting wife in tow pushing them along the whole way, knock off, in sequence, National Player of the Year and projected lottery pick Otto Porter, then follow it up by utterly demoralizing Jamaal Franklin and San Diego State?

Of all the interesting storylines heading into the Sweet Sixteen, none is more captivating than Florida Gulf Coast (Getty Images).

Everyone will have their eyes on FGCU to see what happens next, naturally, but the next round of bracket proceedings, the Sweet Sixteen, offers more than one team, one storyline, one Brett Comer lob, to watch. Here are 16 items, one specific to each team, to keep an eye on — with the common denominator of shining a new analytical light on each match-up. If Florida Gulf Coast has already revolutionized everything we’ve come to know about today’s scoring-averse, slowdown, micro-managed game, where does that leave us – the humble writers who serve to clarify, in long form, what you see on the court – in attempting to understand the remaining rounds of this Tournament? Onward:

1. Is Louisville The Best Thing On The Block? It sure looks that way, and that’s without even seeing Louisville come up against a team capable of challenging Russ Smith and Peyton Siva on the perimeter, of pulling Gorgui Dieng away from the basket, and decoding Louisville’s No. 1 efficiency defense. Colorado State was the closest thing, and the Rams were hopelessly overmatched on both ends of the floor. The Cardinals got the good side of Russ Smith in that match-up, scoring 27 points and committing just one turnover, and when that happens and Louisville maintains its trademark stingy point-prevention, Rick Pitino’s team is tough to beat. The question is whether Oregon, criminally underseeded as a #12, can use its bruising defensive style to counter the Cardinals’ championship formula. Louisville has done nothing thus far to refute its national frontrunner status, and unless Ducks coach Dana Altman can poke holes in U of L’s defensive fortress with Damyeon Dotson and E.J. Singler on the perimeter, and Arsalan Kazemi keeps up his insane rebounding pace (he’s averaging 16.5 boards per game in Tournament play), the Cardinals will maintain that status and waltz into the Elite Eight undeterred.

2. The End Of Ohio State’s One-Dimensional Scoring Problem.

For most of the season, behind Ohio State’s plainly suffocating perimeter defense, headed by one rosy-cheeked point guard roundly regarded as the nation’s best on-ball defender, lay an offense with one glaring problem: DeShaun Thomas was doing everything. For as devastating as Thomas can be, and as versatile as his scoring arsenal has become – Thomas is just as quick to camp out on the perimeter as he is to back down an opponent in the post – the Buckeyes needed a reliable ancillary scoring option. And during Tournament play (and increasingly at the end of the regular season), they’ve gotten exactly that. In a second-round bout against Iona, Sam Thompson (20 points) and Lenzelle Smith (12) were in double figures; Craft (18) stole the show in the next match-up with Iowa State, and there was no greater symbolic statement to his newfound offensive chutzpah than when he looked off Thomas on a critical final possession, lulled Cyclones’ forward Georges Niang to sleep with a deft walk-up dribble, and iced a game-winning three while holding up his wrist on the follow through as his teammates celebrated a squeaky escape. LeBron James took notice. You should, too.

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Happy Sweet Sixteen, everyone. The RTC Podcast crew is back with several of our NCAA Tournament Region correspondents this week to break down what we saw over the weekend and what to expect in the coming one. As always, Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114) is our host, with Brian Otskey (@BOtskey) and Drew Murawa (@AMurawa) joining us to discuss the East and West Regions, respectively. If you missed them earlier, we also published the South and Midwest Region podblasts today. Enjoy the Sweet Sixteen!

East Region

• 0:00-2:22 – Marquette Barely Makes Our Upset Pick Look Bad
• 2:22-8:17 – Timeout and Flagrant Foul Rule Changes
• 8:17-10:36 – Marquette’s Other Close Call
• 10:36-13:20 – Miami Survives a Close Call of Their Own
• 13:20-16:00 – What Does Indiana’s Round of 32 Scare Mean For the Hoosiers
• 16:00-20:04 – Syracuse, Finally a Good Team Without a Close Game
• 20:04-25:14 – Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight Predictions
• 25:14-29:12 – Reactions to the Latest Breaking Conference Realignment News

West Region

• 0:00-3:54 – Gonzaga the First #1 Seed to Fall
• 3:54-6:12 – Wichita State Deserves Credit
• 6:12-9:57 – La Salle’s Under the Radar Cinderella Run
• 9:57-16:48 – Examining the Other West Region Upsets
• 16:48-20:49 – Mountain West March Sadness
• 20:49-22:23 – Arizona Looking to Recapture Top 10 Form
• 22:23-25:57 – Arizona Comes Into Elite Eight Off Blowouts, Ohio State Off a Buzzer Beater
• 25:57-30:27 – Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight Predictions