With tickets to the Sweet 16 on the line, another day of second-round action was on display Sunday in the final day of the NCAA Tournament’s …
With tickets to the Sweet 16 on the line, another day of second-round action was on display Sunday in the final day of the NCAA Tournament’s exhilarating first weekend. We’ve already had a No.15-seeded Cinderella in Saint Peter’s reaching the second weekend Saturday. And a March Madness classic in North Carolina’s upset of No.1 Baylor. Sunday was all about Duke vs. Michigan State. And the second-round showdown undoubtedly delivered, with the Blue Devils keeping coach Mike Krzyzewski’s career alive in knocking out a resilient Michigan State team. Houston and Villanova started Sunday off in impressive fashion, advancing to the Sweet 16 in the South Region with convincing wins against Illinois and Ohio State, respectively. After a first round that saw the Big Ten go 7-3 (it improved to 8-3 on Saturday with Michigan’s upset of Tennessee), that 0-3 stance moves the Big Ten to 8-6 in this year’s tournament. A look at the winners and losers from Sunday’s eight games: The Blue Devils (30-6) were trailing by five with five minutes remaining but made key plays down the stretch to pull away from a Michigan State squad that refused to go away and win 85-76 in a down-to-the-wire second round classic. While all the pre-game hype was on Coach K and Tom Izzo, it was all about Duke players rising to the occasion. The hero for the Blue Devils was Jeremy Roach (15 points, five blocks), who made a huge three-pointer with 1:18 left to give this team the winning momentum it needed to shake off the Spartans and advance.
