College basketball: It’s all-ACC on one side of the bracket
North Carolina’s Marcus Paige celebrates after scoring against Indiana during the first half of a Sweet 16 game on March 25.
This mini-Atlantic Coast Conference tournament has even higher stakes than usual: The winner earns a spot in the national championship game.
The right side of the NCAA tournament bracket has boiled down to four teams — and they’re all from the ACC, with North Carolina and Notre Dame in the East, and Virginia and Syracuse in the Midwest.
On Sunday, the Tar Heels play the Fighting Irish play in the East Regional final at Philadelphia, and the Cavaliers and Orange face off in the Midwest final at Chicago. Because those regionals are paired in the Final Four, those winners will meet next Saturday night on the big stage in Houston with a spot in the national title game on the line.
No wonder Notre Dame Coach Mike Brey called the ACC “the sexiest league.”
“I just remember the grind of the Big East and this is the same grind with the depth of this league now,” Brey said Saturday. “Everybody talks about our league now and the matchups.”
The ACC got off to quite the hot start in this tournament, finishing the opening weekend with a 12-1 record.
It joined the Big 12 and Big Ten in placing seven teams in the field but outperformed those leagues by having six of them — all but Pittsburgh — reach the Sweet 16. And who knows how far a likely eighth team — Louisville — would have advanced, had the Cardinals not self-imposed a postseason ban for this year?
“I happen to think the ACC is the best league from top to bottom, the depth we have,” North Carolina Coach Roy Williams said.
Miami and Duke bowed out in their regional semifinals Thursday night before ACC schools went four for four in the Friday night games.
As the top seeds in their regionals, North Carolina and Virginia expected to be here. Notre Dame, the No. 6 seed in the East, and Syracuse, the No. 10 seed in the Midwest, were the ones left standing after some higher seeds from other power conferences went down in earlier rounds.
It’s the first time that one conference has placed four teams in the Elite Eight since 2009 — when the old Big East had Connecticut, Villanova, Louisville and Pittsburgh make it this far.
Augustana wins Division II title
Alex Richter scored 26 points and Daniel Jansen had 25 to lead Augustana of South Dakota to the NCAA Division II championship, defeating top-ranked Lincoln Memorial of Tennessee, 90-81, at Frisco, Texas.
Casey Schilling added 20 points and 19 rebounds as second-seeded Augustana got its 15th consecutive win.
The Vikings (34-2) outrebounded Lincoln Memorial 42-36 and made 21 of 27 free throws. Lincoln Memorial (34-3) was only nine for 18 from the line.
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