Guy’s NCAA Tournament 2024: Friday’s Sweet 16 Winners and Losers
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4 groups punched their ticket to the Elite Eight on Thursday night, and the rest of the field is now formally set following another amazing night of basketball on Friday.
The huge story out of the early video games was No. 11 seed NC State continuing its not likely run through the NCAA competition field with a 67-58 success over No. 2 seed Marquette, while No. 1 Purdue utilized huge video games from Zach Edey and Braden Smith to travel to an 80-68 win versus No. 5 Gonzaga.
In the late video games, No. 1 Houston lost star point player Jamal Shead and No. 4 Duke got away with a 54-51 success to establish a clash with ACC competing NC State, while No. 2 Tennessee utilized a huge second-half go to come away with an 82-75 win over No. 3 Creighton.
While it’s definitely real that the winners are the winners and the losers lose, let’s take a much deeper dive into a few of the noteworthy stories from Friday’s action to highlight our most significant winners and losers of the day.
Winner: The Closest We Have to Cinderella Keeps Dancing
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It’s difficult to take a look at a group from a significant conference through the “Cinderella” lens throughout March Madness, however in a competition that has actually seen lots of chalk throughout the board, NC State is the closest we need to a group using the glass slipper this year.
The No. 11 seed Wolfpack were just in the NCAA competition field since they won 5 video games in 5 days throughout the ACC competition, overthrowing Duke and North Carolina en path to declaring the automated quote.
Prior to that unforeseen hot streak, they had actually lost 4 directly to slip to 17-14 total and appeared predestined for a journey to the NIT.
Now they’re headed to the Elite Eight for the very first time given that 1986.
DJ Horne (19 points) and Casey Morsell (15 points) blazed a trail offensively, while Mohamed Diarra (11 points, 15 rebounds) continued his late-season rise to assist the Wolfpack win the fight of the boards.
It wasn’t the cleanest video game, with 14 turnovers and a 6-of-12 proving from the free-throw line, however NC State when again discovered a method to win to advance to the Elite Eight.
Loser: A Season-Ending 3PT Performance for Marquette
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The three-point shot has actually been a weapon for the Marquette Golden Eagles all season, as they went into the Sweet 16 balancing 9.0 made 3s per video game (38th in NCAA) and shooting 36.0 percent (73rd in NCAA).
Kameron Jones (92 3s, 41.4%), David Joplin (72 3s, 36.7%) and Tyler Kolek (46 3s, 39.7%) all shoot it well from range, however the whole Golden Eagles lineup had a hard time to discover the bottom of the internet on Friday.
They ended up an unpleasant 4-of-31 from beyond the arc, which successfully sunk their opportunities of advancing versus an upstart NC State group that did a great task requiring difficult shots and managing the boards to restrict 2nd possibilities after those missed out on 3s.
Jones ended up with a team-high 20 points and Kolek had a double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds, however a high-powered Marquette offense that was available in balancing 78.6 points per video game was held to simply 58 points on 33.3 percent shooting.
It was the seventh time this season the Golden Eagles stopped working to