Villanova, Virginia eliminated during sweet – and sour – round of 16

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It's the Sweet 16 – the second week of the NCAA Tournament – and that means bragging rights for college basketball programs.

Check the cover of media guides or banners adorning arenas. They always start with Sweet 16 appearances. No bragging about the first weekend. Playing this week means you had two good wins and you are just two wins from the Final Four.

The story of the tournament has been Kentucky's pursuit of a perfect season. Everyone's playing in that shadow. The Wildcats improved to 36-0 – the best start to a season for any team – and they're trying for 40-0. That would be the first undefeated season by a national champion since Indiana in 1976.

The East Region changed dramatically entering the Sweet 16, with top seeds Villanova and Virginia ousted. It's only the eighth time that the top two teams from one region failed to advance to the second week. The last time that happened was in 2004.

The Atlantic Coast Conference and Pac-12 entered the round of 32 as the only leagues with three or more teams not to lose a game. Virginia's loss to Michigan State was the ACC's first after a 9-0 start, and Oregon faced Wisconsin with a chance to make the Pac-12 8-0.

Here are some story lines to watch as the Sweet 16 approaches:

UCLA'S RUN

The Bruins were the at-large team complained about the most on Selection Sunday. Wins over SMU and UAB have the 11th-seeded Bruins in the Sweet 16 for the second straight year, the first time they have done that since reaching the Final Four in three straight seasons between 2006 and 2008.

"The selection committee thought we were good enough to play in this tournament, and I think we proved it," forward Tony Parker said.

They will face the winner of the Gonzaga-Iowa game in the Sweet 16.

"There's no better time to do that than March," UCLA coach Steve Alford said.

OLD TEAMS

Arizona coach Sean Miller will face his former school, Xavier, in the Sweet 16. Miller has taken the second-seeded Wildcats to the regional semifinals for the third straight year.

Now, he will face the sixth-seeded Musketeers, whom he coached from 2004-2009. Xavier reached the Elite Eight in 2008 under Miller and the Musketeers were in the Sweet 16 the next year.

Chris Mack succeeded Miller at Xavier when he left for Arizona.

"As far as playing Sean, it's really tough," Mack said. "I recruited all these guys that play for me. But Sean gave me a heck of an opportunity to come back to my alma mater. He put a lot of responsibility and trust in me. He ultimately really pushed for me to become the head coach, and for that I'm eternally grateful. It's hard to play against one of your best friends in the business. But it really won't matter to our guys, nor will it matter to Arizona, because they don't know me from a bucket of paint."

SPARTY'S PARTY

Michigan State under Tom Izzo has become as familiar in the Sweet 16 as the guys in a school band wearing enough face paint to cover a garage.

The Spartans have reached the regional semifinals for the seventh time in the past eight years. They will face the Oklahoma-Dayton winner in Syracuse, N.Y.

Izzo has a 13-1 record in games in the round of 32. He was surprised a bit that this team won its second game to move on.

"We've been a team all year that has banged around, probably lost more games than we should have just because of the free throw situation or dumb coaching with two, three seconds left to go in the game and people hitting threes and tying it," Izzo said. "But I think we've had to earn every single thing we've gotten because every game's been like that. So I think they felt comfortable in a game because that's the way not their whole tournament has gone or the Big Ten Tournament, their whole season has gone that way. I'm really proud of this team. I don't use that word lightly when I speak and I am."

IRISH ALIVE

For the first time in 12 years, Notre Dame is in the Sweet 16. The Fighting Irish moved on with an overtime win over Butler. Steve Vasturia had 20 points for the third-seeded Irish, who face the winner of the Kansas-Wichita State game in the Midwest Regional in Cleveland.

"It's a great feeling. We're playing really well right now," Vasturia said. "We made big plays down the stretch, and we've been doing that all year, getting big defensive stops, hitting shots. So it's a great feeling. We're playing with a lot of confidence right now so we want to keep it rolling."

KENTUCKY'S CHASE

The top-ranked Wildcats showed in the round of 32 why they are the even-money favourite to win the whole thing.

In their win over Cincinnati, the Wildcats shot just 37 per cent and were out-rebounded 45-38. There really wasn't a point in the game when Kentucky felt threatened about its winning streak and the 64-51 win was the 29th time in Kentucky's past 36 games that it won by at least 10 points.

"I always like it when my team shoots 37, 36, 35 per cent and wins in double digits," Kentucky coach John Calipari said.

"It shows them they don't have to make shots to win. You can miss them all. No, you can't miss them all. You can miss most of them, and you can still win games if you defend, you rebound and you play that way, make your free throws, and they did."

MARYLAND FALLS 69-59 TO WEST VIRGINIA

Already trailing in the second half against West Virginia, the Maryland Terrapins lost their best player and could never recover.

That all but ensured a 69-59 loss in the NCAA Tournament's round of 32.

"He took a beating tonight," coach Mark Turgeon said of leading-scorer Melo Trimble, who was knocked out of the game with 8:25 remaining and the Terrapins down 53-46. "Would the outcome have been different? We don't know. But obviously we weren't the same without him out there."

Trimble got levelled three times in the game, each time ending up writhing on the floor. The first time, he got back up after a short respite in the opening half. Early in the second half the 6-foot-3, 190-pound freshman ran into what the officials said was a legal pick by 6-9, 235-pound forward Nathan Adrian. He sat out a short time after that.

Then he was apparently kicked in the head by a teammate as he tried to intercept a long pass by the Mountaineers. This time he was helped to the bench and did not return. He spent the final 8:25 at the end of the bench, his head in his hands.

"Obviously, Melo is pretty important to us," Turgeon said of the first-team All-Big Ten player who averaged a team-high 16.3 points a game. "Lucky for us he's been healthy all year. That's pretty amazing. We have one point guard in our program, and a really good one in Melo. And it's the first time all year really that he couldn't play."

The teams were locked in a close battle until the Mountaineers used gritty pressure defence and physical play to pull away.

Devin Williams, who led West Virginia (25-9) with 16 points and 10 rebounds, scored off an offensive board to make it 49-46. The next time down the floor, after a Maryland miss, Tarik Phillip, who hit the clinching 3 late in the shot clock with 29 seconds left against Buffalo on Friday, had his shot blocked. But he got it back and powered it in with 10:08 left.

Moments later, Juwan Staten threw a 60-foot pass to Miles behind the defence for a layup. That was the play on which Trimble was hurt.

Maryland (28-7) cut the deficit to five, but Jevon Carter responded with a 3 for WVU with 4:18 left.

The Mountaineers were content the rest of the way to play keep-away with the ball, Gary Browne and Staten cycling the ball around the perimeter until there was a foul or one of their bruising bigs could muscle in another basket.

LOUISVILLE BACK IN SWEET 16 WITH VICTORY OVER NORTHERN IOWA

Early exit or Final Four — Louisville coach Rick Pitino said he wouldn't be surprised by either this season.

Well, how 'bout another Sweet 16 for the Cardinals, a team the coach doesn't compare with his best but refuses to give up on, either.

Terry Rozier had 25 points and seven assists, and Pitino coaxed the undermanned, fourth-seeded Cards to a 66-53 victory Sunday night over Northern Iowa in the NCAA Tournament.

"Tonight, we played our best game of the season," Pitino said.

The fifth-seeded Panthers (31-4) were a popular pick in this one, trying to recreate their 2010 victory over a different blueblood (Kansas) and make another trip to the second weekend.

But Pitino's harassing defence that morphed from the 2-3 zone to man-to-man and back again made life rough on UNI's best player, Seth Tuttle, holding him to seven shots and 14 hard-earned points.

Now, the Cardinals (26-8) find themselves in the Sweet 16 for a program-record fourth straight year, and in the free-for-all that is now the East Region, it's silly to count them out for a third trip to the Final Four since 2012. Louisville will play eighth-seeded North Carolina State on Friday in Syracuse. A win in that one, and it could be Pitino vs. Tom Izzo, whose Michigan State team is on the other side of that bracket.

Not bad for a team playing with an eight-man rotation — one that took a hit with the dismissal of starting guard Chris Jones last month.

"We had to rally around it," Pitino said. "We have a short bench. But these guys don't take a play off, and that's unusual in this world."

This was the grinding affair that pretty much everyone expected between two teams ranked in the nation's top 20 in defence.

Except in Rozier's case. He darted his way around the floor, finding open spots for jumpers, floaters and creating enough contact to get to the line nine times. His final numbers: 8 for 13 from the floor, 8 for 9 from the line, five rebounds and the seven assists, including two sweet alley-oop passes to Montrezl Harrell that put the game away.

"You see all these dunks. We see 15 of them at every practice, where we say, 'Get out of the way or someone's getting hurt,"' Pitino said.

Good as Rozier and Harrell were, Louisville really won this one with defence — the way it has been pretty much all season.

The Cards forced 10 turnovers and held Northern's efficient offence to 39 per cent shooting — nine points below their average. Pitino's decision to start 6-foot-10 centre Mangok Mathiang set the tone against Tuttle, who found little room in the post.

Panthers coach Ben Jacobson all but admitted he got outcoached by the man with 52 career victories in the NCAA Tournament. After making four of its first six shots, Northern Iowa went 4 for 14 the rest of the first half and trailed by nine.

"We got off to a good start and found some openings against that zone," Jacobson said. "But they made some adjustments, and I didn't adjust soon enough to find some different ways to get Seth the ball."

Northern Iowa's last, best run started when Nate Buss made back-to-back shots to trim a 10-point deficit to six with 4:26 left. The Panthers got the ball on a breakaway and looked to have an easy bucket when Jeremy Morgan dropped a pass to Wes Washpun, who appeared unhindered on his way to the basket. But Wayne Blackshear came from nowhere to disrupt the shot, then Louisville went down and Rozier threw a lob to Harrell (14 points) for the first alley-oop.

"That was the big key of the game. Gigantic," Pitino said of Blackshear's stop.

About a minute later, Rozier and Harrell connected again for a jam and three-point play that pushed the lead to 11 and ended it.

The Cardinals, challenged on offence all season, picked a great day to have an above-average shooting night: 45.8 per cent from the floor.

Blackshear, a senior, finished with 10 points to go over the 1,000-point mark for his career. He's been on three 30-win teams. The only way he can make it four is if the Cardinals take the title.

Might not seem so impossible anymore.

"As a basketball program, we had lots of ups and downs this season," Harrell said. "But we responded in the right way. We came together as a team tonight."