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By Steven RuizMarch 22, 1:59 pm UTC • 14 min
Who shined brightest in the opening round of March Madness? Who fell short? Let’s dive into a special edition of Winners and Losers.
I think the ankle’s fine, guys.
Cooper Flagg played only 22 minutes in Duke’s 93-49 romp over Mount Saint Mary’s on Friday, but that was enough time for him to score 14 points, grab seven rebounds, dish out four assists, and block two shots. More importantly, he didn’t look hampered by the ankle sprain that knocked him out of last week’s ACC tournament. Flagg was able to stick with guards after switching on the perimeter and ran the court with his typical speed. Coach Jon Scheyer limited his star freshman’s minutes, but he said after the game that the lopsided score dictated the decision.
“We were ready for him to play more, but I think the way it worked out was really good,” Scheyer said. “We were ready for him to play as many minutes as he needed to. … It has only been eight days so, for him, it’s not like he’s gotten out of shape.”
Flagg says he’s back to 100 percent. I’m inclined to believe him after that showing. And now that we can cross that concern off the list, Duke, once again, looks like the indisputable favorite to win it all. Duke won the ACC tournament without the nation’s best player, which showed that this team isn’t some one-man show. And Flagg’s supporting cast continued its impressive stretch in Friday’s win. Freshman center Khaman Maluach, one of many NBA prospects on the roster, went 5-of-5 and even hit a 3-pointer against Mount St. Mary’s. He’s already one of the best rim protectors and lob threats in the country, and now he’s finding new ways to score. That’s a terrifying development for Duke’s upcoming opponents. Tyrese Proctor poured in six 3s, continuing his hot shooting stretch. Kon Knueppel had a quiet night in limited minutes, but he’s coming off a strong ACC tournament and has been a reliable scorer all season. Even if Flagg has some rust to knock off as Scheyer stretches out his minutes, the Blue Devils should be able to get through the first few rounds without issue.
Duke gets a talented Baylor team in the next round. The Bears have a few pro prospects of their own, including projected lottery pick VJ Edgecombe. He’s more explosive than most players the Blue Devils have seen this season. And he has help. Robert Wright III, who played with Flagg last year at Montverde Academy, is a talented scoring guard who dropped 19 points on Mississippi State in the first round. Duke switches 1-through-4, so we should get to see Flagg defend both Edgecombe and Wright on the perimeter. That ought to be fun to watch. If Flagg and the rest of Duke’s defenders can keep those two out of the paint, it should be another easy day for Scheyer’s team.
John Calipari vs. Bill Self was billed as a matchup of Hall of Fame coaches, but it doubled as a matchup of old-guard coaches who appear to be falling behind their younger counterparts in the the NIL/transfer portal era. While both are still stars on the recruiting trail—both coaches have secured commitments from top-five players in the 2025 class—that’s just one component of roster building in modern college basketball. Winning the portal is just as important. And for Calipari, it took getting pushed out of Kentucky to learn that lesson. Self knew the value of the portal from the start, but this frustrating season, which came to an end with the 79-72 loss to Cal’s Razorbacks on Thursday, proved how damaging a handful of bad portal decisions can be. Kansas has poured money into the portal, but it hasn’t gotten the return on investment it expected.
Kansas played five transfers in its eight-man rotation this season. Hunter Dickinson was the headliner, as he reportedly received a $1.7 million NIL deal after leaving Michigan for KU. And this year’s portal class was—led by Zeke Mayo, Rylan Griffen, AJ Storr, and David Coit—was brought in to fill in the gaps between Dickinson and two holdovers from the 2022 national championship roster, Dajuan Harris Jr. and KJ Adams Jr. It hasn’t worked out. Mayo was a solid addition to the lineup; but the other three were inconsistent. Self was hoping the additions would improve the team’s 3-point shooting, and they did. But Kansas didn’t add any creative players who could generate open looks for teammates, and they finished 300th in the country in 3-point attempt rate, per KenPom. And with no one attacking the rim, the Jayhawks also struggled to get to the free throw line. That’s a problematic combination for a college offense.
Last year’s big portal addition has generally met expectations, but it’s still a complicated situation. Dickinson was the team’s best player and only reliable scorer this season. So Kansas got its money’s worth on that end. But he’s also a slow-footed defender that teams relentlessly attacked in the pick-and-roll this season. He was a defensive liability, and he showed that again in the season-ending loss on Thursday night. Arkansas had a field day forcing him to defend ball screens.
Self eventually switched to a 2-3 zone in the second half to protect his 7-foot-2 big man from getting targeted by Razorback guards. The adjustment worked. Arkansas averaged 0.345 points on 26 possessions against the zone, per Synergy. Kansas erased a double-digit lead in the second half. But an Achilles injury to Adams seemed to deflate the Jayhawks, and Arkansas had too much talent for them to overcome in the end. Calipari’s team, on the other hand, was led Thursday night by three transfers. Jonas Aidoo, a Tennessee transfer, scored 22 points. Johnell Davis, who starred on Florida Atlantic’s Final Four team in 2023, added 18. D.J. Wagner, who followed Cal from Kentucky, scored 14. Big Zvonimir Ivisic, another Kentucky transfer, was scoreless, but his emergence as a 3-point threat coincided with Arkansas’ resurgence down the stretch of SEC play. The Razorbacks wouldn’t be playing in the round of 32 without their transfer class.
Kansas went out with a whimper, but Self might be relieved that this chapter is finally over. He’ll have another solid recruiting class coming in next season and get another crack at the portal. Kansas has one of the bigger NIL funds in the sport, so he should have no trouble attracting talented players. But Self would probably admit that he hasn’t done a good job picking the players to bring in. If he can get it right this time, he should have the Jayhawks back at the top of the sport. If not, there will be some uncomfortable conversations in Lawrence around this time next year.
Bennett Stirtz has been the best player on the floor in all of Drake’s wins this season. That didn’t change Thursday night with Stirtz scoring 21 points and dishing out four assists in a 67-57 win over Missouri. “D-II Drake” eventually showed it belonged on the same court as the SEC team, but not before a nervy start. The Bulldogs had four turnovers in the first few minutes of the game and didn’t register a field goal attempt until the 15:44-minute mark of the first half. But Stirtz was the steadying hand the team needed before it settled in. He scored 14 of the 20 points Drake recorded over the first 15 minutes of the first half.
Missouri coach Dennis Gates tried his best to throw Stirtz off his game. He threw different defenders at him and switched up his ballscreen coverages all night. Stirtz has been a pick-and-roll master this season, but the Tigers’ athletic defenders and Gates’ tactics stymied him in ballscreen situations and forced the ball out of his hands. Stirtz finished the night with only five pick-and-roll possessions after averaging 20.8 such plays during the season, per Synergy. But that didn’t stop him from creating offense solo. Stirtz led all players in the round of 64 with nine points scored on isolation plays. Most of those came in the first half, when he single-handedly kept the Bulldogs in the game, but his most memorable iso bucket came in the second half when he hit a ridiculous running 3-pointer off of one foot.
Stirtz is a D-II transfer who followed his coach, Ben McCollum, to Drake from the powerhouse they helped build at Northwest Missouri State. In his first Division-I season, he won the Larry Bird Award as the Missouri Valley Conference’s best player and received national attention, landing on the AP’s All-American honorable mention. He’s starting to creep into NBA mock drafts as a second-round prospect, and another big performance on the tournament stage could solidify that.
Next up for Drake is Texas Tech. These two teams played in a not-so-secret scrimmage in October that Tech reportedly won 75-66. Despite the result, McCollum said the game gave his team the confidence that they could play against top talent. Texas Tech is loaded. Big man JT Toppin could cause issues for Drake’s undersized front line, and he’s surrounded by shooters. Again, the Bulldogs will need Stirtz to be the best player on the court to have a chance. He’ll have a lot of competition for that title against the Red Raiders.
It was a bad weekend to be a Tiger in the men’s NCAA tournament. Three of the field’s four Tiger teams have already been bounced, all by double-digit seeds, and the lone survivor, top-seeded Auburn, looks vulnerable after having trouble shaking free of Alabama State until the second half of their game on Thursday. Memphis fell to Colorado State, Missouri lost to Drake, and Clemson was almost run off the court by McNeese, giving us the image of the tournament thus far: The Clemson Tiger looking as if he just watched the Walter Goggins-Sam Rockwell dinner scene in the recent White Lotus episode.
That’s good mascot work. It can be difficult to convey emotion through a 15-pound tiger costume, but that person pulled it off.
Coincidently, all three Tigers losers were done in by turnovers. Clemson had 13, Memphis had 16, and Missouri had 17. Big cats are known to be startled by tall humans, and there was a lot of that going on in all three games. That’s all the tiger material I got. Let’s move on.
Sometimes, you gotta slop it up. Will Wade looked at his undersized McNeese roster and compared it to Clemson’s, which features a 7-foot center and two forwards standing over 6-foot-8, and decided this was one of those instances. He said as much after his McNeese team took a double-digit lead over the fifth-seeded Tigers in the first half.
“We’ve junked the game up,” Wade told CBS’s Evan Washburn during an in-game interview. “We’re playing a match-up zone. We hadn’t played the zone much all year, so we’ve got ’em—we can stay in front of ’em right now. We’re pressuring the ball. [They’re] throwing it out of bounds … we’re going to have to make some adjustments because they’re going to adjust, but the junk’s working so far.”
Clemson coach Brad Brownell also credited the Cowboys zone defense for his team’s early struggles on the offensive end, and said “We’ll figure it out.” The Tigers eventually did figure it out, but not before they were on the wrong end of a 19-2 first-half run that blew the game open for McNeese. The Tigers scored two points on 14 first-half possessions against McNeese’s zone, per Synergy. That’s 0.143 points per possession! The Cowboys were playing their junk zone for most of the big first-half run and that forced Clemson into a historically unproductive effort over the game’s first 20 minutes.
Clemson is 2nd team seeded 5th or better to score 13 points or fewer in 1st half of NCAA Tournament game in shot clock era (since 1986). No. 5 seed Wisconsin had 12 vs Missouri State in 1999 first round
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) March 20, 2025
McNeese hasn’t played much matchup zone this season, but Wade’s team is known for throwing a variety of defensive looks at opponents. The Cowboys press and switch often, which disrupts the flow of opposing offenses—especially in the Southland Conference, where teams don’t have the size to exploit the cross matchups that are inevitably created by McNeese’s approach. Wade was smart enough to know he couldn’t play that same style against a big ACC team, so he went to the zone in a pinch.
Wade, who reportedly already has a deal in place to become the next coach at N.C. State, provided his team a first half spark with his surprise strategy. In the second half, it was McNeese’s offensive talent that shined. Clemson couldn’t stay in front of guard Quadir Copeland, who started his college career at Syracuse. Christian Shumate threw down four dunks in the game. And Brandon Murray came off the bench to score a team-leading 21 points, which made up for the starters Javohn Garcia and DJ Richards Jr. going cold. McNeese didn’t dominate their conference and beat the Tigers with defensive strategies alone. This is a talented team that will give no. 4 seed Purdue a tricky matchup in the next round. The Boilermakers also have plenty of size, and Matt Painter, one of the sport’s best tacticians, will be ready for the matchup zone. Wade may need a new wrinkle to pull off the upset, but his team is up to the task if he can find one.
The SEC has already lost six of its record 14 teams in the field, which has provided the conference’s many haters a chance to point and laugh at its early mediocre results. SEC fans will tell you the results of a single-elimination tournament don’t cancel out the first five months of the season, which were dominated by the conference. And maybe they’re correct—but there’s just something about doing it in March. It just means more.
Jokes aside, the SEC has almost certainly been the best conference in men’s college basketball this season. Of the top six title contenders by betting odds, four hail from the SEC. Even with the Big Ten going a perfect 8-0 in its first-round matchups, there’s no need to reopen that debate. But it’s fair to reopen the Selection Sunday debate on how many bids the deepest conference in America deserved. In hindsight, inviting 14 (from a 16-team league) was probably a bit much. The committee sent six teams that finished with losing records in the SEC to the dance, and all but one of them, Arkansas, were knocked out.
Even in winning efforts, the league’s heavy hitters didn’t look great in wins over lower-seeded teams. Auburn labored through the first half against Alabama State before finally pulling away in a 20-point win. Alabama couldn’t shake Robert Morris until late in the second half. Tennessee didn’t put Wofford away until the final 10 minutes of its 15-point win. Florida dominated the first 10 minutes of its game against Norfolk State but went into cruise control from there. It was an uninspiring display from the best teams in the best conference.
The Big Ten, on the other hand, swept through its opponents, with all but one of its eight wins decided by at least 10 points. It’s kind of hard to claim the title of the best conference when your top title contender has the 11th-best odds to win it all—Michigan State at +3100—and the conference hasn’t won a national championship since 2000. But with the SEC set up for success in this tournament and more dominant seasons like this one likely to come, the rest of us have to get our digs and boastful claims in now before Greg Sankey and company take over the entire world of college sports. So… eat shit, Pawl.
It was a big first round for big fellas. McNeese knocking off Clemson’s big lineup was the rare exception of a team with a massive height advantage failing to win its matchup in the round of 64. We saw the value of dominant big in the very first game of the round when Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner disrupted Louisville’s entire offense with his rim protection and caused the Cardinals issues as a screen-and-roll threat on the other end. Jamiya Neal’s 29 points stole the spotlight, but it was the Bluejay’ 7-footer who dictated the game on both ends. From there, Purdue’s Trey Kaufman-Renn torched High Point for 21 points. Gonzaga’s two big men, Graham Ike and Braden Huff, combined for 31 points on 14-of-20 shooting. Steven Crowl, Wisconsin’s 7-footer, scored 18 in the win over Montana. Arkansas’ Jonas Aidoo scored 22 in the win over Kansas. Michigan’s Vlad Goldin led the Wolverines with 14 points in their close win over an undersized UC San Diego team.
And that was just the first day. On Day 2, we saw Maryland’s Julian Reese get whatever he wanted in a 32-point win over Grand Canyon. Saint Mary’s erased a double-digit second-half deficit against Vanderbilt by putting two bigs on the floor at the same time. Oklahoma had no answer for UConn’s Tarris Reed Jr., who scored 12 points off the bench to help keep the defending champs alive. And in Friday’s nightcap, Nate Bittle scored an effortless 14 points and grabbed 10 boards in Oregon’s blowout of a small Liberty team.
In round 2, we should see some more even-size matchups. There are a handful of tantalizing big-man battles on the weekend docket, headlined by Kalkbrenner going up against Auburn’s Johni Broome. It’ll be interesting to see whether Creighton coach Greg McDermott goes good-on-good with Kalkbrenner taking Broome on the defensive end, or whether he’ll keep him on the Tigers’ true center, Dylan Cardwell. With the way McDermott is talking about the matchup, it seems like we’re likely to see the two big stars go at it on Saturday.
Creighton head coach Greg McDermott on Johni Broome’s offensive impact.”He’s one of the best offensive players in the country at his position and I’ve got one of the best defensive players in the country in Ryan Kalkbrenner.”
“We can’t let him beat us in multiple ways.” pic.twitter.com/iUESuGfDfH
— Auburn Tigers | AL.com (@aldotcomTigers) March 21, 2025
The quest for the three-peat isn’t over yet. Connecticut barely survived a late rally from Oklahoma and Jeremiah Fears on Friday, but its championship-winning vets showed up in crunch time to close out a 67-59 win. It was Dan Hurley’s 13th tournament win in a row, tying him with Mike Krzyzewski for the second-longest streak in history behind John Wooden’s unbeatable mark of 38 consecutive wins. Hurley’s Huskies will have to knock off Florida, one of the country’s best teams, in order to separate himself from Coach K.
That won’t happen if the offense the Huskies sported against the Sooners carries over to Sunday’s matchup. Oklahoma’s switching defense blew up Connecticut’s halfcourt sets and often forced its players to create off the dribble. This Huskies team, which lost All-American guard Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer to graduation this offseason, isn’t built for that type of game. Reed’s posts-up are really the only source of one-on-one scoring Hurley’s team currently has access to—and Hurley doesn’t seem to trust the big man on the defensive end, so he comes off the bench behind the more agile Samson Johnson. Solo Ball came up with some clutch scores down the stretch against Oklahoma, but he’s more of an off-ball scorer. Alex Karaban can’t seem to get past anyone at the moment, and freshman Liam McNeeley isn’t consistent enough to be a team’s leading shot-taker. Hurley’s free-flowing offense still produces enough open shots against most opponents to keep the team’s offensive efficiency up, but this lack of creative scorers lowers the Huskies’ ceiling on that end of the court.
Hurley is getting more out of his defense lately, and Friday’s effort against a talented Oklahoma team may have been the best of the season. The Sooners averaged just 0.91 points per possession in the loss, per KenPom. It was their third-worst output of the season, and it would have been worse if not for the Huskies’ penchant for hacking. Fouls have been an issue for this Connecticut team all season, and that was the case once again in the first-round win. But that shouldn’t take away from an impressive effort on the defensive end.
Hurley has his team playing slower in recent weeks, which has helped to improve the defense. Controlling the tempo is pivotal against a Florida team that is dangerous in transition but much less so in a half-court setting. If UConn can slow down the game, its defense should be able to hang with the Gators on that end of the court. But it won’t matter if the offense isn’t any better on Sunday.
Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.
