Saturday night’s games will decide half the Final Four, and the big boys have pushed the Cinderellas off the dance floor.
Arizona and Wisconsin are back in Southern California fighting for a Final Four berth again. In Cleveland, Notre Dame takes on the biggest heavyweight college basketball has seen in decades, and Kentucky is favored to keep its undefeated season going and deny the Fighting Irish their first Final Four trip since 1978.
The first game features Pac-12 champs (regular season and tournament) against the Big Ten champs (regular season and tournament) in a rematch of last year’s West Regional final. In that game, second-seeded Wisconsin beat top-seeded Arizona 64-63 in overtime. This year the seedings are reversed, and plenty of players are back from both teams.
“They made one more play in overtime than we did,” Arizona’s Gabe York said Friday. “That was a crazy, crazy scenario. There were only 2 seconds left and it took them about 15 minutes for those 2 seconds to end.”
The Badgers (34-3) advanced with a win over North Carolina, while Arizona (34-3) beat Xavier in the Sweet 16.