East Regional Is the Capital of Men’s March Madness With All Heavy Hitters

WASHINGTON — Welcome one and all to the greatest of all NCAA men’s tournament regionals.

This week in the nation’s capital—ordinarily a bit of a sports desert thanks to local sporting ineptness—arrives an oasis of college basketball unlike any other. While the quality of games will not be known until tip off on Friday night at Capital One Arena, there is little question that the star power is historic.

The here and now is eye-opening, including the Big Dance’s No. 1 overall seed in Duke with the front-runner for national player of the year in Cameron Boozer. The Blue Devils are also the ACC regular-season and tournament champions, as are their opponents from the Big East in St. John’s. UConn and Michigan State fell just short of those marks, but are staples this month. The Huskies have cut down the nets after the final game of the season in two of the last three years.

Mostly though, it’s due to the four head coaches who have hundreds of cameras and microphones tracking every movement or word they utter. Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Dan Hurley and Jon Scheyer have a combined five national titles (plus one from the latter as a player), a total of 18 Final Fours with one more on the way and a whopping 2,148 wins in aggregate.

There are loaded slates and there’s what’s happening this week in D.C. It’s basketball nirvana for all even if you don’t have a rooting interest in which one will advance to Indianapolis.

“It’s a high-level group. I think there’s no question about it,” Scheyer said. “At the same time, I don’t think you can anticipate being in a Sweet 16 game and not going against great coaching and great teams. They’re all great coaches that have done it at the highest level. A ton of respect for each coach and their programs. I think that’s what makes it exciting, right? It’s going to be an exciting atmosphere, high-level basketball, high-level coaching for sure.”

This is the most competitive corner of the bracket on the court. Three teams are within the top 10 nationally in KenPom’s net rating (Duke, Michigan State and UConn) and all four feature in the top 13 in defensive rating.

Based on the selection committee’s overall seed list for the tournament, the East’s combined seeding total is just 34—half that of the West Regional. It’s even some distance away from the next closest regional with the Midwest checking in at 45.

“Obviously to be in this region, there’s a lot of buzz, a lot of electricity around D.C. this week,” Hurley said. “Just can’t wait to have our part in it.”

UConn head coach Dan Hurley yells on the sideline. — UConn head coach Dan Hurley has won two national titles. | Kyle Ross-Imagn Images

“This is like a Final Four, if you ask me, when you look at it’s one-, two-, three- and five-[seeds]. You could argue where five could have been after the way they ended the season, St. John’s, they were really good,” Izzo said. “I think all the coaches are good. It’s fun to go against guys that are doing it that way. I don’t know what keeps me in it—I do question it sometimes. I’m not ready to give into the system, even though I think the system is completely broken.”

Such fractures off the court were a frequent topic of conversation among the four coaches. Questions about transfers, the amount of money spent on rosters and even the lack of a standard game ball the teams use were asked and answered with a trademark smirk and some impressive nuance. That isn’t surprising given the rare collection of basketball deans on hand—perhaps exceeded only by the closed-door meetings held during the yearly National Association of Basketball Coaches convention. But each coach also circled back around on how notable it was to be here.

Not just in another third round matchup of the NCAA tournament, but in this one.

“We are an offshoot of professional basketball. I look at it totally different. I think it’s great because I just want excellence on the court between the lines,” Pitino said. “I want to see great players, execution, coaching. We are getting that now.”

“I feel confident I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I think it’s a good balance of confidence and humility—I don’t want that to change for me,” Scheyer said. “Again, you have great respect for each of the coaches, programs that are here. I also think with what we’ve been able to do, when I was watching Duke play when I was 5 years old, everything in between, has got me ready for moments like this.”

It helps that all four programs are quite intimately aware of each other, adding additional layers to whoever winds up in the Elite Eight game on Sunday afternoon. Duke beat Michigan State by six in December to hand the Spartans the first of their five losses. UConn split their regular-season meetings with St. John’s before getting blown out in a rubber match at Madison Square Garden in the Big East tournament final just 12 days ago. The Blue Devils also memorably beat fellow No. 1 seed Michigan at Capital One Arena in February to burnish their credentials as a national title threat and the team to beat in the East Regional this season.

“We were very intentional about trying to schedule them for that game right before the opener so we could really identify our vulnerabilities in that game. They exposed us,” Hurley said of UConn’s exhibition game against Michigan State. “We’re a much different team. They’re a much different team. Certainly it helped us both get ready for November and December, because we’re obviously two of the best teams in the country.”

“I’ve not seen, in my 51, 52 years in this game, never seen a schedule like [Duke’s] in my coaching career. Not only the strong ACC, but they’ve played almost everybody in the Sweet 16,” Pitino said. “It’s quite a testament to the basketball team and their staff that they not only played that type of schedule, but to be victorious. We know we’re playing a great team.”

St. John’s coach Rick Pitino looks on during a practice session. — St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has been to seven Final Fours and won two championships. | Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

The brands, and the coaches stewarding them, are about as good as they get, too.

Duke is not only regularly mentioned as a blueblood, but the winningest program of the past two years in college basketball. UConn may not have the same historical pedigree but has been one of the gold standards in the sport of the past two decades and its Big East compatriot St. John’s is in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999 when it was winning over a generation of fans in the Big Apple.

Michigan State remains the last Big Ten team to win the national championship. There’s the old joke that this month may as well be named Izzo instead of March as he is the winningest active coach in tournament victories.

“Izzo is always a passionate, fiery coach who coaches hard early in the year. He just turns it up a notch, especially in March Madness,” says Spartans guard Jeremy Fears Jr. “He’s beaten the two-seed, he’s lost to a seven. He’s been in every scenario you can be in college basketball. Just understanding and being able to trust and understand him, it’s huge for us. We know he’s done it. We know he’s won it, he’s been to the Final Four and Elite Eights. He knows the keys and the answers to be successful.”

“Every game, every practice, every day, he can tell when you’re a little uptight or when you’re not taking it seriously enough,” Michigan State teammate Jaxon Kohler said. “He knows exactly when you need that and when you need the intense yelling and the emotion that he usually has on a daily basis.”

There will be plenty of that from Izzo and his three peers on Friday night, each contributing to a pair of games that will be hard to top in terms of the résumés involved and the jerseys worn in the stands. The get-in price is tracking to be the highest among the four regionals this year. Fans will need to pony up $800 or more just to avoid the nosebleeds in an arena where a crisp $20 is usually all that it takes to witness basketball on any other weekend.

Duke coach Jon Scheyer stands on the court during a practice session. — Duke coach Jon Scheyer is the most inexperienced coach in the East Regional, but he has won a national title as a player. | Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

All that might be missing at this point is Bruce Buffer doing the introductions and some of the fireworks being sequestered away around the city for America’s semiquincentennial celebrations later this summer.

“What’s on court, the way the game is being played on court is the best I’ve ever witnessed,” Pitino said . “You’re four games away from a national championship, the dream of every athlete and every coach and every fan.”

That’s always been the case whenever the Sweet 16 has arrived on the calendar, but this year in D.C. has somehow managed to take things to another level.

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