SI:AM | Big Ten Dominating Men’s NCAA Tournament as Power Conferences Fill Sweet 16

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can’t believe the MLB regular season begins in just two days.

In today’s SI:AM:
🐊 Iowa knocks off Florida
🏀 Pitino prevails in battle of HOF coaches
⚾ What it takes to be an MLB manager

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Big weekend for the B1G

Last year, the SEC had a stranglehold on men’s March Madness. This year, it’s the Big Ten.

Six of the conference’s nine teams won over the weekend to advance to the Sweet 16. It’s just the third time in the past 10 years that a single conference has sent at least six teams to the tournament’s second weekend. (The SEC had seven Sweet 16 teams last year, and the ACC had six in 2016.)

Most of the Big Ten’s surviving participants should come as no surprise. No. 1 seed Michigan is still alive, as is No. 2 Purdue and three-seeds Michigan State and Illinois. But then there’s fourth-seeded Nebraska and No. 9 Iowa.

The Cornhuskers entered the tournament as the only power-conference team without a men’s March Madness victory. They snapped their eight-game tournament losing streak with a blowout win over Troy in the first round, then survived a near buzzer beater by Vanderbilt in the second round to punch their ticket to the regional semifinal in Houston.

Iowa is the most unlikely of the Big Ten’s remaining teams. The Hawkeyes earned an at-large bid after going 10–10 in conference play in Ben McCollum’s first year as coach. McCollum built a Division II dynasty at Northwest Missouri State, made the jump to D-I with Drake last season and parlayed a 31–4 season with the Bulldogs into the Iowa job.

The fact that the Hawkeyes managed to beat defending champion Florida in the second round on Sunday is stunning, frankly. The talent gap was enormous. Four of Iowa’s five starters are guys who followed McCollum from Drake, including star guard Bennett Stirtz, who started his career at Northwest Missouri State. Alvaro Folgueiras, who hit the winning shot, transferred to Iowa after two seasons at Robert Morris in the Horizon League. But that group of former mid-major players performed well enough in the Big Ten to make the tournament and then beat the defending champions in the second round.

Iowa’s win over Florida was rarer than you might realize. It marked just the ninth time in men’s tournament history that a top seed lost to a No. 9 seed, and just the fifth time in the last 30 years.

Iowa and 11-seed Texas (one of the SEC’s four Sweet 16 teams) are the closest teams we have to a Cinderella this season. This era of increased stratification in college sports has produced a stunningly homogenous Sweet 16 for the second year in a row. Only the five traditional power conferences still have teams alive in the tournament (the big football conferences, plus the Big East). Last year, only the four power football leagues had teams advance past the first weekend. Compare that to 2024, when eight conferences were represented in the Sweet 16, or ’23, when teams from a whopping 11 different conferences made it that far.

This year’s Sweet 16 is full of big, bad football schools, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s uninteresting. The basketball has been really good, with plenty of games going down to the wire and even a few buzzer beaters. There are also some compelling narratives, like Iowa’s unlikely upset and Nebraska’s unprecedented run. St. John’s, the only non-football school remaining, is in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999 (the same year Iowa last made it this far). Arkansas coach John Calipari is seeking to reach the Elite Eight with a fourth different school. Arizona is hoping its stretch of regular-season success under Tommy Lloyd can finally extend to the tournament. There isn’t an underdog like Oral Roberts or Princeton, but it’ll still be worth watching.

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St. John's guard Dylan Darling — Dylan Darling’s game-winning layup lifted St. John’s over Kansas in a battle of Hall of Fame coaches. | Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

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In a battle of Hall of Fame coaches, Rick Pitino’s St. John’s squad survived when Dylan Darling, scoreless all game, drove to the hole and finished a buzzer-beating layup to help the Red Storm knock out Bill Self’s Kansas team, writes Pat Forde.
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The MMQB staff debates its favorite moves of NFL free agency.
Matt Verderame gives one reason for each team to hope and mope ahead of the NFL draft.
Bryson DeChambeau will be riding high into the Masters after he beat Jon Rahm with an amazing shot in a playoff to win the LIV Golf South Africa title, writes Max Schreiber.

The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:
5. Olivia Miles’s scooping layup for TCU in overtime against Washington. Miles finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists after posting a triple-double in the Horned Frogs’ first-round game.
4. Alex Ovechkin’s one-timer for his 1,000th career goal (including the regular-season and playoffs).
3. Alvaro Folgueiras’s game-winning three-pointer for Iowa. (It was a brilliant play call by coach Ben McCollum. The Florida defense was totally preoccupied with Iowa star Bennett Stirtz and left Folgueiras all alone.)
2. Amaya Battle’s jumper at the buzzer to give Minnesota the win over Ole Miss.
1. Dylan Darling’s game-winning layup at the buzzer for St. John’s against Kansas.

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