Setting up the Sweet 16

Good morning! How about one final morning of previews before the NCAA Tournament resumes?

Sound good?

1. It’s all about offense in the East Region

High-powered offense. Big time college basketball brands. Caleb Love against Duke. There’s a lot to like about the Sweet Sixteen of the east region. All the action resumes today.

Firstly, let’s talk about the No. 1 vs. No. 4 matchup: Duke (33-3) and Arizona (24-12). These two teams already met in the regular season, where Duke won 69-55 on the road. The Wildcats will be looking for revenge as a 9.5 point underdog.

“I imagine Thursday night it'll be two very different teams on the court then that played early in the season,” coach Tommy Lloyd said. “I'm not going to try to magnify the stakes or play as a role we're an underdog or a favorite. That kind of to me is wasted energy. Let's go in and let's see if we can play with great effort and energy and great focus and make it a game, and as the game plays out, see if we can adjust where we need to and find a way to come out on top.”

A couple key matchups:

• How about two seven footers in Khaman Maluach and Henri Veesaar?

• And then how can you forget about Love going against Duke’s guards like Kon Knueppel and Tyrese Proctor?

It should be an entertaining game, and Arizona may need Love to have one of his vintage “vs. Duke” games to allow the Wildcats to move on.

While Duke and Arizona is a matchup of two historical basketball powerhouses, No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 6 BYU might be the most fun game of the round. Given the pace of play. (Alabama pushes more than any other D-I team, while BYU is a mid-range tempo team) and shooting, we could see the winner hit triple digits.

The good news for Alabama? Their bigs are healthy for the most part.

“Cliff [Omoruyi] is for sure healthy,” coach Nate Oats said. “Grant [Nelson] is pretty healthy. Not 100 percent but close enough. We've got everything about as close to 100 as you're going to be able to get at this point of the year. And Grant is probably the furthest from that, but like he made the point to me, he hasn't been better than 90 for the last month or so. I think we'll have our full roster available for us to play this game.”

Since Feb. 12, both Alabama (27-8) and BYU (26-9) are in the top-10 of offensive efficiency on Torvik, and both squads have averaged over 84 points per game. If you like offense, this is the game for you out of the East.

2. A Golden return and Cinderella run

Two of the hottest teams will meet today in the West Region. We also get the treat of the and only Cinderella* still playing (*not a typical glass-slipper team).

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