{"id":680598,"date":"2026-03-26T18:47:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/680598\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T18:47:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:47:27","slug":"this-years-sweet-16-is-unlike-any-other-in-the-last-72-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/680598\/","title":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s Sweet 16 is unlike any other in the last 72 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This year\u2019s Sweet 16, which is now underway, is unlike any other in the last 72 years of college basketball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This is the first Sweet 16 since 1954 that does not include Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, or UCLA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It was a rough year for those four blue-blood college basketball programs, with a lot of ups and downs throughout the season, but none of the tournament losses were major surprises. VCU over North Carolina was a fairly popular upset pick, especially with the Tar Heels being without Caleb Wilson. The manner in which they lost, giving up a 19-point lead, was the surprising aspect, and of course, led to Hubert Davis being let go as head coach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Kentucky, UCLA, and Kansas all entered their respective Round of 32 matchups as underdogs and subsequently lost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">College basketball has certainly changed, and blue-blood schools like Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, and UCLA can\u2019t rely as much on their history and status to stay at the top of the pecking order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s Sweet 16, which is now underway, is unlike any other in the last 72 years of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,244,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-680598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116296970587540878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}