16 Stories About The 2025 Sweet Sixteen

We’re down to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Action continues on Thursday, Mar. 27, with four games and four more on Friday as teams look to punch their tickets to the Elite Eight. Before we get there, here are 16 stories – one for each team – in this year’s Sweet Sixteen.

It’s Not Coach K

If your life depended on it, could you name the last coach not named Mike Krzyzewski that took Duke to the Final Four? Current head coach Jon Scheyer is looking to do just that this season and his Blue Devils are the favorite to win the East Region.

Coach K led Duke to 13 Final Fours and five national championships before he retired in 2022. Scheyer has not yet been to the Final Four. It was 47 years ago that a coach other than Krzyzewski led a Duke team to the Final Four. Bill Foster was the head coach of the 1978 Duke team that lost to Kentucky in the national championship game.

Roll Tide

Prior to last season, the Alabama basketball team had been to exactly one Elite Eight in the 84-year history of the NCAA tournament. If Nate Oats’ team could get to the Final Four and eventually win a championship, Alabama would become the answer to the following trivia question. Which NCAA team holds the record for most combined football and basketball national championships?

The Crimson Tide claim 18 football national championships. The great Nick Saban, of course, accounted for six of those during his tenure in Tuscaloosa. Alabama has never won a basketball national championship, but 19 total titles would lead all schools. Ohio State, Syracuse, UCLA, Maryland, Michigan State, California, Florida, Arkansas, Michigan, and Stanford are the only college programs that have at least one college football national championship as well as at least one college basketball national championship.

War Eagle

Like its in-state rival the Tide, Auburn has never won a national championship either. They came close. In 2019, head coach Bruce Pearl took the Tigers to the Final Four. In a semifinal game against Virginia, the Tigers led by two in the final second of play. And then…

Virginia guard Kyle Guy was fouled while shooting a three with 0.6 seconds showing on the clock. Surely, he’d miss one. He sank all three and sunk the Tigers who haven’t been to the Final Four since. Virginia went on to win the national championship.

Rebel, Rebel

Ole Miss has never won a Sweet 16 game in its history. The Rebels have never been to a Final Four. Head coach Chris Beard is doing great things in his second season in Oxford after getting fired by Texas. 

The Ole Miss basketball program owns all of seven NCAA tournament wins in school history. If the Rebels can pull off another upset and beat Michigan State on Friday, they would pass Georgia on the SEC’s all-time NCAA tournament win list. That would move the Rebels out of last place in the conference.

The Not So Wild West 

No team from the western half of the U.S. has won an NCAA tournament in this century. This would make Year 25. The last western team to win a national championship may have the opportunity to do it again – Arizona. Lute Olson led the Wildcats to the 1997 national title. 

UCLA ended its run of dominance with a title in 1975. In the 50 years since, only three western teams have claimed national championships – Arizona (1997), UCLA (1995), and UNLV (1990). The west will be pulling for Arizona, but their Sweet Sixteen opponent is the East’s No. 1 seed – Duke.

You Gonna Eat Your Tots?

Speaking of western teams, one school has been to more NCAA tournaments (31) than any other without ever making a Final Four. That would be BYU, but the real storyline belongs to Cougars leading scorer Richie Saunders. His great-grandfather was the originator of the tater tot. Yes, the delicious tater tot.

F Nephi Grigg was the founder of the tater tot and Ore-Ida, the company that first made them. Saunders is now the Tater Tot king averaging 16.3 points per game. Ore-Ida is giving away free tater tots during BYU games in the tournament. The Cougars take on Alabama in the very first game on Thursday, March 27. Should they win, you can get more free tater tots on Saturday, March 29.

We Have a Problem

Houston. The Cougars have been to six Final Fours. They have zero national championships. It’s amazing that Houston has come so close and never won. The Cougars had Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes in the late 1960s. Houston made two trips to the Final Four with Hayes and came away empty-handed. 

Hayes’ head coach Guy Lewis brought the Cougars back to the Final Four in the early 1980s with Phi Slamma Jamma, a team full of superstars like Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. The Cougars played in the national championship game in 1983 and 1984. They lost both times. 

Now, head coach Kelvin Sampson has taken Houston to five straight Sweet Sixteens and one Final Four. The Cougars have yet to win that elusive title, but they can get one step closer this year with a win over Purdue on Friday, March 28. 

The Player-Coach Double

In the history of college basketball, only two men won a national championship as a player and then went on to win one as a head coach. You should recognize the names – Bob Knight and Dean Smith. They are two of the greatest ever. 

Kentucky head coach Mark Pope could actually one-up both Knight and Smith. It’s Pope’s first season as the Wildcats head coach. Pope was the Kentucky team captain in 1995-96 when the Wildcats won the national championship. If Pope leads Kentucky to a national title, he would be the first to do so as a player and a coach of the same school.

First Time’s a Charm

Only three head coaches in college basketball history have ever won national titles in their very first season. Dusty May is in his first year at Michigan and if he could lead the Wolverines to a national championship that would make four. Half of those four coaches would be from Michigan. 

Steve Fisher was the interim head coach in 1989 when the Wolverines won the championship with an 80-79 win over Seton Hall in the title game. Fisher had served just three weeks before leading Michigan to the championship. At least May has had a full season.

In another interesting twist, if Michigan can pull a monumental Sweet 16 upset of No. 1 Auburn and Michigan State defeats Ole Miss in their regional semifinal, the two in-state rivals – Michigan and Michigan State – would play for a trip to the 2025 Final Four.

He’s Back

How many college basketball coaches have taken four different teams to the Final Four? That would be none, but Arkansas head coach John Calipari could become the first if he can get his Razorbacks there. The Hogs are the surprise of the tournament as the lowest remaining seed – No. 10 – of the Sweet 16. 

Only one No. 10 seed has ever made a Final Four over the last 46 years of the tournament. That was Syracuse in 2016. Calipari has been to the Final Four with UMass, Memphis, and Kentucky. Arkansas plays Texas Tech on Thursday, March 27.

Sunshine State

There are only eight college basketball programs in the history of the game with three or more national championships. Florida, the No. 1 seed in the West Region, is not one of them, but the Gators could become the ninth three-time NCAA champion if they can navigate the rest of the tournament. The Gators would also become the only program to have won all of their national titles in the 21st century. 

Over the course of the first 45 NCAA tournaments, Florida basketball recorded exactly three wins. This season makes it the Gators’ 11th trip to the Sweet 16 in the last 30 years. Another trip to the Final Four would be Florida’s sixth all-time.

The Big Ten Drought

The last Big Ten team to win a national championship was Michigan State in 2000. Jason Richardson, father of current Spartans guard Jase Richardson, was a key reserve on that 2000 national title team. But wait? Didn’t Maryland win a title in 2002?

That is correct, but the Terrapins were still members of the ACC at the time. Maryland did, however, beat a Big Ten team – Indiana – to win that title. What’s interesting is that it was 1999 the last time a Big Ten women’s team – Purdue – won a national championship. Maryland won the women’s championship in 2006 but like the men’s team in 2002, the Terrapins were still members of the ACC. Is this the Big Ten’s year to break either drought?

Pur-don’t & Tenn-no-ssee

Over the past eight NCAA tournaments, Purdue has punched its ticket to six Sweet Sixteens. The No. 4 Boilermakers will take on No. 1 Houston in a Midwest Regional semifinal on Friday, March 28. Purdue has been to three Final Fours and two national championship games. What the Boilermakers don’t have is a national championship. 

Tennessee, the No. 2 seed in the MIdwest Region, also has zero national titles. The Vols also have zero trips to the Final Four. Tennessee has been to the Elite Eight twice. They’ll have to beat No. 3 Kentucky on Friday, March 28, in order to get to their Elite Eight. That would be the 17-time Final Four Kentucky Wildcats. Kentucky has already beaten the Vols twice this season. 

Messin’ With Texas

There are 25 Division I college basketball programs in the state of Texas. Since the very first NCAA tournament in 1939 – won by Oregon, by the way – the state of Texas has just two national championships. One of those was the Texas Western (now UTEP) team of 1966, which was the subject of the 2006 motion picture Glory Road.  

The other Texas team to win a national title was Baylor in 2021. Duke beat Baylor to get to the Sweet Sixteen. That makes Houston and Texas Tech the only remaining Texas teams in the tournament. Could this be the Longhorn State’s year? The Red Raiders played for the national championship in 2019 under head coach Chris Beard, now the Ole Miss head coach. 

25 Years Later

Tom Izzo is already in the Basketball Hall of Fame. He’s taken his Michigan State teams to eight Final Fours, but he has just one national championship. That was exactly 25 years ago this year. The Spartans won the 2000 championship in Izzo’s sixth season as the Spartans head coach. 

Should Izzo and MSU get it done, it would be the longest stretch ever between championships for a head coach. What’s interesting is that, in order to win the 2025 national title, Michigan State potentially would have to beat four SEC teams in a row.