The NCAA Sweet 16 tournament schedule picks up on Thursday and Friday before the Elite Eight sets the Final Four in the college basketball brackets and there are a number of great matchups to look forward to, including the first set of games with teams like the Florida Gators, Arizona Wildcats, UCLA Bruins, Wisconsin Badgers, Dayton Flyers and Stanford Cardinal before the rest of the games play out.
The first matchup of the night on Thursday comes with Dayton taking on Stanford and both of those teams have pulled upsets in the tournament and that game will be on CBS on TV as the first game at 7:15 pm ET. Dayton upset Ohio State to start the tournament and they continued their run with a win against Syracuse when they were the number three seed and now this is an 11 against a 10 seed to get to the Elite Eight from the south region. Dayton has the chance to continue making some noise and the winner of this game will face off against the winner of the Florida Gators and UCLA Bruins matchup.
Dayton took down Syracuse and held them from shooting any long range shots and the Orange could not recover and now Florida has a favorable matchup looming if they can win, as they are the number one overall seed in the tournament and will have a clear shot to the Final Four if they can advance. Florida comes in after winning against Albany and against Pitt and now they are looking like one of the favorites in the tournament, as they went undefeated in their conference and won their tournament before making it in as a number one seed and they will face off against the Pac-12 tournament champions in the Bruins, who have won over Tulsa and SF Austin to advance. Billy Donovan and his team have been in tough games like this before and this has the south region playing out as it's supposed to with the number four seed taking on the number one and that will be for a matchup with the Flyers or the Cardinal.
Baylor and Wisconsin are playing in the next matchup on the schedule and that comes at around 7:45 pm ET before the UCLA and Florida matchup at 9:45 pm and that could end up being one of the most evenly matched games of the tournament. The final game on Thursday has Arizona taking on San Diego State and that part of the west regional has also played out to plan, as they are matching up as the number one and number four seeds in that bracket. Arizona comes in with two of the best players in the entire tournament, as Aaron Gordon has been stellar as a freshman and Nick Johnson was named conference player of the year and is a candidate for national player of the year and those two will be the focus for the Aztecs in the game, which will be on TBS airing after 10 pm.
Friday has more matchups, as Tennessee and Michigan start things off ahead of UConn and Iowa State as well as Kentucky and Louisville and Michigan State and Virginia in another one-four matchup.
Check here for the NCAA Tournament schedule or for more on the Sweet 16.
