Predictable. Compelling. Depressing. Exciting. Indicative of future tournaments that will lack the charm America has grown to love. Indicative of a weekend ahead that will thrill American basketball lovers.
Take your pick and acknowledge two truths. One, the men’s NCAA Tournament Final Four will feature all No. 1 seeds for the first time since 2008 — also a San Antonio Final Four — and the second time since seeding began in 1979. Two, one of those No. 1 seeds is not like the others.
We’re well past the stage of fretting about lost underdog stories. Check back next year as trends are extended or bucked. Give the selection committee a nod for seeding correctly. Take in the best four teams playing each other in the three biggest games of the season. Be surprised if the Duke Blue Devils aren’t the ones carving away at the Alamodome nets Monday night.
West No. 1 seed Florida, Midwest No. 1 seed Houston and South No. 1 seed Auburn could win it. But East champion Duke is the clear favorite. This makes fantastic frosh Cooper Flagg the favorite for most outstanding player honors, which he no doubt will deserve with two more wins. Still, the Blue Devils standing above at this point can be credited in part to the Saturday reminder that Flagg does not stand alone as the driver of Duke’s success.
Flagg is the NBA’s next No. 1 overall pick, a dynamo of a help defender and an offensive creator who sees things before they materialize on both ends of the floor. The Blue Devils (35-3) might have succumbed to Arizona star Caleb Love’s 35-point hero turn in the Sweet 16 but for a Flagg performance coach Jon Scheyer called “one of the best tournament performances I’ve ever coached or been a part of”: 30 points, seven assists, six rebounds and three blocks in the 100-93 win, stuffing the box score like no player in this event since Marquette’s Dwyane Wade in 2003.
#MFINALFOUR IS SET 🙌
ALL FOUR 1-SEEDS MAKE IT FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2008 ‼️#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/Ijq2FAencV
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 30, 2025
Then Flagg had an off night by his standards — 16 points, eight rebounds, 6-for-16 shooting, four turnovers — but Duke smashed No. 2 seed Alabama in the Elite Eight anyway, 85-65. This was an eyeful of the other three players, also future pros, who can dominate in different ways for Duke. And of the gobs of length and talent around them. And of the plan Scheyer — successor of Mike Krzyzewski, an unenviable job description — put together to stifle Mark Sears and the fastest offense in the game while getting clean looks and back cuts galore on the other end.
That’s why Duke is the favorite to win two more games and its sixth national title, the first non-Krzyzewski title in school history. That would also tie Duke with rival North Carolina and Connecticut for third all-time, behind UCLA (11) and Kentucky (eight).
Freshman center and projected first-round pick Khaman Maluach (14 points, nine rebounds, two blocks vs. Alabama) rolls hard and dunks on all who aren’t perfect against ball screens and erases everything Flagg doesn’t on defense. Freshman guard Kon Knueppel (21 points), a projected first-round pick, gets a shot whenever he wants. Junior guard Tyrese Procter (17 points) kills you with a centimeter of open space.
Of course, if ever there was a team that could take away that last centimeter … Houston’s 69-50 stifling of No. 2 seed Tennessee on Sunday sets up a dream semifinal of strength against strength. Duke is the most efficient offense in the sport. Houston (34-4) is the most efficient defense.
Those efficiency ratings are courtesy of Ken Pomeroy, whose website KenPom.com has been doing them since the 1996-97 season. Four of the 10 most efficient teams since then are the four teams competing in this Final Four. In other words, it’s loaded and basketball nerds are hyperventilating. The Blue Devils trying to score and the Cougars trying to stop them will be basketball nerd nirvana.
The Vols managed 15 points in the first half against the Cougars, the lowest a No. 1 or No. 2 seed has ever scored in the first half of any game in this tournament. Kelvin Sampson’s team did this in Indianapolis in front of a heavily pro-Tennessee crowd and now should enjoy that kind of support advantage in its home state on Saturday. The fans of the winner of the first game between Florida and Auburn will become Cougars zealots. The Flagg matchup presents interesting questions for Sampson. But the way his team defends collectively, and the fact that it shoots much better than some of his recent teams, gives this one the potential to be a classic.
Houston is trying for its first national championship in its seventh Final Four. Florida is going for its third national championship, which would put it in rare air with eight other schools with three or more. And that would be the first non-Billy Donovan championship in just the third season under Todd Golden.
Florida (34-4) hovered in the Duke range of formidable entering the tournament, but the Gators have had to pull two late escapes to reach San Antonio. One came against two-time defending champ and No. 8 seed UConn in the round of 32. The other came Saturday against No. 3 seed Texas Tech, when a 9-point deficit with less than three minutes to play turned into an 84-79 win. Walter Clayton Jr., a top MOP candidate, hit the 3-pointers to win it after Thomas Haugh hit the 3-pointers to start the comeback.
That’s Thomas Haugh, Pennsylvanian and football lover, whose Tim Tebow fandom as a kid helped lead him to the Gators. Of course, there’s the football angle. It’s the SEC.
And that football league continues to validate its regular-season dominance in this basketball tournament. The Vols and Crimson Tide bricked the possibility of an all-SEC Final Four (America was not ready for that), but Auburn and Florida meeting for the second time this season guarantees the SEC’s first appearance in the championship game since Kentucky in 2014. If Florida gets its third title or Auburn (32-5) gets its first, that’s the SEC’s first since Kentucky in 2012.
Bruce Pearl, who led the Tigers to their only previous Final Four in 2019, got the better of Tom Izzo and No. 2 seed Michigan State in Sunday’s South Regional final in Atlanta, 70-64. That ends the Spartans’ hopes of repeating national championship history under Izzo 25 years after his first. That remains the Big Ten’s most recent title as well.
Pearl did it behind 25 points and 14 rebounds from Johni Broome, even though Broome left the game in the second half with an elbow injury. He came back in and resumed dominating the Spartans.
“Just keep doubting him,” Pearl said of Broome afterward. “Keep thinking that he’s not going to be able to get to another gear.”
That’s the coach of the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed talking about a first team All-American and prime MOP candidate who so far has split two national player of the year awards (Sporting News for Broome, U.S Basketball Writers Association’s Oscar Robertson Award for Flagg), with several to be announced this week. That may be taking some serious “everyone doubted us” liberties.
But hey, when it’s all No. 1 seeds, a No. 1 seed has to be the cuddly underdog.
Considering Florida’s 90-81 win on the Tigers’ home floor in their only meeting, considering the different kinds of brute force represented in the other Final Four matchup, it looks like Pearl has a card to play.
Duke not winning it all would be the most surprising outcome of this Final Four weekend. Let’s call it the No. 1 seed of surprises. Auburn winning it all? That’s a strong No. 2 seed.
(Photo of Cooper Flagg: Vincent Carchietta / Imagn Images)
