Winners and losers from the second week of the NCAA Tournament

Both Houston and Baylor are in the Final Four, marking just the 7th time in 83 NCAA tournaments that multiple Final Four teams were from the same state. It had happened just once in the last 29 years when Kentucky and Louisville reached the 2012 Final Four. Texas becomes only the fourth state to do this, following Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

2021 - Texas (Baylor, Houston)
2012 - Kentucky (Kentucky, Louisville)
1991 - North Carolina (Duke, North Carolina)
1977 - North Carolina (North Carolina, UNC Charlotte)
1975 - Kentucky (Kentucky, Louisville)
1962 - Ohio (Cincinnati, Ohio State)
1961 - Ohio (Cincinnati, Ohio State)
1960 - Ohio (Cincinnati, Ohio State)

The winner of the Baylor-Houston game will become just the 6th Texas team to play in the NCAA championship game. Texas Western's 1966 championship is the state's lone title. 

Huh? Indiana didn't play this week -- and in fact, they didn't make the tournament -- so how are they on this list? As the games went on in their own state, the Hoosiers had a strange coaching search end with a coaching hire that had some people scratching their heads. While Woodson brings the fans a direct link to their past, as he played for legendary coach Bobby Knight from 1976 to 1980, fans at Woodson's NBA stops (he has never coached in college) took to social media to roast the hire. Thad Matta, who some felt was the frontrunner, will take over as an associate AD of basketball administration ... which is a fancy way to say that he will help advise Woodson on some of the finer points of a college coach's job.

Oh, and Gonzaga is now just two wins away from supplanting the 1976 Indiana team as the last team to end the season undefeated.

The "Conference of Champions" have had themselves quite a tournament. The Pac-12 stunned many by getting four teams into the Sweet 16 and then they go and put three teams in the Elite Eight (the fourth team was beaten by a fellow Pac-12 school). The fun looked like it would end there as Oregon State and USC lost to Houston and Gonzaga, respectively. UCLA, the league's final hope, toppled the East's top seed, Michigan, in a nail-biter.

UCLA becomes the second First Four team to reach the Final Four (VCU, 2011) and the fifth 11th seed to reach the Final Four. No 11th seed has won once they've gotten to the final weekend.

The Pac-12 hasn't won a national championship since 1997. 

Lauded all season for how powerful it was, the Big Ten snuck only one team into the Sweet 16 and were shut out of the Final Four. That is despite having two No. 1 seeds (Illinois, Michigan) and two No. 2 seeds (Iowa, Ohio State) in the big dance and all of their tournament teams having spent the Big Ten tournament playing in the very same city as the entire NCAA tournament. Ohio State was stunned by 15-seed Oral Roberts in the first round while Iowa (Oregon) and Illinois (Loyola-Chicago) were bounced pretty handily out of the second round. Michigan made it to the regional final before bowing out to 11th seed UCLA on the strength of missing their final eight shots of the game.

Their streak of not winning a national championship extends to 20 tournaments.

For the first time ever, all four Final Four schools are west of the Mississippi River. The last time we've had a champion from that side of the ol' Mississip was when Kansas won it all in 2008. Gonzaga and UCLA are trying to become the first west coast school to win a title since Arizona in 1997. The path of those two schools couldn't be any different. Undefeated Gonzaga has awed us with their sheer domination of the four foes placed in their path. Meanwhile, UCLA had to play in the First Four because they had lost four straight games heading into the tournament. The Bruins have won two overtime games and another game by just two points.

The ACC (8), SEC (4) and Big East (7) have dominated winning championships over the last 22 tournaments. Now it is the west side of the map's turn.

This was not a banner year for the ACC. For the first time ever, no ACC team received a 3-seed or higher in a tournament and historical heavyweights Duke and North Carolina had down seasons. Despite the mediocre season, the league was still able to get two teams into the Sweet 16 as Florida State and Syracuse advanced to play over the weekend. That's as far as the ACC would get, as both the Seminoles and the Orange looked awful in their blowout losses. Syracuse shot 28% in their 62-46 loss to Houston, while Florida State shot 40% from the field and attempted just six free throws in their 18-point loss to Michigan.

This was the first time since 2014 that no ACC team made it to the Elite Eight. In fact, an ACC team has been in the national championship game in 4 of the last 5 years. Not this year.

With the shifted schedule, we all were able to enjoy every game in their very own time slot. Typically there are four games shoved into a five-hour window on Thursday and Friday nights, and while the games are staggered, you still have games overlapping and ending around midnight on the east coast. This season, every Sweet 16 game was shown on its own (though we still ended around midnight in the east) and I sat and watched every minute of every game. It really set up the tournament nicely. After the first week where there is organized chaos to quickly get 68 teams down to 16, we get a few days to reset and enjoy each of the sweet sixteen teams left. Hopefully, this is an idea that may catch on for future tournaments. 

Droughts were being ended all over the place last week. Baylor reached their first Final Four in 71 years. Houston reached its first Final Four in 37 years.

The Elite Eight was the same. Oregon State reached their first regional final since 1982, and their first regional final that wasn't vacated since 1966. Houston reached their first regional final since the Phi Slamma Jamma days of 1984. Arkansas reached their first Elite Eight since those Nolan Richardson Hogs of 1995. USC? Their last trip was in 2001. UCLA reached its first regional final and Final Four since 2008. None of the Elite 8 coaches had won a national championship.

Of the Final Four, only UCLA has won a national championship, and they've won just once in the last 45 years. 

Though they technically lost, Oral Roberts was a winner in nearly every other way. The Eagles had Arkansas on the ropes and had their best player take a great shot to win the game at the buzzer that just didn't fall in. They were thiiiiiiis close to becoming the first 15-seed to reach the regional finals. Max Abmas became the first player to score at least 25 points in each of the first three rounds of the NCAA tournament games since Stephen Curry did it in 2008.

The loss was heartbreaking for ORU, but the exposure for the school, the basketball program, and Abmas was invaluable. Thanks for a great run!

Moser's Loyola-Chicago Ramblers were actually favored to win their Sweet 16 matchup against Oregon State and reach the regional finals. But the Ramblers' offense was horrible -- especially in the first half against the Beavers. Loyola ended up making just 18 of 54 shots as they bowed out of the tournament, 65-58. Moser had a tough day with the officials and even fell down on the sideline after a Loyola turnover. In the postgame news conference, he was asked about the Indiana opening, which he replied that he needed time "to digest" this loss. After all, this was the end of a great era of Loyola basketball as Cameron Krutwig and Lucas Williamson graduate as the last remaining players of the 2018 Final Four team (not that this program can't continue being a player in March). A day after Mosier was asked about the Indiana job, the Hoosiers hired someone else.  

Look, Moser is in a great position. He can stay at Loyola and continue to be the mid-major the big boys love to hate or he could take one of the jobs that are open or could open in the next few weeks. Last week, though, could've gone a lot better for him. 

I don't care that Alabama would go on to lose to UCLA in overtime, Alex Reese's shot to tie the game just before the end of regulation was cold-blooded. Down three with 4.2 seconds left, the ball found Reese's hands about five feet behind the top of the three-point arc. Reese released it, with his shooting hand held high. As he slowly walked towards the basket, the ball ripped the net to tie the game. The arm stayed up, and the face was steel. The shot? Ice.

Alabama would lose in overtime to UCLA in large part due to their horrible free-throw shooting. The Crimson Tide would make just 11 of 25 free throws, including missing 6 of their final 7 of the game. Twice with the game tied under two minutes in regulation, Herbert Jones missed one of his two free throws. Down a point with six seconds remaining, Jones missed both free throws. With UCLA leading 70-65, Alex Reese, who made the three to send the game into overtime, missed two free throws -- the only two the Tide shot in OT. Meanwhile, UCLA iced the game by hitting 20 of their 25 freebies.

Alabama had a great shot at not just getting to the Final Four, but at winning a national championship. They'll always remember all the free throws they missed on Sunday.

Despite all the chaos we've seen over the last couple of weeks, we still ended up with a pretty chalk Final Four. The two best teams all year long, Gonzaga and Baylor, ended up where they'd be all along. Houston, who has hovered among the top five to ten all year, made it. That's two No. 1 seeds and a No. 2. The wrench comes from an 11th seed, UCLA, who happens to have won more NCAA tournaments than any school in history.

In the Sweet 16, six of the eight games were won by the better-seeded team ... with the two "upsets" coming by a power conference team (Oregon State) beating a mid-major (Loyola-Chicago), and UCLA ... again, the school that's won more national championships than anyone else. So in 12 games this week, 9 were won by the better seed. 

Old school folks tend to roll their eyes at the new way of basketball -- firing up so many threes. Well, during the eight games in the Sweet 16, the teams combined to shoot 91-of-334 from the three-point line ... or 27%. The winning teams shot just 32% in that round (much better than the 23% the losers shot) ... with winners Michigan, Baylor, and Arkansas shooting a combined 7 of 39 from distance.

The Elite Eight was not much different. Houston shot 11-of-32 from three (in fact, they had the lowest shooting percentage of any team to win a regional final game in 50 years) en route to their regional final win. Baylor did rip the cords, hitting 8 of 15 threes, against Arkansas. Baylor's effort buoyed yet another round of rough shooting. The "Elite" Eight teams combined to shoot 33% (45-for-134) from three with the four losing teams going 16-of-53 (30%).

With three defensive-minded teams among the Final Four, don't expect things to change much over the weekend. 

Juzang scored 28 of UCLA's 51 points in the Bruins' 51-49 win over Michigan in the East Regional final. He became the first player to score at least half of his team's points in a regional final win since Oscar Robertson scored 43 of Cincinnati's 82 points in 1960. And he did it all with a bum ankle.

Juzang, who played at Kentucky last season, will be playing in the Final Four while his former team had their worst season in a century. 

Imagine if Oregon State could do anything on the defensive boards on Monday night? The Beavers were embarrassed on the glass against Houston, giving up 19 offensive rebounds (Houston rebounded 45% of their missed shots). Those offensive rebounds allowed the Cougars to get off 15 more shots than the Beavers in what ended up being a six-point game. Add in Oregon State's uncharacteristically poor free-throw shooting (11-of-20) and the Beavers have only themselves to blame.

Defense still wins championships. Remember that the last tournament game before 2021 was between two great defensive teams in Virginia and Texas Tech. Last week just showed how far great defense can go. Of the 12 games played over the week, the losing team averaged just 61.8 points and it was only fitting that the final game of the week was a 51-49 nail-biter. Star players like Buddy Boeheim, Herbert Jones, Ethan Thompson, and Moses Moody had brutal games due to outstanding defensive efforts by the teams we'll be watching this weekend. 

With Gonzaga facing UCLA in the Final Four on Saturday, we will get a lot of flashbacks to their 2006 meeting in the Elite 8. In that game, UCLA scored the final 11 points of the game to shock Adam Morrison's Zags, 73-71. The visual of Morrison slumped on the floor with tears running down his face has been part of the fabric of the tournament ever since. You better believe you will see plenty of the 2006 National Player of the Year over the next few days.