March Madness 2026: The best and worst from Thursday’s Sweet 16

No need for any fluff. Let’s get right to it.

Best game

(2) Purdue 79, (11) Texas 77 (West)

Perhaps the least anticipated of all the regional semifinal matchups delivered, without question, the best contest of Thursday night and one of the most dramatic finishes of the tournament.

Texas and Purdue traded blows for a full 40 minutes before Trey Kaufman-Renn’s tip-in of a Braden Smith miss with 0.7 seconds to play sent the Boilermakers back to the Elite Eight for the second time in three years.

Did Kaufman-Renn get away with a slight push or a hook to create the space necessary for the last-second heroics? Texas fans certainly seem to think so, and will be making the claim for some time to come.

Even if he did, if you’re fortunate enough to get Smith to miss what is typically a gimmie for him, you simply have to come down with the rebound — or at least not get forced all the way underneath the basket — in this situation.

The tip-in ended a terrific run that began in the First Four, and nearly ended with the Longhorns becoming the third team to go from Dayton all the way to a regional final. The run was also head coach Sean Miller’s ninth trip to the Sweet 16 in 21 seasons, the most for any coach who hasn’t made it to a Final Four.

But the night belonged to Purdue, the preseason No. 1 team that will now face Arizona on Sunday with a trip to the Final Four on the line. A win over the Wildcats would send the Boilermakers to their fourth Final Four, and put them just two wins away from that ever-elusive first national title for the program.

Team that won it best

Arizona

Arizona certainly backed up the growing notion that they should be viewed as the current favorite to cut down the nets. The Wildcats hammered trendy upset pick Arkansas, 109-88, to punch the program’s first trip to a regional final since 2015.

Attempting just eight three-pointers in the game (and making five of those), Arizona shot a torrid 63.8 percent from the field against John Calipari’s team. That’s the best field goal percentage of any team playing in a Sweet 16 game since 2005.

“I thought our guys were great offensively today,” Wildcats head coach Tommy Lloyd said after the game. “The great thing about basketball and the tough thing about basketball is, unfortunately, that doesn’t automatically translate to Saturday. We’ve got to find a way to kind of recreate that rhythm we had tonight.”

The win was especially sweet for Lloyd, who has won a record 147 games over his first five seasons at Arizona, but has struggled in the NCAA Tournament. Before Thursday night’s win, the Wildcats had lost three times in the Sweet 16 and once in a stunning 2/15 first round upset under his watch.

This year’s group has felt different, and that difference was on full display Thursday evening … and has been for basically the entirety of March. ‘Zona has now won 12 consecutive games, and its three victories in the NCAA Tournament have come by a combined by a combined 67 points.

Arizona is now one win away from its first trip to the Final Four since 2001, and three wins away from its first national title since 1997. That ‘97 championship is also the most recently won by any team from the Western half of the United States.

Biggest disappointment

Houston

“Disappointment” feels harsh, but when Florida was stunned by Iowa last weekend, Houston instantly became the heavy favorites to win the South Region and make it back to the Final Four for a second consecutive year.

If you had told Kelvin Sampson that his team would be playing a game Thursday night that would feature just 120 total points, he, just like the rest of us, probably would have guessed that his team would have been in good shape. Instead it was Illinois that was able to pull out a 65-55 slugfest in a game where the Cougars just could never seem to get in any sort of rhythm offensively.

Playing in their home city and just two miles from their campus, Houston struggled mightily in front of a partisan crowd inside the Toyota Center. The team shot just 34.0 percent in a game where they produced their lowest point total of the season.

Houston trailed by only a point early in the second half before a stretch where they missed seven consecutive shots and allowed Illinois to go on a 17-0 run that put the game out of reach. When Milos Uzan, who finished the game 2-of-11 from the field, finally drilled a three, it had been nearly seven minutes since the Cougars’ last score. That was all she wrote for what Sampson and company were hoping might be a revenge March back to the national championship game to avenge last season’s heartbreak.

Three Thursday cheers

1. Ben McCollum

A guy crushing it at the Division II level for years and years and years, finally making the jump to the big leagues and then immediately crushing it at that level as well is quickly becoming one of the best stories this month has given us.

Fran McCaffrey won a lot of games at Iowa, but he simply could not get it done in the NCAA Tournament, famously failing to ever get the Hawkeyes out of the tournament’s first weekend.

Or, for more perspective …

I’d say the Hawkeyes have been suitably rewarded for making the move they did 12 months ago.

2. The Big Ten

The 2024-25 SEC is talked about as arguably the best conference in the history of college basketball, largely because of its performance in the NCAA Tournament. The Big Ten might be putting together an even better run just a year later.

With Purdue, Illinois and Iowa (which faced another Big Ten team in Nebraska) all winning on Thursday, the Big Ten could now have as many as five of the eight teams playing in the regional finals (Michigan and Michigan State play on Friday), and is now already guaranteed to have at least one team in the Final Four.

The last Big Ten national champion — as any fan of the conference can tell you without hesitation — was Michigan State all the way back in 2000. We could be 10 days from that finally changing.

3. Jordan Pope playing with a broken foot

Playing back in the Bay Area where he grew up, Texas guard Jordan Pope hit four threes and scored 12 points while playing 33 minutes for the Longhorns Thursday night. That may seem like a relatively pedestrian performance for a guy who averaged 13.1 ppg for the season, but after the game, Pope revealed that he had actually broken his foot with five minutes to go in the team’s second round win over Gonzaga last weekend.

“I think I can clear the air now,” Pope said after the game. “Five minutes left against Gonzaga, I broke my foot. A complete break. It was definitely tough. I’m not sure a lot of guys would have went out there and played, but credit to my training staff.”

March is not for the faint of heart.

BONUS CHEER: The Illinois water gun locker room celebration

It’s back!

These got big over the last couple of years but we hadn’t seen any of them so far in 2026. Nice to have them back.

Three Thursday jeers

1. Nebraska having four players on the court at the worst possible time

It’s been a dream season for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Fred Hoiberg’s team spent a solid chunk of the season ranked in the nation’s top 10, they finally shed the stigma of being the only power conference team to have never won a game in the NCAA Tournament, and they advanced to their first Sweet 16 after winning one of the most thrilling second round games we’ve ever seen.

You’d think with all of that being the case, that anything from Thursday night on would have just been icing on the cake … a dream come true … something no Husker fan could possibly complain about.

And then Fred Hoiberg had four players on the floor with less than a minute to go in a one possession game.

That … that would be tough to not get upset about.

“Put that one on me,” Hoiberg said after the game. “It was a miscommunication and I’m the head coach. Put that one on me.”

“My team was on the floor,” would have probably been the better response.

Accidental Norman Dale is the worst kind of Norman Dale.

2. Muscly Florida/Nebraska Bro

It’s over, man.

Not only had this guy already used up his 15 minutes of March quasi-fame, but it seems like he may have cursed the new bandwagon he hopped on.

It was either this guy or Matt Rhule.

Definitely not Fred Hoiberg and the fellas.

3. Billy Richmond’s ejection

It had no real bearing on the game’s ultimate outcome, but what are we doing here?

If that’s an ejection then we should have ejections in about 65 percent of all college basketball games.

Get real.

All-Sweet 16 Thursday team

Tramon Mark, Texas

The sixth-year senior went out with a bang, knocking down 11-of-15 from the field and 5-of-7 from three on his way to a day-high 29 points in Texas’ losing effort.

Tate Sage, Iowa

The unheralded freshman came up huge off the bench for the Hawkeyes, finishing the team’s win over Nebraska with 19 points (4-of-7 form three), eight rebounds and three assists.

Darius Acuff, Arkansas

The freshman sensation ended his college career with a 28-point performance in Arkansas’ loss to Arizona. Acuff’s 88 points are the most by any freshman or any SEC player over three NCAA Tournament games.

Trey Kaufman-Renn, Purdue

The Boilermakers’ force in the paint finished with 20 points, eight rebounds, and the game-winning tip-in just before the buzzer against Texas.

Pryce Sandfort, Nebraska

He struggled a bit down the stretch, but the Cornhusker standout still finished with a team-high 25 points after drilling 6-of-10 shots from beyond the arc.

3 Best Thursday dunks

1. Malique Ewin, Arkansas

2. Nick Pringle, Arkansas

3. Tobe Awaka, Arizona

Honorable Mention: Alvaro Folgueiras, Iowa

3 Best Thursday images

1. “The Tip”

Maybe not the best name for this play. I don’t know. Purdue fans can workshop this.

2. “The scoreboard reads 0.0”

3. “Go, webs, go”

3 Best Thursday quotes

1. “I’m having the most fun of my life.” —Arizona freshman forward Koa Peat

2. “He slammed his white board and broke his marker on the floor. Ink everywhere. It was pretty intense … He was just telling us we sucked, and that we were soft.” —Iowa guard Bennett Stirtz on what head coach Ben McCollum said to the team when they were down 10

3. “I’m from south Spain. We are known by being a little more, life-smart than some other places.” —Iowa’s Alvaro Folguieras on noticing Nebraska didn’t have enough players on the floor

Friday Sweet 16 schedule

Let’s do this again Friday night. Bring snacks. Maybe a hot dip or something.

All times Eastern