It's time to whittle this thing down to our Final Four.
Sunday gives us four teams that have been frequent visitors to this stage in recent years, with Michigan and Tennessee squaring off early and Duke taking on UConn in the finale.
Let's analyze both matchups and find some bets and Elite 8 picks.
Tennessee vs. Michigan
If Tennessee is to win this one, the Volunteers are going to have to buck a lot of history.
Tennessee has never made a Final Four, though this is it's third straight Elite 8. We also haven't seen a six-seed make the Final Four since way back in 1992. We've seen multiple seven, eight, nine and 11-seed Final Fours since then, but six seeds have lost 10 straight Elite 8 games.
I'm never going to feel great backing Rick Barnes in a tournament setting against Dusty May.
Barnes is now 5-16 SU as a seed underdog in tournament games, even after these last two wins. His ATS record has been much improved the last few years, but it remains quite ghastly overall.
May, meanwhile, has already won an Elite 8 game with Florida Atlantic, and he's now 9-3 ATS in tourney games and has been excellent in conference tournament one-off settings too.
The quick turnaround only exacerbates the coaching mismatch. Some of the game's great coaches post their best cover rates in tournament games with one day prep; not so for Rick Barnes, who's an ugly 5-12 ATS in that spot over the last two decades.
It's clear at this point that Tennessee was under-seeded and probably more like a four- or five-seed, but Michigan is playing like it was somehow under-seeded as a one-seed too. The Wolverines look like the best team in college hoops, with that trio of future NBA big men leading the way.
Those big men will be an abrupt change of pace for Tennessee, which upset Iowa State largely on the basis of rebounding.
The Vols embarrassed the Cyclones on the glass, nearly doubling them up at 43-to-22 rebounds, and that included 16 offensive boards, which led to a slew of easy buckets.
That was an expected edge heading into that matchup with Iowa State a weak rebounding team and missing Joshua Jefferson. It's an edge Tennessee is over-reliant on as one of the single best offensive rebounding teams in the nation.
But that edge will be much harder to find against Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr. and Yaxel Lendeborg, and without all those second chances, Tennessee's offense can get pretty gross.
This is a terrible shooting team that turns it over a lot and takes a ton of 2s at middling percentages. Putting that up against Michigan's elite effective field goal percentage defense is a recipe for disaster.
How will Tennessee score?
Tennessee has been outstanding defensively, and the Volunteers will try to slow this game down and drag it into the mud. The slower and lower scoring this gets, the better Tennessee's chances are.
As good as Tennessee's defense is, Michigan's is better, and the Wolverines have the vastly superior offense. Their biggest bugaboo is turning it over, but they may have dodged a bullet here since Iowa State is elite forcing turnovers, while that's not a major strength for the Vols.
It won't be easy, but Michigan should find paths to scoring.
The tempo is a huge question here, with Michigan top-25 in the nation and Tennessee bottom-100.
Tennessee could struggle to score, but if it struggles to score in a faster-paced game, it could still hit a decent total. But that could also mean losing by more points.
If Michigan scores efficiently but it's a slower game than the Wolverines usually play, that could limit their total or mean a "close" game that isn't particularly competitive but fails to cover anyway.
Michigan is the significantly better team, and I have the Wolverines over 75% to win, so the moneyline looks priced correctly.
Michigan allowed just under 70 points per game this season, but it allowed 91 and 80 points in two of its three losses. Those are two of the four highest totals allowed by Michigan all season. You beat this team by hitting shots and putting up a crooked number, and Tennessee can't do that.
Tennessee has scored 71 or less eight times this season. It lost all but one of those, and that's seven of Tennessee's 11 losses. The Vols average just 70.6 points per game in losses, compared to 83.1 points per game in wins.
I like Tennessee to go under 69.5 points, hoping that's something of a proxy bet for a likely Volunteers loss, or even an ugly win.
Tennessee played eight games this season against a team currently ranked top 10 at KenPom offensively. The Vols are 2-6 in those games, including losses by seven, 10, 13, and 24.
Tennessee has 15 double-digit losses under Barnes the last five years alone. Its tournament exits in that stretch all came by at least six points, too.
Remember, 10 straight six-seeds have lost in the Elite 8. Six of those losses came against one-seeds, by an average of 20.8 points per game. Every loss was by at least six and all but one was by double digits.
If we like Michigan in this game, we should trust the Wolverines to cover. I think this gets to double digits or beyond. Michigan has 27 double-digit wins already this season, and just under half its wins are by 15 or more points.
Let's play a Wolverines escalator and ride Michigan right into the Final Four: Michigan -7.5 along with -9.5 (+125, BetMGM) and -14.5 (+250, Caesars).
Picks: Tennessee Team Total Under 69.5 | Michigan -7.5 & Escalator -9.5 (+125) & -14.5 (+250)
UConn vs. Duke
This shapes up as the marquee game of the Elite 8, so it's appropriate we get to end our weekend with this one.
History probably won't be much help here. Both Duke and UConn are pretty unimpeachable at this stage, and both Dan Hurley and Jon Scheyer have outstanding records but not a huge sample size.
Historically, one-seeds entered the weekend 27-24 SU against two-seeds in the Elite 8, so these are near coin flip outcomes. In fact, six of the last eight matchups finished within six points, so we could be in for a classic.
These teams share similar strengths, preferring to dominate on the inside-out. Both typically have a big rebounding edge, so that's a loss for each here. Both are terrific depending the paint, negating each other's best method of scoring.
Both teams also play a bottom-100 tempo, so this looks like a slow, grind-it-out type game where every point matters.
How much will Duke get from Patrick Ngongba II and Caleb Foster?
That much is unknown, though it was shocking to see both play on Friday. Ngongba hasn't been himself since returning, but Duke probably isn't in the Elite 8 without Foster's second-half heroics in the Sweet 16.
There's one place Duke will almost certainly have a significant advantage in, so prepare yourself: at the free-throw line.
UConn's defense tends to be pretty foul-heavy and Cameron Boozer and Duke know how to get to the line. The Blue Devils also foul as little as any team in the nation, while the Huskies don't usually get many free throws anyway.
Don't be surprised if that means 10 or 20 extra trips to the line for Duke, and that's a great way for a team with a short rotation to catch its breath and get some easy points.
I don't see any other huge edges.
Duke is the slightly better team, but it hasn't played as well lately, struggling to get past all three tournament opponents. Duke is a bit better on offense, though its defense hasn't been as good with Ngongba not at full strength.
I think Duke is the right favorite, but it's pretty hard to get to -225 on the moneyline, implying around a 69% chance of a Blue Devils win. Does this team really win two of three against UConn right now the way it's been playing? That's hard to imagine.
I don't have a strong play, but I'll put a little on the UConn moneyline at +190 (theScore) with a line that's simply priced too high.
Pick: UConn ML +190
