March Madness 2024: Reseeding the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 teams from UConn to NC State

Hitting reset on the 2024 NCAA Tournament field with a reranking of the 16 teams remaining

By Chip Patterson Mar 25, 2024 at 9:21 am ET• 10 min read

The first two rounds of the 2024 NCAA Tournament are in the books. It was an epic opening weekend that saw four games go to at least one overtime and enough thrills to fill up a "One Shining Moment" highlight on first- and second-round games alone. But now it's time to look forward, reshuffle the deck and take a wide-angle view of teams remaining in contention for the national championship. 

On paper, the tournament has been kind of chalky so far. This is just the fifth time since 1979 that every No. 1 seed and No. 2 seed have made the Sweet 16 (1989, 1995, 2009, 2019). In that collection of wins were plenty of lopsided results, and the tournament as a whole has already matched the record for 25-point wins (11, 1993). But the opening weekend also saw No. 1 Houston pushed to overtime and narrow four-point wins for No. 2 Tennessee and No. 2 Marquette. Right now, the closest thing we have to a Cinderella is the magical run of No. 11 NC State, which needed seven games in 12 days to claim an automatic bid to the tournament and march on to the program's first Sweet 16 since 2015. 

But, within the group of 16 teams remaining, we have certainly seen some changes to our pre-tournament expectations. Some favorites have shown vulnerability in wins while others have seemingly saved some of their best performances for March Madness. Some of what we saw is repeatable, but as we stack the Sweet 16 up against each other, it's important not to focus exclusively on the results of the weekend but also consider the information obtained from an entire season of basketball.