Midwest — The top four seeds advane to the Sweet 16. JW’s quest for a threepeat contues comfortably with a 14-point win over Whitworth. They could get a test tonight as they face Sewanee, which gave Millsaps its only loss of the seaosn, tonight. Sewanee advanced with a 10-point win over Whittier. On the other half of the bracket, Wentworth made the statement of the night by obliterating NYU 114-66, now they’ll get undefeated Defiance, who continued to flirt with postseason disaster and needed a late rally to come back to defeate Lynchburg by five.
East — Hardin-Simmons rolls on with an 18-point win over St. Joe’s. Now they’ll face a Trinity (TX) team I referred to in the preseason as possibly as good as Millsaps. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but a 15-point win over Palm Beach Atlantic last night was solid. The bottom half of the bracket has 6-seed Calvin, which pulled the minor 93-85 upset of Vassar last night, going up against Eastbay, less than convincing with an eight-point win over Wooster last night.
South — Millsaps needed a pair of free throws with 3 seconds to play to escape an upset bid by Susquehanna and advance. Now they’ll get one of the tournament’s surprise teams in 12-seed Howard Payne. HP won the battle of double-digit upstarts against Mt. St. Joseph last night by 11 and has scored 90+ in each of the first two rounds. The bottom of the bracket could be one of the night’s more interesting games as Buena Vista, a 7-point winner over Dickinson, hits US Merchant Marines, who won their first two NT games by an average of 20 points after a 21-point blowout of Denison last night.
West — The top half of the bracket is as-expected. Top-seed Rivier rolled Connecticut by 33 and has perhaps the most impressive set of results through the first two rounds. Now they get Texas Lutheran, a 7-point winner over ghost-shipped Martin Luther. The bottom of the bracket looks nothing like it is supposed to. Webster, an 11 seed, knocked off 14-seed Rose-Hulman Tech on an old-fashioned 3-point play with 4 seconds to play, completing a rally from five points down at halftime. Now they get 7-seed Emmanuel, who had a huge win against a Penn St. Altoona team that I thought in the preseason could win it all this year. Emmanuel was down eight at the half, but stormed back to a 62-56 win.