What happened in Thursday and Friday's first round

Our staff picks for No. 8 Florida Atlantic-No. 9 Northwestern, the first game of the day:

• Nicole Auerbach: Northwestern
• Tobias Bass: Florida Atlantic
• John Hollinger: Florida Atlantic
• Brendan Marks: Northwestern
• Austin Mock: Northwestern
• Joe Rexrode: Northwestern

Good morning from Barclays Center. Here to see FAU and Northwestern in a compelling 8-9 game, followed by a good look at Duke and UConn's prospects.

No. 8 seed, East Region

Opponent, time, TV: Northwestern, 12:15 p.m., CBS

Team in 16 words: Last season’s Cinderella story brought just about everyone back, but were up and down this season.

Record: 25-8 (14-4 AAC)

Coach: Dusty May (4-1 in NCAA Tournament, 1 Final Four)

Player to watch: Johnell Davis (AAC Player of the Year)

Numbers:

BetMGM title odds: +10000

Sweet 16 projected chance: 7.8 percent

Final Four projected chance: 1 percent

Strengths: The Owls brought just about everyone back from a team that went to the Final Four a year ago, so they have a level of experience that no other squad can match. FAU also has one of the best guards in the country in Johnell Davis — who is capable of scoring with efficiency from all three levels. Big man Vlad Goldin has made strides and at times has been the team’s best player, and also a legit low-post scoring threat.

Weaknesses: The defense was a staple last season, ranking 34th in KenPom. This year the Owls struggled on that end, ranking outside of the top 100. That’s been a major area of concern for coach Dusty May all season, along with starting games slow and having to come from behind on a frequent basis. Alijah Martin’s inconsistency has also been worrisome.

Outlook: The Owls were tough to figure this season. They had some terrible losses (Bryant and Florida Gulf Coast) and some terrific wins (Arizona). They were expected to win the AAC, but finished behind South Florida. But this is a team that can make another run with Davis, Goldin and Martin — who stepped up last postseason and will need to do it again.

— Jeff Goodman

No. 9 seed, East Region

Opponent, time, TV: Florida Atlantic, 12:15 p.m., CBS

Team in 16 words: Northwestern’s first-ever back-to-back tournament team boasts veteran star Boo Buie but has been stung by injuries.

Record: 21-11 (12-8 Big Ten)

Coach: Chris Collins (2-2 in NCAA Tournament)

Player to watch: Boo Buie (first-team All-Big Ten)

Numbers:

BetMGM title odds: +20000

Sweet 16 projected chance: 10.6 percent

Final Four projected chance: 1.6 percent

Strengths: Northwestern is one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country, led by fifth-year senior Boo Buie, whose percentage jumped from 31.8 to 44.3 this season. Princeton transfer Ryan Langborg (41.5) and Brooks Barnhizer (35.2) make it rain as well. They’ve kept it up despite losing their starting shooting guard Ty Berry to a season-ending injury in early February. The Wildcats’ offense also boasts one of the lowest turnover percentages in the country (13.3).

Weaknesses: The 2023-24 squad is not as strong defensively as last year’s team that took No. 2-seed UCLA to the wire in the Round of 32. Opponents have averaged nearly 36 percent from three. Meanwhile, 7-foot center Matthew Nicholson, the Wildcats’ blocks leader and second-leading rebounder, has been out with an injury suffered March 2 against Iowa. His status for the NCAA Tournament is uncertain.

Outlook: Northwestern finished tied for third in the Big Ten and upset No. 1 Purdue for a second straight season, in addition to getting solid wins over tourney teams Dayton, Michigan State and Illinois. The Wildcats admirably withstood Berry’s injury, but their depth will be thin if Nicholson can’t return. They can win at least once if Buie is his usual sensational self, but Barnhizer, Langborg and some role players will need to catch fire in order to make the program’s first Sweet 16.

Northwestern (21-11) has never been to consecutive NCAA Tournaments before. This is only the third appearance for the Wildcats ever, all coming since 2017 under Chris Collins. The Wildcats are 2-0 in the first round. Graduate guard Boo Buie is the program’s all-time leading scorer with more than 2,000 career points.

Baylor is a scoring machine, surrounding freshman C and coming superstar Yves Missi with a pack of terrific shooters and passers, including PG RayJ Dennis (6.8 assists per game), F Ja’Kobe Walter (14.2 points per game), F Jalen Bridges (11.9 ppg, 40.6 percent on 3-point attempts) and G Jayden Nunn (10.6 ppg, 43.1 percent on 3PA). The Bears are hitting 53.3 percent of their twos and 39.4 percent of their bombs, and grabbing 35.1 percent of the shots they happen to miss (ranking sixth in the country). It all adds up to 122.5 adjusted points per 100 possessions, giving Baylor the sixth-most efficient offense in the country. The Bears’ defense has slipped a bit since they won a national title three years ago, but that’s not to say many teams have given them trouble. Bad luck may be the toughest opponent they’ve met this season. (Well, bad luck and Iowa State.) Facing one of the nation’s strongest schedules, Baylor lost 10 games—including five by 3 points or less or in overtime. And they’re not likely to be challenged by these Raiders.

Colgate could be the dictionary image of the type of team we call “Schoolyard Bullies,” who are used to having their way on small-conference playgrounds but hardly ever fare well on bigger stages. These squads establish their dominance over weaker competition, then maintain their superiority by playing things safe. Their statistical hallmarks are avoiding turnovers and amassing defensive rebounds — they spend their energy cutting off all opportunities for opponents to gain momentum. They often pile up gaudy won-lost records, which can lure bracket-fillers. And seriously, we are not here to knock them. Building a program that can regularly nab NCAA tournament bids in any way is a big deal. It’s just that if you don’t take chances, you’ll never catch up to a team like Baylor.

Colgate defines this family of longshots as well as anyone. The Raiders rank 19th in the country in defensive rebounding percentage this season but 299th in offensive rebound percentage and 239th in forcing turnovers. This style has brought them another conference championship — in the first round of the Patriot League tournament, they walloped Holy Cross in a game where Colgate had three, count ‘em, 1-2-3, offensive rebounds. The Raiders are so dominant among the likes of Army, Navy, American and Lafayette that in the truncated season of 2021, when Colgate had no non-conference opponents, some ratings systems saw them as one of the very best teams in the country.

Bottom line: Colgate is now 87-15 in Patriot League play since 2019 — and 0-4 in the NCAA tournament. Vermont, Liberty, Bucknell and New Mexico State have all followed similar paths at different intervals over the past 15 years. Slingshot sees these bullies coming from a mile away and heavily downgrades their longshot potential. So should you.

Upset chance: 8.2 percent

After making the Final Four last year, Florida Atlantic (25-8) is back. All five starters from the Final Four game against San Diego State returned to FAU this season. The record isn’t as pretty as last year’s, but this team has wins against Butler, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech and Arizona. The Owls had never made the NCAA Tournament until 2022 but have now been three times in a row.

SALT LAKE CITY — Oakland’s storybook started with the most prescient preface imaginable.

It was Wednesday in Pittsburgh when Greg Kampe, the lifer head coach, the 68-year-old making his fourth trip to the NCAA Tournament since leading Oakland University to its transition to Division I athletics in 1999, made a simple plea.

“What I’m saying is, don’t keep us out,” Kampe said, trying to level with everyone. “You know, we’re what makes this tournament. The little guy.”

Oakland hails from the Horizon League, a group of modestly funded athletic programs spread throughout the Great Lakes. It began in 1978 as the Midwestern City Conference, but only Detroit Mercy remains from the original members. The league later became the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, then changed to the Horizon in 2001. All kinds of schools have come and gone — Marquette, Dayton, Loyola Chicago, Saint Louis, Xavier, so on. They left for nicer leagues, more money, better opportunities. Butler emerged from the Horizon to reach the Final Four in 2010 and 2011, then left for the Atlantic 10 in 2013. The Horizon has mostly existed in its current form since 2020, when Robert Morris and IUPUI joined the likes of Cleveland State, Wright State, Youngstown State and others. Illinois Chicago left in 2022 for the Missouri Valley.

Oakland’s membership began in the 2013-14 season after twice making the NCAA Tournament as members of the Summit League, an even smaller league scattered from the Midwest through the Plains. The Golden Grizzlies have had success, winning more than 60 percent of their conference games, but only reached the Horizon League tournament title game once (2021) and losing. It’s been a nice program, at a regional commuter school, with a likable head coach.

Now, though?

Now everything is different, because on one March night, for 40 perfect minutes, Oakland played basketball. The Grizz beat Kentucky. Freakin’ Kentucky. Greg Kampe beat John Calipari. Someone named Jack Gohlke outshot national freshman of the year Reed Sheppard.

One of those wins. The kind that changes a place.

Kampe, born in 1955 in Defiance, Ohio, knew what was possible before the impossible happened.

“Trey Townsend, Jack Gohlke, Blake (Lampman) — they could be Jimmy Chitwood tomorrow night,” he said Wednesday of his top three players. “Don’t take that away from us.”

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The NCAA Tournament is upon us in all its perfection. It is, quite simply, an event that does not need to be changed or expanded.

But we can do both and keep you refreshed all the while.

Behold: The Athletic’s fourth annual NCAA Tournament Beer Guide.

In previous years, we’ve assigned a brewery and a recommendation to each team in the men’s tournament. This time, we’re focusing on the host sites and the fans traveling to them, identifying the best spot to watch the games and grab a quality beverage. And for the first time we’re including the regional sites and Final Four for the women’s tournament, too.

(Given the variability in hosts for the first weekend of the women’s event, we decided to start with the Sweet 16. If your team is a home team, feel free to help out your fellow imbibers in the comment section.)

A couple notes: The breweries chose the beer. THE BREWERIES CHOSE THE BEER. This is important. And when we couldn’t reach someone for a rec, we took our best stab at the pick. (Those ones you can blame us for.)

Let’s toast to the Madness …

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The Connecticut Huskies are hours away from officially beginning their quest for back-to-back national titles. If they succeed, they’ll be the first program to do it since Billy Donovan’s Florida teams won championships in 2006 and 2007.

So, UConn coach Dan Hurley called Donovan to pick his brain about it all. He also called Jay Wright, who won two in three years at Villanova. He called Tom Izzo, too.

Hurley wanted to know how to approach the year after a title. Where do you start? How do you keep your team motivated? How do you handle it all mentally? And then he went back to work — ready to hit the gym again just two weeks after cutting down the nets in Houston.

“In the end, I love being a coach. I love the work,” Hurley said Thursday. “Two weeks after it was over, I wanted to start practicing again because I love to coach, and I love to be around my team. That's the best part of the job. And then you deal with the human-nature element from both your program and with the individuals, where you just won the championship. It’s really easy to get seduced into thinking it's going to be easy to do it again, or it's going to be easy to make another run — especially when we did it in such dominant fashion like we did last year.

“I’ve been tougher on the group throughout the season because I've just been trying to like root out any form of complacency or entitlement with this team. … The only thing that matters is what happens at 2:30 on Friday.”

That’s when UConn tips off against No. 16 seed Stetson.

First, let’s start with the name, because it matches the game of one of the best players in college basketball. Great Osobor, carried by a deep well of self-belief, also happens to have taken an extraordinary path to prominence on the hardwood.

When John and Mabel Osobor found out they were having a baby boy, they were living in Tudela in northern Spain, an ancient city known for its Gothic architecture. Having immigrated from their native Nigeria, John and Mabel, elated by their family’s coming addition, repeatedly voiced, “God is Great.”

The concept of greatness stuck with them and led them to bestowing such a label upon their son. All these years later, the 6-foot-8, 250-pound forward has proved himself worthy of it. Great even considers himself “a bit of a showman.”

Osobor was recently named the Mountain West Conference player of the year, having been a linchpin in a remarkably fast rebuild at Utah State. The Aggies, under first-year coach Danny Sprinkle, returned zero contributors from a year ago and brought in 13 new players. As vital as any was Osobor, who left Montana State and followed his head coach last April. Osobor this season is averaging 18.0 points and 9.2 rebounds and shooting 58.3 percent from floor.

The Aggies took the conference by surprise and storm. They won 27 games. They won the school’s first outright regular-season title since joining in 2013. There are several reasons Utah State is back dancing in the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time since 2019 under a third head coach. As the No. 8-seeded Aggies take on No. 9 TCU in the Midwest Regional in Indianapolis this week, it would be impossible for the program to be where it is without its always confident and sometimes cocky post player.

“We could be playing the Lakers,” Sprinkle said, “and he’d think he’s the best player on the floor.”

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With Purdue taking on Grambling State tonight — the top-seeded Boilers’ first NCAA Tournament game since becoming only the second men's No. 1 seed to lose to a 16 when they lost to Fairleigh Dickinson a year ago — I caught up with the Atlanta Hawks’ De’Andre Hunter to ask about how he dealt with similar circumstances.

Hunter starred on Virginia’s 2019 national championship team, but in 2018 he was out with an injury as Virginia became the first No. 1 seed to lose to a 16 in a humiliating 74-54 loss to UMBC. Here’s his advice for the Boilers today:

When you guys came into that first tournament game in 2019, how did you guys deal with the emotion of that?

"Of course, the previous year was on our minds, but it was moreso just that we just had to get past it. We just felt that if we got past the first round, we wouldn’t be as, not nervous, but not thinking about that aspect of the game. That was pretty much it, once we won the first game we were pretty confident."

If you could say something to those guys from Purdue, what would you tell them?

"Just worry about the game this year, don’t worry about this game last year, it happened already. Just get ready for this game and people are gonna forget about (last year) if you win the championship."

Is there anything special you did to steel yourself for that first game in 2019?

"Not really because I didn’t play the previous year, so I didn’t really have the experience of playing. That was my first time playing (in the tournament). So I was just excited to be out there."

No. 14 seed Oakland delivered an epic NCAA Tournament moment in the Round of 64 by upsetting No. 3 seed Kentucky, 80-76. Golden Grizzlies senior guard Jack Gohlke became an instant March icon by leading the team with 10 3-pointers off the bench.

While Gohlke claimed the team is “not a Cinderella,” Oakland is the early feel-good story of the tournament. So who is Gohlke, where is the school located (not where you think) and what else is there to know about the Golden Grizzlies?

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The play ended with Zach Edey and Nolan Winter back to back, Winter bent over at the waist and Edey splayed across his shoulder blades. They wound up there, in an awkward reverse piggyback while fighting for a rebound on the final day of the regular season, only after their forearms got wrapped around one another like dueling boa constrictors.

Fans in Mackey Arena, angry that their Purdue big man got tangled up, voiced their displeasure, while Wisconsin coach Greg Gard, convinced his big man got the brunt of the workover, voiced his. Amid the din, officials Doug Sirmons, Brian Dorsey and Kelly Pfeifer went to the monitors to review it all. On the broadcast, Fox analyst Robbie Hummel deadpanned, “There’s a lot to unpack there.”

The hardest job in college basketball is not defending Zach Edey; it’s officiating a game in which he plays. The Athletic talked to five recently retired officials and coordinators and one currently working to ask them about the challenge that Edey presents. They all agreed that the big man is no picnic, not just because of his size (7 feet 4, 300 pounds) but also because of the scrutiny he brings to every possession, let alone every game.

Whistles and no-calls merit equal attention. Big Ten coaches and opposing fans screeching about the first, Purdue fans enraged at the second. Northwestern coach Chris Collins earned himself an ejection after storming the court to vent his frustration after Edey earned 17 trips to the free-throw line while Collins’ entire team took eight from the charity stripe. And an irate Tom Izzo, when asked by Fox during a timeout of Michigan State’s Big Ten tournament quarterfinal against Purdue how his team might better defend Edey, bristled. “I don’t like how it’s being called. How’s that?” And in a tourney semifinal, Edey alone fouled out three Wisconsin players.

Yet the chorus of caterwauling that has trailed Purdue throughout this season has not even reached its crescendo. That comes now. The NCAA Tournament is upon us. Everything matters more in March, including every foul call.

“You have to watch him on every single play, get your head on a swivel,” says former NCAA coordinator of officials J.D. Collins, who retired from his position in 2022. “If he’s setting a screen, posting up, dunking, every single play he’s involved in, we need to decide if it’s legal or a foul.”

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