Alabama, BYU anticipate Sweet 16 shootout in March Madness

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Sports Seriously

The highest-scoring game in NCAA men’s tournament history came in 1990, when Loyola Marymount beat Michigan 149-115 in the second round. A week later, the Lions lost 131-101 to eventual national champion UNLV in the regional finals for the third-highest total in tournament history. Sandwiched between this pair in second place is LMU’s 119-115 win against Wyoming in the opening round of the 1988 tournament.

In fact, all five of the highest-scoring games since expansion to the 64-team field in 1985 belong to Loyola Marymount which operated at a breakneck speed still unmatched by any team in the past three decades and earned a place in March Madness history.

Sixteen tournament games since that 1990 season have cracked the combined 200-point mark, several with the benefit of overtime, but only two games have done so since 2008. One of those involved Alabama, which beat College of Charleston 109-96 in last year’s opening round on the way to the Final Four, where the Crimson Tide lost to eventual national champion Connecticut.

In the regular season or the postseason, Alabama’s high-pace style of play is designed to overwhelm competition and bury teams behind a scoring barrage. The No. 2 Crimson Tide may meet their foil — or at least see a mirror image of their playing style of choice — in a Sweet 16 matchup in the East region against No. 6 Brigham Young, an opponent that has been more than happy to run and gun in reaching the tournament’s second weekend for the sixth time in program history.

Alabama presents “a tall task for us,” said BYU coach Kevin Young. The Cougars haven’t made the Elite Eight since 1981 and have never advanced to the Final Four.

Should the matchup meet expectations and go according to plan, Thursday night’s game in Newark, New Jersey, will be…

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Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2025/03/27/alabama-byu-sweet-16-shootout-march-madness/82674141007/

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Publish date : 2025-03-27 10:10:00

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