The East Regional was loaded, but it's the two best teams that will play for the title on Sunday after No. 1 seed Duke and No. 2 seed Connecticut held on for impressive wins on Friday night. Sunday's winner between basketball bluebloods will head back to the Final Four.
As soon as the full NCAA Tournament bracket was announced on Selection Sunday two weeks ago, the one thing that really jumped out was how tough the East Regional was. It was loaded.
We'll have a regional final on Sunday, and we all get what we wanted — a showdown between No. 1 seed Duke and No. 2 seed Connecticut. The two bluebloods have survived the gauntlet, winning three games to get to the precipice of another Final Four trip.
The third wins came on Friday night in Washington, D.C. Duke held of a very good St. John's team 80-75 and UConn held off a furious Michigan State rally to win 67-63.
Duke and Connecticut will play for the regional title on Sunday, at 5:05 p.m. ET
The Huskies beat Michigan State with a dominant game inside. Tarris Reed Jr. had 20 points and Alex Karaban added 17. Both also made critical free throws in the final minute to lock down the win.
Here's the Connecticut-Michigan State game story from UConn Roundtable writer Jami Leabow.
Connecticut is now 32-5 on the season, and they're looking for their third national championship in four years. They had to hold off a furious Michigan State rally after leading by as much as 19 points in the first half, dashing out to an early 25-6 lead.
The Spartans, who made only four three-pointers the entire game, battled all the way back, just ran out of gas at the end.
"Give our guys credit. We bounced back and picked away," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "Our goal in the second half was to play much better. We just kind of wore down."
Duke had to come back against St. John's to punch their ticket to the East title game. They got a big boost from Caleb Foster, who was back on the floor less than three weeks after fracturing a bone in his foot. He came off the bench to score 11 points, all in the second half, and played 19 minutes without a turnoverf.
Duke is now 35-2 on the season. Isaiah Evans led the way with 25 points, and Cameron Boozer added 22. Foster was the difference, though.
"Still a little stunned with what happened, to be honest with you guys," Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. "He had no business playing tonight. Ninety-nine percent of guys do not come back to play under the circumstances of what's happened to him. It was incredible the way he willed us. There's no analytics. There's no stats that can measure how big this dude's heart is for what he did."
Here's the game story from Duke Roundtable writer Will Dalton.
This will be the only regional title game this weekend that won't include a Big Ten team. Duke is the only ACC team remaining, and UConn is the only Big East team left. The SEC still has Tennessee left and the Big 12 has Arizona.
But the Big Ten has four teams left in the field — Michigan, Purdue, Illinois and Iowa.