The Purdue Boilermakers would love a return to the Final Four.
Last season they made it all the way to the National Championship before losing to UConn. Once you get there, you can't help but want to get back. Zach Edey may be playing for the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA, and Mason Gillis is trying to help the Duke Blue Devils make it to the Final Four, but Purdue still has a great team and a great coach and wants to make a deep run.
That run will be keyed by Braden Smith, the best point guard in the nation and a strong candidate to be a First-Team All-American. The Boilermakers have a Top-10 offense in the nation and enter the tournament relatively healthy. Thankfully, a few late-season stumbles -- including a four-game losing streak in February -- did not cost Purdue on the seed lines, as they were given the No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region.
Purdue will open the Tournament playing High Point, a good low-major team but one that Purdue will be heavily favored to beat. From there, the normal path would be for Matt Painter's crew to face the 5th-seeded Clemson Tigers and then the No. 1 seed Houston Cougars.
Houston has been one of the best teams in the country, winning the competitive Big 12 by a colossal amount and blowing team after team out of the water. The Cougars are dangerous, with the best defense in the nation and a well-rounded offense. They are a worthy title favorite.
To reach the Elite 8 and, past that, the Final Four, the Boilermakers will need to take down Houston. Unless, of course, someone can do that first.
The Gonzaga Bulldogs could upset Houston
While Purdue can certainly speak to the dangers of overlooking a 16-seed, the Cougars should easily dispatch tiny SIUE and advance to the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament. There, however, they have been dealt a nasty blow by the NCAA Selection Committee, who placed the Gonzaga Bulldogs as a No. 8 seed in the same pod as Houston.
That matters because while the Bulldogs were given an 8-seed, they rank in the Top 10 in most predictive metrics -- how strong the team is against an average opponent moving forward. In other words, the Bulldogs are rated to be as strong as a 3-seed and the Houston Cougars will face them as early as the Second Round.
That's where upsets are made, in these bracket inefficiencies -- and Houston's loss could be Purdue's gain. Gonzaga is a team that knows how to win, having been to a whopping nine-straight Sweet Sixteens, the most in the country by far. If they take down Houston, they will extend that streak to 10. Head coach Mark Few has led the Zags to multiple National Championship games.
Not only is Gonzaga much, much stronger than their seed line, but the Houston Cougars are not whole. Key big man J'Wan Roberts sprained his ankle in the Big 12 quarterfinals, and his status for the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament is up in the air. He would likely be much healthier by the Sweet 16, but if he's not whole by this weekend the Cougars are vulnerable to Gonzaga.
Such an upset is very possible; per Evan Miyakawa, the Gonzaga Bulldogs are the eighth-best team in the country and they are an 8-seed. That's the stuff of upsets. That is how you see a dominant No. 1 seed go down prior to the second weekend.
And if that can happen, suddenly Purdue gets to face a good Gonzaga team, certainly an easier matchup than Houston. And with up-and-down Illinois and Kentucky on the opposite side of the Midwest bracket, the Boilermakers may not have to face No. 2 seed Tennessee either. The path to a second consecutive Final Four is not easy, but it's starting to unfold.
In the end, it could mean more tournament success for the Purdue Boilermakers.