Unlike last year’s tournament of upsets, the 2012 tournament saw most of the top seeds advance. And that produced some outstanding match-ups in the Elite Eight.

Kansas vs North Carolina

- Don’t let the final score fool you (80-67), this game was an instant classic.

- A few games ago John Henson returned to action and the first play of the game was Henson knocking down an open jump shot. Flash forward to Sunday’s game. Stilman White was going to have to play a large role with Kendall Marshall out and the first play of the game is White knocking down a jumper. I don’t know if those were set plays, but if they were, Roy Williams sure knows how to give his players confidence.

- North Carolina started the game 12-of-14 from the floor and there were assists on nine of those baskets. For the majority of viewers who thought North Carolina had no shot with Kendall Marshall on the bench, it was suddenly very realistic that the Tar Heels could win. I tried to articulate this on Friday, but there are moments in sports when expectations change. There is a moment in every great match-up where you start to believe the underdog has a legitimate chance to win the game. In the Ohio – UNC game, it happened when Nick Kellogg hit a three to give Ohio the lead. And in the UNC-Kansas game, North Carolina maybe shouldn’t have been a prohibitive underdog, but it was impossible not to feel that way after watching them struggle in the previous game. The Tar Heels would need a miracle to have a coherent offense against the Jayhawks. But eight minutes into the game, having scored on 12 of their 14 possessions, it was suddenly apparent that the Tar Heels had enough offensive sets and enough offensive firepower to win. Eight minutes into the game, expectations had changed.

- At the 11:30 mark in the first half, North Carolina had an ORtg of 166.7. (That’s 25 points on 15 possessions.) Kansas had an ORtg of 164.3. (That’s 23 points on 14 possessions.) And these are elite defensive teams. That was simply some of the best offensive execution you will ever see in a regional final.

- At the 10:11 mark, North Carolina’s James Michael McAdoo got his second steal and the camera panned to Bill Self on the sideline. He looked like his head was about ready to explode. But that wasn’t nearly the most painful sequence of the half for Self. After watching a seven-point lead shrink to three points at the three-minute mark, Kevin Young of Kansas drove to the basket and attempted to dunk the ball. But Young missed the dunk attempt. And then Young compounded the error. First, he fell to the ground and refused to get back up and run back on defense. Finally, after Kansas tried to play four-on-five defense for 15 seconds, Young ambled into the picture just as North Carolina got a lay-up to cut the lead to one-point. Then, in an effort to make sure Self yanked him from the game, Young set one of the worst screens I have ever seen. He simply walked into Stilman White and shoved him despite the fact that White was actually walking away from the contact. Self was desperately grabbing Justin Wesley off the bench before the officials could even finish making the foul call. In fairness to Young, he may have been fouled on the missed dunk, but that doesn’t excuse the effort that followed.

- Sixty seconds later, Justin Westley got credit for a tip-in, but it was really Tyler Zeller who tipped the ball into the Kansas basket. Amazingly, this wasn’t even the most costly “own goal” of Zeller’s season. He also had one as the team blew the home game against Duke earlier this year.

-North Carolina took a two-point lead with 30 seconds left in the first half, and if it wasn’t for a huge steal and lay-up by Kansas’ Elijah Johnson, the Tar Heels would have had a ton of momentum heading into the break.

- Flash forward to the second half. Kansas leads by five, and North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes and Thomas Robinson are diving for the ball and falling out of bounds together. Barnes has the presence of mind to grab the ball and toss it off Robinson’s back before his foot touched the ground. It was a miraculous save.

- Despite the lead, Kansas could not put the game away. Up five in the second half, Tyshawn Taylor thought he saw a breakaway lay-up. What everyone in the stands saw was four North Carolina defenders in the way. But that didn’t stop Taylor from making the ill-advised pass and committing the turnover. It was just a hideously ill-timed decision. Then with 4:24 left in the game, Kansas was only up two points, and Taylor got the ball in transition. With no other Jayhawks under the basket in rebounding position, he jacked up a senseless three-pointer, and gave all the momentum back to North Carolina. There are some point guards who have a natural feel for the game, but in four years, Taylor has never had that feel. He has all the talent in the world, but he will always be a terrible game manager. He can play like an All-American, and if Kansas is going to advance further in the NCAA tournament, they will need him to play well. But controlling the flow of the game just isn’t in Taylor’s DNA.

- Despite all of this craziness, and despite Harrison Barnes cutting the lead to one-point with four minutes left, Kansas eventually prevailed. There were at least two buckets where Kansas got a full 360 basketball swirl to fall in and not roll off the lip of the basket. There was Jeff Withey being in position for timely blocks. And there was Elijah Johnson was his gutty three pointer late in the contest.

- And when Kansas took control, North Carolina had no point guard to calm the ship. Stilman White passed well early in the game, but he ran out of gas late in the contest. In the end North Carolina’s jump shots stopped falling and Kansas advanced to the Final Four.

The ACC’s Fall

This was an unusual year. Normally one of the major conferences bombs out in the early rounds, but the major conferences have lived up to expectations for the most part. As I showed on the day the brackets were announced, here were the expected wins for each conference based on historic seed performance (EW – Seed) and the Pomeroy probabilities (EW – Pomeroy). Note: I exclude wins earned in the First Four.

In terms of historic seed expectations, the only power conference to fail in this tournament was the ACC. But with Kendall Marshall’s injury, you can hardly make the claim that the ACC was overrated.

In terms of exceeding expectations, the Big East has won far more games than Pomeroy predicted, and more than their seed expectations too. The SEC has also won more games than expected.

Kentucky vs Baylor

- This game was not an instant classic, but it was John Calipari’s team at its best. Keep in mind that both Baylor and Kentucky are built with a number of elite high school recruits. But only one of the two teams has players who are exceeding expectations. At the start of the season no one had Michael Kidd-Gilchrist ranked higher than Perry Jones III. But I would suspect everyone has Kidd-Gilchrist ranked higher today. Maybe Calipari is “lucky” to find the right elite recruits, but I think this game was the perfect evidence that no one unlocks talent better than Calipari.

- At one point Clark Kellogg said, “Baylor doesn’t have a matchup advantage anywhere on the court.” Ouch.

- In the first half, Kentucky made 11 field goals in a row. It was similar to North Carolina’s hot start, but it was better because it was mostly lay-ups and dunks. And it was better still because Kentucky was getting stops on the other end.

- There were a lot of great plays for Kentucky in the game, but no play was more telling than Terrence Jones rebounding his own missed free throw to seal the game in the second half. I give Baylor credit for fighting hard at the end and not giving up, but they aren’t a fundamentally sound enough basketball team to beat the elite teams in the nation.

- I honestly feel very sorry for Baylor. This should be celebrated as a fantastic season. The team won 30 games and made it to the Elite Eight. That’s a very special year. But all the losses to elite teams make it hard not to look back at this season and not feel some disappointment. At least the team will have the Big 12 tournament win over Kansas to look back on as the season’s redemption.

Lousville vs Florida

- Have you ever noticed that whenever Rick Pitino gets a technical, he always says he was yelling at his own players, not the refs?

- Greg Anthony and Frank Martin were right at halftime when they said Florida’s three-point shooting would come back to earth. But I still agree with what Kenny Smith said. When you are getting wide open looks, especially wide open threes from the top of the key, that’s a high percentage shot. You aren’t going to shoot 8-of-11 on closely guarded threes, but the type of shot Florida got in the first half was a shot they are going to make more often than not.

- And while Syracuse refused to adjust when Wisconsin was shooting lights out, Rick Pitino made the adjustment at halftime. He switched to a man-to-man defense and used variations on whether to switch screens, and Florida stopped knocking down jumpers.

- Probably the image of the game was Russ Smith attacking the basketball at the halfcourt line and twice tipping it backward. He couldn’t quite force a back-court violation, but his hustle and energy was symbolic of Louisville’s grit in the game.

- Bradley Beal played great in the tournament, but he will be haunted by that late steal and travel for a long-time.

- The 18-3 comeback will live in Louisville lore, but the beauty of great comebacks is they are rarely a sequence of great shots. Other than the 2004 game where Tracy McGrady hit four three-pointers in a row for Houston, I’ve never seen a team shoot themselves into a comeback. It usually takes a series of great stops, free throws, hustle plays, AND shots to get back in a game. And Louisville had all of those.

- Rick Pitino said after the game that they will have to wheel him out of the nursing home for the 25th anniversary of this Final Four trip. And I’m sure he will love to be at that celebration.

Ohio St. vs Syracuse

- If you wanted an omen that this was not Syracuse’s day, the two missed lay-ups and one missed dunk near the start of the game seemed like a predictor of things to come.

- How odd was it to see Aaron Craft get a double-dribble?

- Ohio St. ultimately beat Syracuse by not settling for threes. They were great at feeding the post, and I think it helped that Jared Sullinger could score from the elbow with bank shots. He didn’t need to be two-feet from the basket to score, and it was much easier to feed the ball eight feet out.

- One of the oddest momentum shifts in the game came on a hustle play. Leading by 10, Aaron Craft made an unbelievable save of a ball out-of-bounds, but he came back in and committed a turnover and two fouls within a minute.

- You can’t say enough about Lenzelle Smith Jr. taking an incidental headbutt, receiving stitches in the locker-room, and then coming back to hit a huge three-pointer when the lead was down to one point.

-Give Syracuse credit for not settling for threes late in the game. Syracuse was able to drive the ball to the basket and pick up some fouls, and by extending the game, they gave the team a chance. Ohio St. responded by making 13 of their final 14 free throws, but if that doesn’t happen, the Orange would have had a golden opportunity to win.

-CBS Sports Network had a graphic that Jim Boeheim is now 1-7 against the Big Ten in the NCAA tournament (and that win against Wisconsin was far from convincing.) The Big Ten has had a reputation for great inside post-play and that’s never been a great matchup for Syracuse.

Coming Wednesday: An analysis of the players in the Final Four.