Sister Jean and the No. 11 seed Loyola Chicago Ramblers kept up their magic with a 69-68 victory over No. 7 seed Nevada in Thursday evening’s Sweet 16 action.
A couple hours later, the No. 9 Kansas State Wildcats pulled off a bigger upset by taking down the No. 5 Kentucky Wildcats.
Kansas State did that despite looking awful in their win over 16-seed UMBC in the second round, and despite having three players fouling out on Thursday, which forced them to play the final minutes without a guy over 6’4″.
So here we are with a highly, highly improbable Elite Eight matchup: Loyola Chicago vs Kansas State.
In fact, this will mark the first time in NCAA Tournament history that an 11-seed meets a 9-seed in the Elite Eight.
And that of course means we’ll have an 11 or 9-seed in the Final Four. That number could grow to as high as three teams that are at least 9-seeds in the Final Four, with No. 11 Syracuse facing Duke on Friday night, and the No. 9 Florida State Seminoles pulling off an upset over the No. 4 Gonzaga Bulldogs on Thursday.
But this Loyola Chicago-Kansas State Elite Eight matchup perfectly shows how nutty the 2018 NCAA Tournament is. Here are some tweets about that matchup and one of the craziest tournaments we’ve ever seen:
https://twitter.com/Sam_Vecenie/status/977034909985337344
Out of 17.3 million brackets on ESPN:
0.4% have Loyola-Chicago in the Elite Eight
1.4% have Kansas State in the Elite Eight
2.3% have FSU in the Elite Eight
32% have Michigan in the Elite Eight.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 23, 2018
Loyola Chicago and Kansas State will tip off at 6:09 PM ET on Saturday (TBS) for the right to go to the Final Four.