Final prelim done - Sweet 16

 

In our tournament of new Value Add Basketball Game teams, all first-round matchups are complete — except for the three teams that were waiting on play-in winners. 

 #48 Long Island University, ranked 48th among our all-time 300 greatest teams, is the tournament’s #6 seed and will now face #264 Chattanooga, which advanced on a buzzer-beater in a thrilling win over #287 Hampton. 

 #169 Canisius (1957) is the #15 seed and will play #193 Cleveland State (1986), which survived an even wilder finish — a 114–112 overtime win over #266 McNeese State. 

 #49 City College of New York (CCNY) 1951, the tournament’s #2 seed, will now face #273 Oral Roberts. Oral Roberts trailed #288 Troy (2025) with five minutes left before Max Abmas hit a 4-point play to spark a 17–10 closing run in a 69–61 win. Abmas scored all the points in the final five minutes except for two clutch free throws from center Kevin Obanor. Oral Roberts has the distinction of being the only team in our game with two 90% free-throw starters, meaning on the 20-sided die a roll of 1–18 is good. Once those three games are completed, we will use the scores from this bracket to calculate the updated rankings of the 300 great teams in the game. 

 Teams Already in the Sweet 16 Here are the 13 teams already through, along with their all-time ranking in our system and their star player: 

 24 — Florida — Walter Clayton Jr. (1st Team)  

192 — Iona — Jeff Ruland 

147 — St. John’s 2 — RJ Luis (2nd Team) 

213 — Ball State — Paris McCurdy 

38 — Duke 1 — Cooper Flagg (All-American, projected NBA #1) 

214 — Fordham — Charlie Yelverton 

76 — NC State — Lorenzo Charles 

229 — Florida Gulf Coast — Bernard Thompson 

113 — Long Beach State — Ed Ratleff 

258 — UC San Diego 12 — Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones 

33 — UCLA — Russell Westbrook (#68) 

161 — Idaho — Gordie Herbert 

148 — St. Louis — Bob Koch