Elite Eight did not have the same flavor on Saturday night than the Sweet 16 did, but Sunday’s games made up for that. South Carolina-Florida played an SEC East Classic in Madison Square Garden, but it was a great undercard to the main event of the weekend. Kentucky-North Carolina will go down as one of the better Elite Eight games of recent memory with tons of unsung heroes. The biggest was Luke Maye, a preferred walk-on from North Carolina, hitting the shot of his life with under three seconds left sending Kentucky home.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #Elite8 pic.twitter.com/GETD7qN2kG

— NCAA March Madness (@marchmadness) March 26, 2017

North Carolina will be the favorites to take the National Championship and for good reason. Heels have found a way to win at every stop. They survived two SEC scares with Arkansas last weekend and Kentucky today. The great thing for Heels in both games were they closed out the game with terrific runs where their defense went to another level. Maye was incredible for the second straight game with 17 points following up on the 16 points and 12 rebound effort on Friday night. It’s what March is all about.

Final Four is set, and it’s not the usual cast this season. South Carolina and Gonzaga enter in as first time participants. Oregon is there for the first time since 1939 and is looking to be the first PAC-12 winner since UCLA did it in 1995. North Carolina is looking for revengeeeeeee (Drake voice) and cure some of the demons of last April in Houston. To me, this is a great Final Four and should be a dandy next Saturday.

Charlie.