Below we recap Thursday’s action and look ahead to the weekend from the standpoint of the Never Been Kissed (NBK) — our tracker for those schools who have never made it to the Sweet Sixteen in all the years since the NCAA first expanded the D1 Men’s tournament to 64 teams back in 1985.

THURSDAY

Princeton pulled off the upset of the day, beating #2 seed Arizona 59-55 and busting Jay Bilas’ bracket right off the jump. This was a game where Princeton just hung around — down 16-13 after 10 minutes, down 31-30 at half, down 49-41 with 10 minutes to go — before closing with an 18-6 run as the Wildcats wilted. 6’8″ Princeton senior Tosan Evbuoamwan was too much for even the touted Arizona bigs to handle, putting up 15 points, 11 rebounds while commanding double-teams in the paint. The victory launches Princeton to the top of the NBK standings, as they have a 33% chance of beating Mizzou on Saturday and making their first Sweet Sixteen of the modern era. This marked the last college game for NBK favorite and St Louisan Courtney Ramey.
The Tigers were the biggest but not the only upset of the day. Furman pulled an unlikely rabbit from the hat of the #4 seed Virginia Cavaliers on Thursday night 68-67. With Virginia up two an less than ten seconds left, 2019 hero Kihei Clark launched the illest-advised pass in recent history, picked off easily by Furman’s Garrett Hien, who in turn found JP Pegues for the winning three. Virginia had an in-game win probability of 96.1% before Clark’s ill-fated launch, and afterwards Cavs coach Tony Bennett called it a “gut punch”. Next up for the Paladins are the Aztecs of San Diego St on Saturday.
In an all-NBK first round showdown, Northwestern prevailed over Boise St. 75-67.
Utah St. threatened, but ultimately could not pull past Mizzou, and the Tigers won 75-67. Weirdly, a technical foul on Aggies coach Ryan Odom seemed to fire up the other team. Mizzou extended their three point lead to nine and never trailed again. And the Mountain West continues to come up small in big moments.
Charleston gave the Mountain West some glimmers of hope as they fell to San Diego St. 63-57. The Cougars cut the lead to two with under five minutes left, but could not handle the Aztecs combination of size and speed. They end the season 31-4 and put themselves on the watch list for NBK 2024.
Louisiana was a trendy pick over injured and teetering Tennessee, but came up short 59-55. The game was never as close as the final score, with the minimum win probability for the Vols of 85%.
Colgate were brushed aside easily by a strong Texas team 81-61, with Sir’Jabari Rice off the bench for the Longhorns to shoot 7-10 from three point range.
UNC Asheville went down 14-0 against UCLA and it never got much better. They were crushed 86-53.
Northern Kentucky, on the other hand, was only down two at halftime, but could not stay with a hobbled but great Houston club 63-52.
Howard hung with Kansas for the first ten minutes, but the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris and the absence of Addidas Enthusiast Bill Self were not enough to tip the scales in favor of the Bison.

FRIDAY
Here is today’s action in the NBK:
#2 TCU (61%) vs Arizona St. – 9:05 PM CDT on truTV
#5 Drake (46%) vs Miami FL – 6:25 PM CDT on TBS
#6 Florida Atlantic (49%) vs Memphis – 8:20 PM CDT on TNT
#7 N.C. State (31%) vs Creighton – 3:00 PM CDT on TNT
#8 Iona (20%) vs UConn – 3:30 PM CDT on TBS
#9 Montana St (21%) vs Kansas St. – 8:40 PM CDT on CBS
#10 UC Santa Barbara (22%) vs Baylor – 1:30 PM CDT on TNT
#11 Vermont (16%) vs Marquette – 1:45 PM on CBS
#12 Grand Canyon (14%) vs Gonzaga – 6:35 PM CDT on TruTV
#13 Kennesaw St. (17%) vs Xavier – 11:40 AM CDT on TNT
#14 Farleigh Dickinson (2%) vs Purdue – 5:50 PM CDT on TNT

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and Basketball Reference and ESPN