March Madness grades: UConn gets ‘A+’ while Arizona earns a ‘B-‘ in report card heading into Final Four

The college basketball season’s spring semester is nearly in the books after a frenetic few weeks of the NCAA Tournament that now has us down to just four teams. But you’re in luck: I’m not waiting for this season to finish to hand out report cards.

Below are my grades for every team that participated in this year’s Sweet 16 with the highest marks — as you might imagine — belonging to those teams still in the hunt for the national championship.

Only one team earned an A+ from yours truly — surprise, surprise, that’s UConn — but Alabama, Purdue and NC State all have grades to be proud of. Same for the Elite Eight teams that just fell short: Duke, Tennessee, Clemson and Illinois all skated by with B- or better. 

I had to draw the line in the sand somewhere to differentiate the advancing teams from the eliminated, though, so unfortunately I could not grade on a curve. The below grades aren’t reflective of any one team’s season success or failures, to be clear, they are merely representative of the tiny sample of how each team performed in the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. 

Let’s get to it.

College basketball grades: Sweet 16, Elite Eight report card