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What's the best Sweet Sixteen game ever?

by Ted Bauer

FOR BEST SWEET SIXTEEN GAME EVER, WE'LL TAKE TATE GEORGE VERSUS CLEMSON

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NCAA Tournament returns Thursday night with the "Sweet Sixteen" round. We decided we'd rank the best Sweet Sixteen games all-time. Since different pockets of history have seen different amounts of teams in the tournament, we might throw a few "Regional Semifinal" games in there too. (That's the scientific term for the Sweet Sixteen.) Here goes nothing. As always, if you disagree: e-mail us. We like to talk to people. It eases the pain.

TOP 5
RANK (YESTERDAY)		WHAT	WHY
	1 (10)	CLEMSON VS. UCONN IN 1990	Most people would simply call this "The Tate George game." No reason for us to disagree. We once met a girl at a bar outside Hartford (true story) and she told us, "If you can't respect that shot more than Christian Laettner's, this convo is over." Whole thing did not end well.
	2 (35)	UCLA VS. GONZAGA IN 2006	We're probably more swayed by the call at the end than anything ("HEARTBREAK CITY!!!"), but one of the coolest things about this game is that earlier in the night, J.J. Redick and Duke had gone down to LSU, and now Adam Morrison was also eliminated. And with that, the main storylines of the '05-'06 college basketball season went up in smoke, to be replaced that Sunday by the George Mason Patriots.
	3 (62)	DUKE VS. INDIANA IN 2002	This game was amazing. Duke had absolutely no right to lose it. (If you forgot the game, here's "vid.") We were at a bar last weekend (all our stories involve bars, ugh) and a Maryland kid told us, "The worst thing about that game was that everyone from Maryland wanted to beat Duke the year we won it, because of what happened in 2001." Eh, we're glad Juan Dixon finally got his ring.
	4 (9)	UCONN VS. WASHINGTON IN 1998	Most people would call this "The Rip Hamilton Game," and rightfully so. Here's some "vid" of the moment. Huskies vs. Huskies was actually a pretty good game in the '06 Sweet 16 too, and should have happened this year. Darn you, Purdue.
	5 (42)	BYU VS. NOTRE DAME IN 1981	Ah, another game associated with a dude: "The Danny Ainge Game." Space Ghost, coast-to-coast, if ya know what we're saying.

HONORABLE MENTION
RANK (YESTERDAY)		WHAT	WHY
	82 (139)	ARIZONA VS. UNLV IN 1976	Each team had four players with 18 or more points in this thang, as Arizona won 114-109 in OT.
	103 (1,870)	UNC VS. INDIANA IN 1984	You know that joke about "the only guy who can hold Michael Jordan under 30?" Here's another candidate: Bobby Knight. Jordan had only 13 points in this game as Indiana moved on. If Jordan had torched the Hoosiers, the Georgetown Hoyas may have zero NCAA titles. Egad!

RISING AND FALLING
MOVEMENT		WHAT
		THIS YEAR'S SLATE (Let's hope some dogs start winning.)
		UNC VS. VILLANOVA IN 2005 (Great game, but what a bogus travel call, eh?)

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