First of all, another huge play by the dunker, Alvaro Folgueiras, the same player who hit a game-winning three to knock off Florida last week. On critical late-game possessions, the man is apparently invisible.

It feels like everybody in the arena noticed Folgueiras wide open at the same time. In the above clip, you can see Iowa’s players all signaling downcourt at the wide open player — some fans in the stands, too.

And then, people figured out why. I love the clip in which Stan van Gundy realizes Nebraska had too few players.

Nebraska realized it was a player short as the play was starting and center Rienk Mast dashed to the scorer’s table to try to get checked into the game. I wonder if Mast could’ve just run straight onto the court instead of going to the scorer’s table. I checked and he was on the court for the previous possession, so he wasn’t technically subbing into the game.

Either way, Hoiberg should’ve burned his team’s last timeout. After the game, he took the blame for the “miscommunication,” jumping in during the post-game press conference to prevent Mast from having to answer a question about what happened. “I know (the referees) always count to make sure there's not six,” Hoiberg said. “I don't know the rule on that with four.” It kinda sounded like he was counting on the Hickory High treatment.

Of course, what really lost the game for Nebraska was an eight-minute stretch in which they were outscored 14-3. But the Cornhuskers still had a shot to win before the substitution fiasco, which turned a three-point deficit into six points with less than a minute to go.

I can’t say enough about Iowa head coach Ben McCollum, the four-time Division II national champion head coach who won a tournament game with Drake last year and now taken has Iowa farther than its been in the tournament since the 1980s. He might be the best pound-for-pound coach in college hoops.

And most importantly, he knows how many players are supposed to be on the court at any given time!

I don’t think I’d ever seen a made shot that didn’t even graze the net. To accomplish this, you have to shoot the ball like five inches from the hoop with an 80 percent launch angle, and it has to drop almost vertically through the basket. I thought it might’ve been an airball on TV.

Missing on that play: Texas’ 7-foot starting center, Matas Vokietaitas, who had been Texas’ best player in the NCAA Tournament (including a 23-point, 16-rebound performance against BYU). But head coach Sean Miller subbed out Vokietaitas for this possession, and his backup gave up the game-winning rebound.

Unlike Nebraska’s four-on-the-floor situation, Texas made its costly substitution intentionally. CBS’ Matt Norlander wrote a whole story about the substitution decision. Texas head coach Sean Miller was worried that Purdue would attack the slow-footed Vokietaitas by running a high screen to get him switched onto Smith.

And because Purdue’s own center, Oscar Cluff, had fouled out on the prior possession, Texas had less need for a seven-footer on the floor.

(Editor’s note: I initially wrote a few paragraphs that the player who got outrebounded was backup center Nic Codie. Codie is the player who subbed in for Vokietaitas, but not the player who specifically missed on the rebound. That’s an embarrassing error by me and I’m gonna do a correction in tomorrow’s n)

It’s a tough loss for Texas. The Longhorns fought all the way from the First Four to the Sweet 16. They won three games in five days last week, and were hanging in despite odds that kept getting longer. Their best player in this game, Tramon Mark, scored 29 points despite clearly hobbling because of an ankle injury he suffered in the first half. Their other guard, Jordan Pope, announced after the game that he broke his foot in the win against Gonzaga. That’s two guards with a combined two healthy feet, and they still had the game tied in the closing moments. And they still forced Purdue into a miss that could’ve sent the game to overtime …

But man. You fight so hard, you get all the way to this point, and then you lose because your backup big got bodied. That might be even harder to think about all offseason than the Nebraska brainfart.

North Carolina fired Hubert Davis after the Tar Heels went two years without winning an NCAA Tournament game. Davis’ tenure peaked in 2022, when he beat Duke in the final home game of Coach K’s legendary career, and then again in the Final Four to end Coach K’s career. Really not much to add here, just wanted to talk about how Mike Krzyzewski lost two-straight games to UNC to end his career, including the first-ever Duke-UNC game in the NCAA Tournament, which happened to be in the Final Four.

LSU hired back Will Wade as head coach. Quick summary: In 2022, LSU fired Wade, mainly because of the 2019 news that the FBI had caught him on a 2017 wiretap discussing paying players, which became more-or-less legal in 2021. Wade won an NCAA Tournament game at McNeese last year then left for NC State, then bailed on the Wolfpack after one year because he likes LSU more and they’re paying him more money. It’s an obvious win for LSU, which has become one of the worst hoops programs in the resurgent SEC in Wade’s absence. What did we learn from all this? I guess we learn not to do it again.

Boston College’s next head coach will reportedly be UConn assistant Luke Murray, who has been one of the top assistants at arguably the best program in the sport. And more importantly, his uncle is former SNL cast member and famous actor Brian Doyle-Murray! Fans will be eagerly waiting to see whether Doyle-Murray shows up in Boston to cheer on his nephew at games.