The men's Final Four field is set. Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, and UConn will play in Indianapolis on April 5. Between them and that date sits a week during which coaches will watch film, players will recover, and bracket holders will contemplate what happened Sunday night in the East Region final and remind themselves that they did not see it coming. [1][2]

No one saw UConn coming. [3]

The Huskies trailed Duke by 19 points in the second half of Sunday's Elite Eight game, a deficit that statistical models place at roughly a 2 percent probability of recovery against a No. 1 seed playing at full capacity. Duke was playing at full capacity. The Blue Devils, who entered the game as the tournament's overall No. 1 seed and the consensus favorite to win the national championship, had a 19-point cushion and seventeen minutes to protect it. They did not. [3][4]

What followed was one of those sequences that the tournament's advocates cite when explaining why March Madness produces a loyalty that the regular season does not. UConn ran an 18-2 run over eight minutes, the kind of sustained production that requires both individual brilliance and collective composure — neither of which a team down 19 in an Elite Eight game has obvious reason to maintain. Braylon Mullins scored 13 of his 35 points in that stretch. The Huskies tied the game with 4:30 remaining. Then tied it again at 72-72 with 11 seconds left. Then Mullins hit a step-back three-pointer at the buzzer. [3][4]

Duke 72, UConn 73. The scoreboard showed it for a moment before the arena's sound system registered what it meant. It meant the tournament's best team, by every pre-game metric, was eliminated by a team that was losing by nearly three baskets twenty minutes earlier. This is also what March Madness produces. [3]

Michigan's win over Tennessee was less theatrical and more emphatic. The Wolverines, who entered the Elite Eight as the tournament's other No. 1 seed and whose path through the regional had been the opposite of dramatic — competent, consistent, untroubling — beat Tennessee 95-62, a 33-point margin that makes analysis nearly redundant. Michigan had 58 points at halftime. Tennessee's entire final score was 62. The Wolverines are going to Indianapolis having not been tested. That fact may become significant in the Final Four. [1][2]

Saturday's Elite Eight completed the field before Sunday's drama. Arizona defeated Purdue 79-64 in the West Regional final — the Wildcats, whose tournament run has featured the kind of efficient domination that does not generate individual highlights but steadily eliminates opponents, are the tournament's most complete team on paper. Illinois defeated Houston 65-55, the third-seeded Illini taking down a Houston program that had been to the Final Four three consecutive years before Sunday's loss. [4]

The Final Four matchups are UConn (2) versus Illinois (3) in the early game and Michigan (1) versus Arizona (1) in the late game. The UConn-Illinois game features the tournament's most compelling narrative: the team that just completed one of the great comebacks in tournament history against the team whose defensive identity is built around preventing exactly the kind of burst that won the game. The Michigan-Arizona game is a No. 1 versus No. 1 matchup — the first in the Final Four since 2008 — between two programs that have been dominant all year and have not yet been in the same bracket until now. [1][2][4]

The women's Final Four is set on the same side: UConn advancing after Sunday's rout of Notre Dame, with Virginia's bracket-busting run giving the women's tournament a different flavor than the men's — the No. 10 seed that shocked Iowa is still playing.

April 5 is Saturday. Indianapolis is already sold out.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, New York