Sweetest

Oh, right. Those guys.

Or should I say: That guy.

That Guy being Carsen Edwards, whom everyone familiar with a basketball (round ... orange ... routinely hurled violently through orange rings by Zion Williamson) knew needed to get going if Purdue was not going to Purdue this up again. Carsen Edwards needed to get out of this funk he was in, if Purdue was going to play like the regular season Big Ten champs. Carsen Edwards needed to, oh, I don't know, make a damn shot once in awhile.

Well. Consider that box checked off.

Because here came defending national champion Villanova in the round of 32, and here came Edwards, and there went Villanova. The final was Purdue 87, Villanova 61, and Edwards had 42 of Purdue's 87. Neither the score nor Edwards' point total was anything anyone was expecting, least of all Villanova, who was not last year's team but did win 26 games this year.

I mean, come on. If I'd told you before it tipped last night that Purdue would have been up 56-24 on the defending national champs at one point in the second half, you would have sent me to rehab. Even Purdue Pete would have laughed inside that big head with the creepy dead eyes.

And yet ... it happened. Edwards went for 42 on just 21 shots, and as so often happens, that opened up everything else for Purdue. Matt Haarms added 18 points and nine boards. Ryan Cline scored 12. And Grady Eifert had pretty much the signature Grady Eifert stat line: 5 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists and a steal.

The Purdues shot 53 percent and limited 'Nova to 35 percent. They outrebounded 'Nova by an astounding 42-24. And they reminded everyone, again, that winning the Big Ten regular-season title wasn't something that happened because the basketball gods meant to write down "Michigan State" and accidentally wrote down "Purdue" instead.

And so now it's on the Sweet Sixteen for the third straight year for Matt Painter's crew, and who knows what happens next. Momentum is a fever dream in the NCAA Tournament, because everything's about matchups and what you do one night rarely translates to what you do another. Just ask Wofford sniper Fletcher Magee, who dropped seven 3s and 24 points in a first-round rout of Seton Hall, then scored just eight points and was 0-for-12 from the arc as Wofford bowed to Kentucky in the round of 32.

So, who knows. Likely the Boilermakers get 2-seed Tennessee next, if the bracket holds. They shouldn't win that game, if the brackets continue to hold. But Tennessee can be had, just as everyone in this tournament can be had. Auburn got hot and drilled them by 20 in the SEC title game. In other words ...

In other words, Auburn went Purdue-vs.-Villanova.

Commence the Music of Foreshadowing.