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
| Team | Grade | Analysis | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | UConn | A+ | Every team to make the Final Four has obviously earned high marks, and deservedly so. But UConn is the only team to get the A+ treatment here. What they did Saturday in dismantling Illinois -- spurred by a 30-0 in-game run -- was jarring. The Huskies have all the hallmarks of a championship team. |
 | Purdue | A | Sunday saw an all-timer between Purdue and Tennessee with the Boilermakers taking down the Vols behind a career-high 40 points from Zach Edey. It's the program's third-ever Final Four and first since 1980. |
 | NC State | A | No one thought NC State was bad, but no one thought NC State was this good. The Wolfpack have now won nine-straight after taking the South Regional this weekend with wins over No. 2 seed Marquette and No. 4 seed Duke. |
 | Alabama | A | Alabama earned its first-ever Final Four berth by sticking with its identity: launching 36 3-pointers and making 16 of them to bury Clemson in the Elite Eight. The Crimson Tide have shown they can score with any team in the tourney. Can they do it against UConn? |
 | Tennessee | B+ | In an alternate universe, Tennessee perhaps makes its first Final Four with the scoring of Dalton Knecht and the defense behind him. But the Vols ran into a Purdue team on a mission, and that was that. One of the great postseason runs for this program. |
 | Clemson | B+ | If not for some woeful free-throw shooting struggles in the second half for Clemson, the Tigers -- not the Tide -- might very well be dancing into the Final Four. Brad Brownell's group played tremendous defense in the NCAAs and consistently were the more prepared team in every matchup. |
 | Duke | B | Duke's decision not to double team DJ Burns Jr. might've cost it a shot at the title. Burns went for 29 points in a career day Sunday as NC State marched to the Final Four. After a terrific run defensively this postseason, the Blue Devils dropped the rope on that end and paid the price. |
 | Illinois | B- | Illinois had a dream run before running into a UConn buzzsaw. Sometimes that happens. It's hard to knock too much off of the Illini's grade for getting run off the floor by this Huskies team. |
 | Houston | B- | Despite losing Jamal Shead early in the game vs. Duke, and despite myriad other injuries, Houston nearly took down Duke and gave the Blue Devils a real fight. We'll be talking about the impact of Shead's ankle injury for a long time, unfortunately. |
 | North Carolina | B- | UNC missed a lot of shots it normally makes and RJ Davis went without a made 3-pointer for the first time all season in a Sweet 16 loss to Alabama. If any team has some wondering what-ifs, it's gotta be this Tar Heels team. |
 | Iowa State | B- | Iowa State played Illinois tight in an eventual Sweet 16 loss but stumbled so hard out of the gate it couldn't catch up. To even come back and make it a close game says a lot about the resilience and toughness of this Cyclones team. |
 | Marquette | C+ | NC State punched Marquette in the mouth from the jump and the Golden Eagles immediately went into panic mode in the Sweet 16. They went an uncharacteristic 4-of-31 from 3-point range in the loss to the Wolfpack, falling short in a South Regional it could have very easily advanced out of the . |
 | Arizona | C | For a second consecutive year, Arizona was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament at the hands of a team whose mascot is a Tiger. The Sweet 16 loss felt fluky -- Arizona went 5-of-28 from 3-point range -- but sometimes the better team doesn't have the best stuff. That's what happened with the Wildcats. |
 | Creighton | C | Tennessee looked like it was on the brink of running Creighton out of the building before the Bluejays gave one big last-ditch effort. Baylor Scheierman was nearly a hero but even some of his best stuff to keep them in the game on offense couldn't help slow Tennessee's offense. |
 | Gonzaga | C | About one month ago, Gonzaga looked like it'd be a bubble team for the tourney. So to get to the Sweet 16 for a ninth consecutive tournament -- even if it ended in a lopsided loss to Purdue -- is a remarkable accomplishment. |
 | San Diego State | C- | San Diego State took Yale to the woodshed in the second round before UConn did the same to it in the Sweet 16. So it goes. SDSU isn't the first team to get ran by the Huskies. Aztecs had a great tourney and Jaedon LeDee acquitted himself as a star in the process. |
