What we learned: Teams that are hot, teams that are not - ESPN

The penultimate weekend before the NCAA tournament is always one of the most fun on the college basketball calendar. There's a mix of regular-season contests, conference tournament action, high-profile showdowns and automatic bids being handed out.

This particular Saturday featured rematches from the memorable Feb. 3 slate: Kansas at Houston, Kentucky at Tennessee and North Carolina at Duke. How would the Cougars enact revenge for their most recent loss, the 13-point drubbing at the hands of the Jayhawks? Was Kentucky's February resurgence a harbinger of things to come or would the Volunteers' Dalton Knecht have one more statement performance left in him before the postseason? And the best rivalry in the sport with regular-season championship stakes on the line for UNC and Duke? We'll take it.

The schedule also had bubble dwellers fighting for their lives, tournament teams jockeying for seeding and the first NCAA tourney bid handed out in the Ohio Valley Conference. Who punched their ticket?

ESPN's Myron Medcalf, Jeff Borzello and Joe Lunardi break down the big storylines from the final Saturday of the 2023-24 regular season.

Ja'Vier Francis slams it home over Hunter Dickinson, then seals the rock which the hands of Jamal Shead for a Cougars and-1.

Myron Medcalf: A few weeks ago, Bill Self was asked to compare his team's challenges with injuries — Kevin McCullar Jr. had missed four of five games at that point because of a bone bruise in his knee — to the situation he had when Joel Embiid suffered a back injury at the end of the 2013-14 season. Self said the two teams were in different situations, not because of talent, but because of the depth — and the lack thereof with this season's group. Sure, the Jayhawks continue