Courtesy of Todd Greene
For years, the NCAA in March has been defined by the NCAA Basketball Tournament where the best 68 teams in the Country are seeded and placed into a bracket to decide who is the best of the rest. This win or go home style of postseason basketball often leads to crazy upsets and surprise runs from lower seeds and because of that has earned the title “March Madness”. However, this year in particular has lacked the magic of years past with fewer upsets and no major Cinderella runs from smaller conferences at the Division one level on the Men’s side.
Of the teams who qualify for the tournament they are divided into four regions and each team in the region is seeded 1 through 16 so there are four of each seed. One for each region. As of the first two rounds only one double digit seed team is still alive and only 2 schools not from the SEC, ACC, Big 10, or Big 12 have made the sweet 16. After the first round out of all 32 games only eight resulted in the lower seeds beating the higher seed and not one of the 16 highest seeded teams in the tournament fell in the first round.
This is a stark contrast to past years where the mayhem has been real. In 2023, we saw Ivy league school Princeton as a 15 seed upset both 2 seed Arizona and 7 seed Missouri to make it to the Sweet 16. That same year a 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson upset 1 seed Purdue in the first round. The final four that year was contested between San Diego State University from the Mountain West, Florida Atlantic University from the American Athletic Conference, the eventual winners University of Connecticut from the Big East Conference, and Miami from the ACC.
This tournament was only three years ago but still feels like a different era of Men’s NCAA Division 1 College Basketball. And it might be because it is. This year, marred by no major upsets and lack of success for Mid Majors, is not a one off incident because it happened last year too. In last year’s tournament, all of the number one seeds made the final four and there were no defining storybook Cinderella runs or first rounds upsets. Mid Majors were largely unsuccessful. Not a single school outside of the SEC, ACC, Big 10, or Big 12 made it past the second round, including 2 seed regular season powerhouse St Johns and defending champion University of Connecticut who both lost in the second round.
They do say once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern, so maybe there is nothing to worry about just yet. But people have theorized that the addition of Name Image and Likeness (NIL) in the NCAA is a potential cause for this shift.
New Name Image and Likeness rules in College Athletics allows for schools to legally pay athletes to attend their program. Many have argued that this disadvantages smaller Mid Major schools because they don’t have the ability to offer as much NIL money to athletes and all the best high schoolers just go where they can make the most money. They argue that the athletes aren’t motivated to go to the school that can develop them the best, they are now motivated to go to the school that offers them the most money which is SEC, ACC, Big 10, and Big 12 schools.
With all that we should try to appreciate the upsets when they do come along and this tournament has had its moments of excitement. 1 seed, and overall favorite Duke trailed 16 seed Siena by 10 points at half time despite Siena only having 5 healthy, eligible players who played all but the last few seconds. Although Duke found a way to win, it was an exciting scare for people who picked Duke to win it all. 12 seed High Point University managed to win by 1 point against 5 seed Wisconsin, 11 seed Virginia Commonwealth University was able to beat historically dominant Blue Blood Program University of North Carolina in overtime in the first round, and 11 seed Texas has taken down 6 seed BYU and 3 seed Gonzaga to reach the sweet 16. This shows that although the era of crazy runs to the Final Four from smaller less well-known programs may be over, as long as the win or go home system is alive there is always room for some madness in March.
