This is a historic moment for the NCAA tournament — but should we have been surprised by the parity we’re seeing in 2023?
Perhaps we should have seen this sort of NCAA tournament coming, especially after a 16-seed and 15-seed advanced out of the first round for the first time in history. It’s only become more wild since Fairleigh Dickinson and Princeton won their opening games. For the first time in NCAA tournament history, there won’t be a single 1-seed in the Elite Eight — or the Final Four. Regardless of Texas‘ outcome against Xavier on Friday night, there will also be the fewest number of top-two seeds in the Elite Eight since seeding began.
Alabama losing to San Diego State and Houston getting blown out by Miami made it official: This is the most unpredictable NCAA tournament we’ve ever seen.
How did we get here? Why is it happening? ESPN’s men’s college basketball experts Jeff Borzello, John Gasaway, Joe Lunardi and Myron Medcalf break it down.
Joe Lunardi: Let the overreactions begin. The first rule of thumb in March is that virtually any team — A-N-Y T-E-A-M! — can win a 40-minute game played by college kids. That said, the number of shockers in the last two weekends is equal parts mind-numbing (for the losers) and awe-inspiring (for the rest of us). This year’s outcome, with all No. 1 seeds gone by the Elite Eight, is no different than all four 1-seeds reaching the Final Four in 2008. Neither has happened before, or since; they are simply the extreme ends of the probability scale.
John Gasaway: We can deduce that Fairleigh Dickinson, Arkansas, San Diego State and Miami were all underrated. Truly! The 64 teams outside the top seeds all had a better chance than we realized when we were filling out our brackets last week. (Yes, it was just last week.) The strongest teams on paper this year, including Houston, tended to be a bit on the young side, and even if that weren’t the case, we really should have learned from Virginia’s experience in the 2018 round of 64 that any team can lose. Now, every team that was a No. 1 seed has lost.
Myron Medcalf: Men’s college basketball didn’t have any one great team, which gave some of the more experienced groups an edge in the NCAA tournament. We’re seeing a lot of older teams move forward to the next stage, and a number of younger teams go home. It might appear that Houston and Alabama don’t meet that criteria, but Kelvin Sampson has talked about the loss of his four seniors from last year’s team and the addition of players like freshman Jarace Walker. There was a learning curve with the Cougars. And Brandon Miller is a phenomenal player, but if you eliminate 2012 (Anthony Davis) and 2015 (Duke’s three first-round picks), you won’t find a national champion that was led by freshmen in the one-and-done era.
