The 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is only three days old, but it has already been the most wild and unpredictable tournament we’ve ever seen. One of every seed in the tournament, aside from a 16, won a first round game, and after a day of the second round, a 15-seed, 12-seed, 11-seed, and 8-seed have all punched tickets to the Sweet 16.
Sunday night’s action was capped off with 12-seed Oregon State toppling 4-seed Oklahoma State and presumptive top pick in the upcoming 2021 NBA Draft Cade Cunningham, in a 80-70 win in which they led wire to wire. That win marked the 11th upset of the tournament by the NCAA’s definition — a team seeded five or more spots below their opponent winning — which set a new record for upsets in the first weekend with 8 games still to be played.
We define an upset as a team seeded five spots or more lower than their opponent. We've already set the record with 11 such occurrences. We're midway through the second round.
— David Worlock (@DavidWorlock) March 22, 2021
Those games would be:
13 North Texas over 4 Purdue
15 Oral Roberts over 2 Ohio State
15 Oral Roberts over 7 Florida
8 Loyola Chicago over 1 Illinois
12 Oregon State over 5 Tennessee
12 Oregon State over 4 Oklahoma State
11 Syracuse over 6 San Diego State
11 Syracuse over 3 West Virginia
13 Ohio over 4 Virginia
11 UCLA over 6 BYU
14 Abilene Christian over 3 Texas
There are a number of theories as to why we’re seeing so many upsets. For one, a team like Loyola Chicago was probably underseeded as an 8 and, as such, they were much closer to 1-seed Illinois than most any other 8 would have been and were able to dominate wire-to-wire. There’s also probably something to playing some of these games in smaller gyms with a very limited capacity that makes a smaller school team feel a bit more comfortable, along with the fact that most any shooter will tell you it’s easier to fire away from deep in an empty gym. With lower bowls unoccupied, it’s a better environment for threes and that’s the quickest way for a team to erase a talent gap by bombing away from the arc. Finally, this has been a really weird season of stops and starts, absences and a general lack of rhythm, so these top teams might simply not be as cohesive as they usually are.
In any case, it’s been rather thrilling to see all of the upsets and we have another day of second round games that might bring us more. We’ll see if these Cinderellas can continue their runs into the second weekend, but at least thus far Indianapolis has been quite hospitable for the lower seeds.
