The NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament has, as expected, been filled with a great deal of upsets and surprises. ESPN’s Tournament Challenge Game had 11.6 million players this year. The people filling our their brackets have undoubtedly cringed as they have watched their percentile rankings quickly fall due to the amount of surprising games witnessed thus far. With the help of Ian Barton, Development Intern for the University of Arizona Athletics, I decided to sit down and analyze some of this year’s most discussed teams.
UCLA
In terms of UCLA, just because you win in the tournament, does not validate your selection. UCLA has not “proven” that they belong by winning two games. At the time of selection, they were undeserving of their pick. Statisically, you could definitely argue that Colorado State, Temple University, or University of Miami Florida deserved it more. UCLA beating Southern Methodist University on a fortunate call and fourteen seed University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) does not validate their selection. In fact, fourteen seeds haven’t reached the Sweet Sixteen since 1997, which goes to show how truly “good” they are. They went 11-7 in games against Pac 12 teams. They went 4-12 in road and neutral games throughout the entire season. They still do not deserve to be there.
Iowa State
Iowa State was an interesting team all year. Fred Hoiberg has brought concepts from the NBA to Iowa State. It is apparent that he is a very well liked coach, both by the players and the fan base. They also had a lot of good wins against a lot of good teams this year. For example, they had thirteen wins against teams that were top 50 RTI, so that made them a formidable team in this tournament. They beat so many teams in the regular season that many people could see them going really far and continuing to beat the good teams in the tournament. There were a quite a few signs to Iowa State getting eliminated in the first round that should have been noticed by bracket makers early on. The last few games before the tournament, Iowa State was down by large deficits and recovered to win. This mentality may have carried on into the tournament, thus explaining why they lost to UAB.
Wichita State
Wichita State advanced to beat Kansas, which was a seven seed over a two seed upset. This was a big time deal. Despite both being in Kansas, the teams had not played each other since1993. The reason being that Kansas refused to schedule Wichita State because they did not see any benefits in playing them. This added extra fuel to the fire, because it generated a lot of publicity amongst the state and other sports enthusiasts. Also, a few Wichita State players were raised as huge Kansas fans, but were never recruited in high school by their favorite team. This also added another element of tension to the game. Knowing all this underlying tension and history between the two teams, there is no question as to why Wichita State was able to play so well and upset Kansas.
Villanova
Oh Villanova. Number one seed Villanova was upset by number eight seed North Carolina State (NC State). Many people were surprised about this upset, but there were a few early indicators that could have shown that the Wildcats were in trouble. People didn’t give NC State enough credit. NC State had three exceptional wins, which proved themselves as a formidable opponent by beating Duke at home, and Louisville and University of North Carolina on the road. NC State really proved themselves by beating those three teams. They also had a top ten strength of schedule, meaning they consistently played and delivered against good teams. In other words, NC State was capable of upsetting Villanova as they were prepared for a tough game like this one over the course of the season. Villanova’s flaws come down to one thing: they always crack under pressure. Villanova has had trouble making the Sweet Sixteen previously. Their inability to follow through, combatted with NC State’s ability to perform well against strong teams, shows that this upset was not as surprising as some may have believed it to be.
With millions of Americans going “Mad” over March Madness, and with unexpected results every year, it is obvious why the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament continues to capture the hearts of America’s most devoted.
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