No Small Feat

In my bracket breakdown before the tournament, I made this prediction: "The committee did do a good job of matching big conferences and mid-majors in the 8/9 and 7/10 games though. 5 games like that among those and I will guarantee the mid-majors win at least three of those." They did better than that, they won all five (Colorado State over Missouri, Creighton over Cincinnati, Wichita State over Pittsburgh, San Diego State over Oklahoma and Temple over NC State).

But before we say this proves the small guy doesn't get respect, look at this: of the 8 teams seeded 11 or 12, 4 were from big conferences, 4 were from small conferences. The big guys (Oregon, Ole Miss, Minnesota and California) all won their games, the 4 from the smaller conferences (St. Mary's, Belmont (damn them) Akron and Bucknell) all lost.

And one more stat of the 12 teams seeded 1, 2 or 3, 10 were from big conferences, 2 were from mid-majors. The big conference schools were 18-1 (they all advanced save Georgetown), while New Mexico and Gonzaga went 1-2, both monumental upsets.

If you choose to study this more there is an excellent Wikipedia page devoted just to tournament victories by teams seeded 11 or worse.

I'm not writing this to make any judgment because I really don't know what it all means. I thought New Mexico and Gonzaga were great teams. I don't know why they lost. Maybe you could see the Pac-12 was underseeded and that's why Oregon and Cal won their games, but I really thought that league sucked, especially compared to the Mountain West which has zero teams remaining.

Things like this are what makes the NCAA Tournament so great. One never knows what the fuck is going to happen.