Written by Robby Carriger
How’s your bracket?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. After several months of watching college basketball and the nightly ESPN shows that feature about a dozen analysts, I got less than 10 percent correct on this year’s bracket.
Compare that to Harding nursing student Janet Foutch, who filled out a bracket two minutes before the first game, watches no college basketball and has watched about 17 minutes of the tournament. Janet currently sits atop our bracket pool and in the top 3000 on ESPN.com out of about six million.
Janet’s ascent to the top of the our bracket pool and ESPN’s, as improbable as it may seem, is one of only a few upsets that March Madness has provided us with this year. In fact, during the last few years, the NCAA tournament has begun to offer fewer and fewer of those crazy upsets that made the tournament so popular in previous years.
Only six times in the history of the tournament have two one-seeds faced each other in the national championship game. Three of those six instances have come in the last four seasons.
This season became the first ever in which every one, two and three seed advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. Other than 2006, the only year in which no one seed made the Final Four and George Mason made its improbable run, much of this decade has seen an abundance of chalk in the center of the bracket. From 2001 to 2009, (excluding 2006) only one team higher than a four seed made the Final Four.
It’s not just the upsets that have been missing from March. The quality of games over the last few seasons has started to go down. Connecticut’s closest game in route to the Final Four was a seven-point win over Missouri, and North Carolina cleared each team in its path by double digits. Other than the Villanova-Pittsburgh game in the Elite Eight, I challenge you to recall another game from this year’s tournament that had you sitting on the edge of your seat as the last shot went up. Some of the games have been exciting, but compare this season’s Elite Eight to 2004’s, where only one game ended with a point margin larger than 10.
As it is, the bigger programs and higher seeds are beginning to set themselves apart over the last few years. The NCAA is suffering from a severe problem in over-rating teams from weaker conferences that subsequently get upended by the fourth or fifth best team from the Big East or ACC.
Memphis did not lose in 2009 leading up to the tournament, but Memphis also did not play tournament-quality teams until the tournament, and they were exposed for it. Gonzaga benefited from playing mid-majors in the first two rounds of this year’s tournament, but when faced with a team from a power conference, the Zags fell by 21.
People love March Madness for the parity it offers and the exciting Cinderella stories. They love it for office pools and upsets and buzzer beaters. They love it because the first week of the tournament offers 48 games in four days. They love it because the tournament rewards teams who take risks and leave it all on the court, not the teams who take the safe play every time.
In the same way, people love taking risks in their brackets and watching them pay off, at least until recently. The last few tournaments have paid off for those who go with the chalk. Those who take few risks are the ones who are rewarded. Then again, President Obama picked three one seeds and a two so maybe something is to be said for the safe play. As for me, I’m waiting for next year … or maybe I’m just mad I lost to a girl.
