With the ballgown on, the carriage and horses in tow, Colorado State was ready for its Cinderella moment. The Rams were primed to be the life of the ball with all the talk surrounding them, and they were ready to reap the fortunes.
Instead, the clock struck midnight, and the Rams − and every other bracket busting hopeful − saw its fairy tale ending disappear and the glass slipper shatter.
For it being called March Madness, it’s been a March without much of it. Yeah, there’s been some upsets like No. 10 Arkansas taking down No. 2 St. John’s and No. 6 Mississippi’s beatdown of No. 3 Iowa State. But as the second round ends and the 16 remaining teams prepare for next weekend, the Big Dance will go on without an unexpected appearance from the one that got blessed by a fairy godmother.
The Sweet 16 will have no team seeded No. 11 or higher, the first time since 2007. No Cinderella story happening in these parts.
It’s quite the change in narrative considering how often it’s happened. There’s been multiple years where at least two No. 11 seed or lower teams made it. In recent editions, we’ve had multiple No. 16 seeds prove they can actually win, and in 2021 and 2022, a whopping four teams seeded that low made it. Last year there was only one, but it was an NC State team that made it all the way to the Final Four.
Entering the second round, it was going to be a tough challenge for the streak to stay alive. Colorado State, Drake and McNeese were the only teams that pulled off significant upsets in the first round with the hope of getting to the second weekend.
On Saturday, McNeese got blitzed by Purdue from the start in a 14-point loss. Texas Tech was too much for Drake and the Bulldogs lost by 13 points. Colorado State was the last chance and it looked like the Rams would do it with a late 3-pointer, but Maryland’s Derik Queen hit the first buzzer-beater of the men’s NCAA Tournament to send Colorado State home.
This year’s Sweet 16 exclusively will have teams from major conferences for the first time since the round began in 1975, according to OptaStats. Only the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC will be represented. That’s only four conferences when every Sweet 16 prior had at least seven.
What happened to the bracket busters?
There is no definite answer, but there are several factors that could be the reason the bracket has mostly been chalk the past two seasons.
Before exploring what could be going wrong at the mid-major level, we must remember the really good teams this season are, in fact, really good. All of the No. 1 seeds had no more than five losses this season, none of the top 10 overall seeds had double-digit losses.
Led by the SEC powers, there’s been a clear separation of good and elite this season, and those at the top have proved it so far this tournament. The metrics support it as the top eight teams in KenPom are still alive. The lowest-rated team in KenPom? Arkansas at No. 36, although it’s hard to call the Razorbacks a Cinderella given the talent it had to survive the SEC gauntlet.
Those elite teams have gotten some pretty stiff competition from mid-major teams that dominated their conferences and had all the makings of a Cinderella run. UC San Diego fell just short of its comeback attempt against Michigan, High Point couldn’t hang with Purdue, and Liberty and Akron got steamrolled in their opening matchups. All teams with potential not getting their one shining moment.
So could something be wrong at the mid-major level? Possibly.
Look around at the remaining teams and you’ll see rosters full of transfers. The main contributors sometimes come from other premier programs, but mostly they arrive from the mid-major level, wanting a bigger platform to shine – or possibly cash-in on NIL offerings.
It’s rare to find continuity on any team in this day and age, but the lack of it at the mid-major level is hurting their chances of going on significant runs in March. Most Cinderella teams are full of players that have spent years together, building for the moment.
“I think what’s changed in college basketball is there’s not as many old mid-major teams as there used to be,” said Colorado State head coach Niko Medved. “There’s not as much of that because older guys who played together are pretty good.”
The lack of Cinderella runs doesn’t help the case to expand the tournament. There’s no point in adding more teams to the field if they’re going to end up getting squashed by the championship favorites. It also doesn’t help the casual fans, who fill out brackets and watch just so they can see those little schools beat the powerhouses.
But it sure does set up an elite second weekend of basketball. In the Midwest Region, the top four seeds are alive and with the exception of Arkansas, all remaining teams are seeded No. 6 or better. It will be heavyweight fights for the remaining 15 games of the college basketball season, with each one having a must-watch label.
Yet it will be without the ones that make March the spectacle that it is, and they hope it won’t be the new normal down the road.
“Sometimes, it’s just the way the year goes,” Medved said.
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