Well if you thought this season of March has been increasingly full of Madness, you may be on to something.
Tonight, the two remaining No. 1 seeds (Alabama and Houston) were playing in the Sweet 16 to claim their place in the Elite Eight, and it didn’t go well.
Overall No. 1 seed Alabama lost to No. 5 seed San Diego State 71 to 64.
No. 1 Seed in the Midwest Region Houston lost to No. 5 Seed Miami 89 to 75.
The other two top overall seeds, Kansas and Purdue, didn’t even make it out of the first weekend. Kansas lost to No. 9 Arkansas in the round of 32, and Purdue made history for all the wrong reasons by losing to 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson, marking only the second time in the history of the tournament that a No. 1 seed lost to a No. 16 seed.
And now there is even more history to add to the 2023 edition of March Madness…
The NCAA tournament will now have an Elite Eight with none of the No. 1 seeds present, making it the first time that has happened in the event since it first started in 1979.
This has to be the worst year for March Madness brackets of all time right?
The tournament almost always sees at least one or two No. 1 seeds in the Final Four, and now this year all four of the top seeds failed to make it past the Sweet Sixteen.
As for No. 1 seeds making it to the championship weekend, there has only ever been three Final Fours that did not include a top overall seed.
So one of the strangest, wildest, maddest NCAA tournaments continues without its top four ranked teams (Alabama, Houston, Kansas, and Purdue). If you are thinking “okay, well if the higher ranked teams aren’t going to be competing for a National Championship, then who is?”
Well, we could very well be in for a Final Four full of small school pride. As of right now, CBS reported that the title game is guaranteed to have one of these five teams competing for the National Title:
No. 5 Seed San Diego State University
No. 6 Seed Creighton University
No. 15 Seed Princeton University
No. 9 Seed Florida Atlantic University
No. 3 Seed Kansas State
I doubt anyone had THAT happening in their bracket challenges. Unless you maybe went to one of those schools, but I doubt even the Princeton Alums had their 15-seeded Tigers making it to the national championship.
If No. 2 seed Texas loses to No. 3 seed Xavier later tonight, there will be no 2-seeds left in the tournament as well. That is quite the upset, because a top three seeded team has won the NCAA championship 22 out of the last 23 years.
An 8 Seed is the lowest seed to ever walk away from March Madness as champions, so there is a decent chance that history continues to be made with the unpredictability of this year’s tournament and the teams left remaining.
And as always, Twitter is eviscerating all the No. 1 seeds that failed to make a deep run in March Madness:
