March Madness has been packed full of upsets through three days of games.
Entering the NCAA Tournament, I said limited capacity would likely help underdogs because without packed stands, the talent disparity isn’t as large as people think. Add in the chaos of restricted schedules because of coronavirus, and the formula was sitting there for upsets. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Well, that prediction turned out to be 100% correct.
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Multiple underdogs didn’t just win first round games, but punched tickets to the Sweet 16. With one more day of Round of 32 action left, Loyola, Syracuse, Oral Roberts and Oregon State are already guaranteed to play this upcoming weekend.
Literally half of the Sweet 16 is made up of teams that weren’t supposed to be there. Given the fact we have eight more games Monday featuring underdogs who weren’t supposed to be here, I’m sure we’re not done sliding underdogs into the next round.
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I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I called these exact upsets. I didn’t. I knew there’d be upsets, but I had no idea where they’d come from.
I 100% expected Illinois and Ohio State to make deep runs. Neither made it out of opening weekend.
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The talent gap between a guy playing for Ohio State and a guy on Oral Robers is real, but it’s not nearly as big as your average fan thinks.
So, you remove the fans, make it five-on-five with no crowd noise to swing momentum and you’re going to find yourself with substantial upsets.
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That’s where we’re at as of Monday morning. It’s been a wild tournament and we’re not done yet. In fact, we’re just getting started!