Has there ever been an ncaa tournament where all the teams seemed so equal? i know the little guys catching up has been talked about for years but it's never happened as much as it has this year. 1 vs 16 games are supposed to be absolute blowouts and regularly 30 and 40 point wins occur, yet in the four 1 vs 16 games, we had two 16 point wins, and two 13 point wins, with one of the 1's trailing by 12 in the second half and another 16 having an open 3 to cut the lead to 4 with about 5 minutes to go (monmouth). in the 2 vs 15 games, we did have the biggest blowout so far (ucla v belmont) and have had no upsets, but the other 3 games featured two 8 point struggles, and a buzzer beater to win by 2 (tennessee). a 14 has beat a 3 and 2 other 14's (xavier and murray state) went to the wire with 3's (gonzaga and unc). a 13 took a 4 to double OT and another (bradley) beat a 4 seed that had been on a roll. and we even got two 12 v 5 upsets. the other seeds don't even need to be mentioned. i think we've only had about three 20+ point wins so far, which is amazing, and seemingly every game, no matter the seeding, has been close. and it's not as if it has been luck. it's not like the lower seeds are just draining 3's everywhere and the higher seeds are struggling, the teams actually look even on the court. in years past, you always got the sense that it was just a matter of time before the 2 or 3 or 4 seed got things rolling, started physically dominating, and won. now they don't even seem capable of physically dominating. it's just a dogfight the whole way. it seems as if the change to this level of evenness just happened overnight. anyone else feeling that this is unprecedented parity for The Tournament.
Couldn't agree more. It's one thing to have parity among, say, the top 15 teams. But this year there seems to be parity all across the board. For large stretches of the Nova game, for example, Monmouth looked just as good (or as bad). Jim Calhoun said yesterday that a 1 will lose to a 16 soon because the difference just isn't that great anymore. I liken it to the USA "Dream Teams." The other countries were so in awe in 92 and 96 that there was no way they could win. now everyone thinks they can take the US, so their battle is half won. Same with the lower seeds. They all -- even the 15s and the 16s -- think they can win. So they take it right at the top seeds and find out that, hey, we can play with these guys. My brackets are toast, but this kind of tourney is a lot of fun. Just take a look at how some of the top seeds have fared: UConn: down 12 late in the second half to a 16 seed Nova: looked downright awful Duke: uninspired for a half Memphis: looking good Tenn: escaped UCLA: looks great OSU: unimpressive Texas: Penn???? UNC: escaped Kansas: owned Gonzaga: probably should have lost Florida: should've been a 1 seed? BC: should've lost Iowa: doh! Pretty amazing. Never seen the top seeds struggle to this extent. I mean, if you were to re-seed this tourney after the performances in the 1st round, your top seeds would be Memphis, UCLA, Florida, and Duke ...
i'll agree with that statement. i don't think there has ever been such close games between 1/16 and 2/15 matchups. there was only one blowout (UCLA) between those 8 games. i think that almost any team left has an equal shot of winning the whole thing. it's that wide open.
