UPDATE: Are we allowed to claim this as the first bulleye of the 2021 Tournament? Michigan State and UCLA, who will face off in one play-in game on the 11-line, are the walking wounded definitions of strong but stumbling major-conference teams landing in the First Four. And the winner gets to play 6-seed BYU, which we rate as the second-most vulnerable favorite in the bracket! Meanwhile, Drake and Wichita State, who will play in the other, are exactly the kind of non-majors the NCAA likes to reward with half-bids. (The victor there will go up against USC, a considerably tougher opponent.) If you’re looking for teams primed to pull off first-round upsets, root for the Bruins and Bulldogs. Both teams keep things very slow, hit the offensive glass and shoot threes accurately if infrequently.
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We all know by now where to start hunting for NCAA Tournament upsets, right? 12-seeds have beaten 5-seeds in 50 of 140 games since 1985, for a .357 winning percentage that’s both aberrantly high and seems to produce upsets every year, including three in 2019. Hunt the 12-line, right?
It turns out you should probably aim a bit higher than that – literally.
For the first 25 years after the Tournament expanded beyond 32 teams, 5-12 and 6-11 matchups triggered upsets at roughly the same rates (which is how choosing 12s became popular advice in the first place). Since 2010, however, a wide split has emerged between the two groups of underdogs: 11-seeds have won an outright majority of their first-round games, going 21-19 for a winning percentage 12.5 points higher than 12-seeds have attained. 2010 happens to be the year the NCAA broadened its field from 66 to 68 teams, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Since that most recent expansion, 13 of the 18 extra slots created have gone to 11-seeds. Six teams that won the resulting play-in games then pulled upsets in the first round of the NCAA Tournament – and a few went on memorable deep runs. VCU reached made the Final Four in 2011; Tennessee (2014) and Syracuse (2018) made the Sweet Sixteen. The 2013 La Salle Explorers deserve a mention here, too. They had to beat Boise State just to get into the field of 64 as a 13-seed, then toppled two more opponents. That’s a remarkable record for a bunch of teams that barely made the tournament, and that had to play and win extra games just to reach the first round.
As our Slingshot statistical model sees it, the First Four has become home to two kinds of programs that are often severely underseeded by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
Wounded Assassins
One set is a group we call “wounded assassins,” which are power conference teams that pile up double-digit losses despite strong underlying metrics. In 2014, for example, Tennessee had one of the widest gaps ever between analytical and official evaluation: KenPom rated the Vols as the 10th-best team in the country, but after going 24-13, they had to settle for an 11-seed play-in berth from the NCAA. More recently, Syracuse has been losing an average of 14 games a year and turning bubble management into an art form. When genuinely good teams like this make the tournament, it doesn’t matter much if they’ve lost a few close games, or stumbled late in the year, or went south on national television, or developed some kind of bad reputation.
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Outstanding mid-majors that don’t earn autobids
The second batch are outstanding mid-majors that don’t earn autobids. For reasons I think we’d all agree are colored green, the selection committee finds it difficult to reward these teams, even when they would clearly merit seeding in the top half of brackets, like St. Mary’s in 2013 or Wichita State in 2016. This year, it would much rather include Louisville or Michigan State than Utah State, even though the Aggies are the best of the three. But play-in games at least give the NCAA the chance to pay grudging respect to one or two worthy programs from smaller conferences, such as Dayton in 2015 or Belmont in 2019. It’s almost like the committee stares at its brackets and says, “We can’t give the A-10 another berth, but we could give it another half a berth!”
However inadvertently, the committee is using the First Four to stash precisely the kinds of squads that do unexpectedly well in the tournament – usually, though not always, as 11-seeds. That’s the cause and effect here. Put wounded assassins together with some of the best mid-majors in the country, and you’ll get one smoking pack of giant-killers. As a bonus, whoever wins play-in games then gets to face some of the weakest overdogs in the field.
So, paradoxically enough, keep an eye on the teams playing extra games this year, on whatever line they take place. The First Four is likely to include a usual suspect or two from reliably underrated tournament pros, like Syracuse, VCU or Wichita State. And it could be a springboard to new success for wounded assassins such as UCLA or non-majors like Drake.
Then practice rolling your eyes and telling your friends that if all they’re doing is picking teams by trendiness of seed, they might as well be throwing darts.
Thanks to Liz Bouzarth, John Harris and Kevin Hutson of Furman University for research assistance.
(Top photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
