King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NCAA Tournament: Everybody out of the office pool. The second round blows a nation's brackets sky high. Plus: No sideline reporters! Yes!

Mar 21, 2005 | This year's NCAA Tournament seems a little bit upside down. The first round went more or less according to form, with a few big upsets as usual. Bucknell and Vermont got the headlines, but Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Alabama-Birmingham and North Carolina State also had surprise wins worth mentioning. Mostly, though, the favorites moved on, as they usually do.

It was the second round that blew everyone out of the office pool. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a 12 seed, in the Sweet 16? N.C. State over UConn? Utah over Oklahoma? Texas Tech over Gonzaga? And don't get me started on that double-overtime West Virginia upset of Wake Forest. Words don't even do that game justice.

The myth and romance of the NCAA Tournament comes from the first round, the first two days. That's when the impossible happens, the high double-digit seed stunning some powerhouse from a power conference. The school names become synonymous with Cinderella-story upsets. Hampton and Cleveland State. Richmond and Weber State. UNC-Wilmington and Coppin State.

Once in a while, one of these teams gets through to the Sweet 16, as UW-Milwaukee has done this year. For the most part, though, order is restored over the weekend.

At least, that's how I always pictured it. Maybe I'm alone in that and you're out there saying, "Well, duh," but actually, upsets are way more common in the second round than in the first. This year hasn't been odd at all.

This is as good a place as any to note that by upset I mean someone beating an opponent seeded at least two spots higher, since I think we can all agree that a 9-seed beating an 8, or a 5 beating a 4, isn't really an upset.

For all the talk of parity in college basketball, some of which has happened in this column, I found it surprising that first-round upsets seem to be on a slight downward trend. This year's first round felt a little quiet, with its five upsets, and it was, just like the last two years have been. Before that, though, there were at least seven upsets in four years out of five.

Here's the number of first-round upsets, not counting 9-over-8, in each of the last 10 years:

1996 -- 6
1997 -- 5
1998 -- 8
1999 -- 7
2000 -- 3
2001 -- 9
2002 -- 7
2003 -- 5
2004 -- 3
2005 -- 5

If there's increasing parity, thanks to the rise of the so-called mid-major conferences, then those low seeds ought to be closer to the high seeds in quality, and they ought to be beating them more often, which isn't happening. By way of illustration, let's look at the women's game, where the talent isn't as deep and there's a huge gulf between high and low seeds. Here are first-round upsets the last five years, just to give you an idea:

2001 -- 3
2002 -- 4
2003 -- 1
2004 -- 4
2005 -- 4

Even the relatively quiet years on the men's side tend to have more upsets than the women's Tournament does, because there aren't enough good female players yet to create 64 teams that can compete at the top level, though I think that day is approaching fast. Less parity, fewer upsets. But on the men's side: more parity, fewer upsets.

Next Page: What's going on here? A theory. Plus: Glorious sideline silence. And: He goes up for the layup -- and we can't see it!

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