(I started this post before the above replies, which are good, but, hey, I've got this whole post written now, so...)
All teams are seeded in the March Madness bracket according to their perceived power level.
#1 seeds are believed to be the very best teams in the tournament, with the strongest chance of going all the way to the finals.
#16 seeds have the lowest seeds, which means they are believed to be the worst teams in the tournament.
In the first 33 years of the modern March Madness bracket, not
one single #16 seed
ever beat a #1 seed. (It finally happened in 2018, when #16 UMBC beat #1 Virginia, but it has not happened since.)
An "upset" is whenever a team beats a team with a better seed. So if a #9 beats a #8, that's an upset. If a #14 beats a #3, that's a BIG upset. And, as I said, it took 33
years (and 136 games) before a #16 managed to beat a #1.
A team is "overseeded" if the people who made the bracket give a team a seed slot higher than it deserves. A team is "underseeded" if the people who made the bracket give a team a seed slot lower than it deserves. The actual March Madness selection committee works insanely hard to avoid this, but there is always some subjectivity in the decisions -- and, sometimes, pure personal animosity. In 1970, Adolph Rupp (coach of Kentucky) notoriously influenced the selection committee to give hated rival Marquette (coached by the great Al Maguire) a worse seed than Marquette deserved based on its record, leading Marquette to snub the entire March Madness tournament. (They went to the NIT instead, which they won outright.)
Obviously, in our case, we don't have thousands of sports nerds calculating seed values, just Iron Prime making his best guesses, so it's not a surprise that we have some overseeds and some underseeds on this bracket.
If a team with a bad seed (#12, 13, 14, 15, or 16, generally) manages to win a single upset, that happens, but it's usually a fluke, and the bad seed gets knocked out in the next round. However, if a bad seed wins in the second round, too, then it becomes a "Cinderella story," and people start taking them seriously. By the Elite Eight (Round 4), everyone still alive in the tournament has proved their mettle, and nobody cares about seeds anymore.
I hope that helps! I was raised to care passionately about the college basketball tournament brackets, and I want to share that passion with others.
Rules Manager | Official Rulings in
blue. All else opinion. |
Rules Archive
"We pledge our loyalty to the Glossary from now until death."
"Then receive this reward from the Glossary. May it keep you strong."
~Iron Prime