This year is the highest likelihood ever of a 16 seed beating a 1 seed
There are a handful of professional sports feats the world has yet to witness.
A perfect 19-0 season in the NFL (the 1972 Miami Dolphins only played a 14-game regular season and finished 17-0). An NBA team sweeping every round of the playoffs. Multiple cycles in the same MLB game. All of these things have yet to happen and might never happen.
No sports feat is untouchable, however. In just the last 20 years, sports fans have witnessed Peyton Manning break Tom Brady’s already unfathomable record of 50 touchdown passes with 55, teams in baseball and hockey come back from a 3-1 deficit in a seven-game playoff series, and the Golden State Warriors break the win record of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls with 73.
One sport feat that may finally fall this year? A No. 16 seed upsetting a No. 1 seed in the NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament.
Over a span of 33 years, 16 seeds have gone 0-132 against 1 seeds in March Madness.
The 133rd try, however, features the strongest 16 seed of all time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s advanced metrics.
According to its Elo ratings, the 2018 University of Pennsylvania Quakers are the best 16 seed of all time. They will still have a monumental task ahead of them to topple the top-seeded Kansas Jayhawks in the first round of the Midwest Region, but it’s never been more likely.
Penn has several key factors going for it.
First, the Quakers are deep. The team has carved out a stout six-man rotation, with a smattering of quality role players dotting the rest of the roster.
Of those top six players, five are respectable to good 3-point shooters. Nothing can narrow a talent gap in college basketball more than some hot 3-point shooting.
Speaking of that talent gap, the matchup between the Quakers and Jayhawks is the closest 16-vs.-1 talent gap ever, according to the aforementioned Elo ratings.
This is Kansas’ 14th top seed in school history, and by almost any metric it is the school’s weakest.
That somewhat offsets the fact that Kansas has historically bludgeoned 16 seeds as a No. 1.
For what it’s worth, the closest a 16 seed has ever come to beating a 1 seed happened when another Ivy League school lost by just a point to a historically dominant program.
Georgetown eked out a 50-49 win over Princeton in that memorable 1989 game. Had a couple of breaks gone the other way, this entire article could’ve been a moot point.
At the end of the day, Kansas will probably win. It will probably win handily, especially considering the game will take place in Kansas.
But for every fan of a true underdog and for anyone who loves a good David-vs.-Goliath story, this could be the biggest game of the first round.
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