NCAA Basketball: Overrated Kansas, dominant Virginia, and more takeaways

8) Expect for there to be a lot of upsets in the NCAA Tournament

We touched on the parity in college basketball this year a little bit in the intro, but I think it’s really worth expanding upon – we are going to see a lot of early-round upsets in the NCAA Tournament this year.

Why?

Let’s start out with this. The great teams are the great teams and will be there in the end. They have mostly separated themselves in a different tier from everyone else and will be fine.

However, there are also a lot of typically good teams that are struggling or have very obvious weaknesses. Take Kansas, for example, as we discussed previously. Even teams like Cincinnati, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other teams like them that will get middling seeds in the Big Dance are all very beatable.

The final part of the recipe is that there are a number of really good mid-major teams this year. Gonzaga, Nevada, and Buffalo are obviously the cream of the crop and all three could make really long runs while others like San Francisco, Lipscomb, Furman and many more have already proven they can beat quality power conference competition.

It’s going to make for a great NCAA Tournament opening weekend as a lot of these smaller schools will find success. I don’t know if we’ll have that Loyola-Chicago type of run but several mid-majors will win at least a game.

You heard it here first!