NCAA Basketball: 10 teams primed to lose early in 2023 NCAA Tournament
By Joey Loose
In just over two weeks, we will have the bracket for the 2023 NCAA Tournament. It’s a crazy fact, considering there’s still over a week of regular season play and more than two dozen entire conference tournaments to be played. We already know and have seen a lot about these NCAA basketball teams, even if they each have between two to five chances to prove themselves even further.
The Cinderella stories are one of the most interesting parts of each NCAA Tournament, but there’s always another side to those incredible runs. Every big upset portrays this amazing story of a mid-major or smaller program, but it’s fair to think about the team they upset as well. This happens every single year: there are high-seeds that get upset either in the first round or very early in the NCAA Tournament, and usually, it’s things we did not see coming.
Today is about those teams that are on the losing end of the upsets. Sometimes, a program just has a really bad shooting day, or an off-effort all around. Other times, the mid-major Cinderella program has an otherworldly effort and really asserts itself in the win. Sometimes, like with UMBC’s upset of Virginia in 2018, both things take place.
We’ll be looking closely at ten teams that have the potential for being upset early in the NCAA Tournament. We’re looking solely at teams expected to be or contend to be a higher seed, so you wouldn’t find any of the bubble teams or mid-major contenders on this list. Those teams can’t really be upset anyways. Not all of these ten teams are equal, but we’ll be sure to explain their specific scenarios and why we believe they are prone to an upset this year.