NCAA Tournament 2023: Top 10 most likely 1st round upsets to happen
By Joey Loose
After years of preparation and months of basketball, the NCAA Tournament is finally on our doorstep, with the 68 teams fielded recently on Selection Sunday. No matter the outcome, each NCAA Tournament gives us a fair share of players, teams, and moments that we will never forget. It’s the greatest postseason event in American sports and it really offers a chance to shine a light on people who aren’t exactly household names.
Every year there seems to be some team that comes out nowhere to shock the nation, sometimes winning a game or two or just pushing one of those high seeds to the limit. These Cinderella stories are one of the coolest parts of March Madness and one of the best parts is that they’re totally unpredictable. Nobody expected UMBC to upend Virginia five seasons ago, nor did anyone thing lowly Saint Peter’s would march all the way to last year’s Elite Eight as a 15-seed.
Who could that be this season? The easy answer is that we won’t know until the games tip off on Thursday, and there could very well not be a conventional Cinderella story this season, but that depends on your definition. Both Loyola-Chicago and UCLA had very good teams in recent years, but their marches to the Final Four as 11-seeds certainly portray them as Cinderella teams, especially for a mid-major like those Ramblers.
Today, we’re focusing on those first few days of the NCAA Tournament and identifying the most likely first-round upsets. Any of these ten teams mentioned could become this year’s Cinderella story; or it could certainly be another team along the way. For today’s purposes, we’re only focused on these first-round matchups and will explain and rank the likelihood of each of these upsets coming to pass on Thursday or Friday. Let’s get right into the list.